Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

No game to this day has ever captured the feel of table-top role-playing like Arcanum. It's varied, non-linear, open world style is just awesome. Unlike modern games where there are a thousand places to go kill people, Arcanum has a fairly small world. But almost every NPC has an interesting story to tell, a fun quest to give, and atmosphere to add. Arcanum's greatest strength by far is that you can play through it in many different styles. You can kill your way through in a dozen ways: as a deft swordsman, a brutish ogre, a master of the bow; you can be a master gunsmith and craft yourself a machine gun; you can master the many schools of magic. In addition to force, nearly every quest can be solved in other ways. You can sneak past enemies and steal whatever you need. You can seduce NPC's with your beauty, or use your gilt tongue to persuade them to see your point of view. The character creation system isn't always balanced, but it has so many wonderful options. Charisma may seem like a dump stat to some, but a high score allows you to recruit additional party members. I once played through as an orc with the background "just plain ugly"- I figured how much could a low beauty score really hurt? Well, aside from constant racial slurs, merchants would charge me 5 times as much as in my last game. Sometimes people would outright attack me on the streets. The story is a bit standard at first, but before long it takes off and twists into a really epic tale. Honestly, the ending of Arcanum might be one of the most sadly beautiful in any game. Humor, philosophy, creativity, ethical dilemmas- Arcanum is really a treat for anyone looking for more than just a dungeon romp. The combat system is pretty bad though. You can switch between real-time and turn-based and exploit the game with this. Spamming molotov cocktails is an easy way to get through the game. Magic is clearly better than technology, though less rewarding. Most of the items in the game are not very interesting. There are also a good number of annoying glitches. Baldur's Gate this is not. If you just want to run through the game killing monsters and amassing treasure, this isn't the game for you. If you want to be immersed in a crazy, funny, different world, to try new things, you will LOVE it. Since getting this from GOG, I've played through the game 4 times already.

... for releasing such an awesome game. This game is made by (nearly) same developers from Fallout series. Instead, This game is set on Victorian Steampunk-ish Fantasy theme instead of Post Apocalypse. There are LOADS of freedom and options offered for your characters, and character development possibility is near-infinite. (I played as a Gnome Gunman, while my friend did an Elf with 8 companions at a time, and other friend did a Half-Orc Berserker who tried to destroy everything on sight) There are no class but you can spend stat point on skills or stats, including 16 types of magic(5 spells each) and 8 types of technology(7 item recipes each, plus obtainable recipes that require combined knowledges). Only the sad thing in this game is that it's filled with bugs, exploits and some other problems. Fans are working on them to make them better, as another Troika's game, Vampire Bloodlines did. If you love Fallout. Buy Arcanum. NOW.

If you liked Fallout 1 or 2, you will really like Arcanum. The game / play style is very similar, but the world / setting is very different. You create a character (or chose a pre-made) and allow you to develop your character along technology skill pathways, or magic (not both). A great mix of magic and tech competing with each other in fantasy 1920's feel.

I remember playing Arcanum, when I was younger, during the Fallout/Baldur's Gate years and I thought it was absolutely amazing! I'm glad that GOG finally put themselves together and released this game :D Oh, and by the way, there's an high resolution patch available to this game, it higly reccomended you try this game out with the high res patch: http://www.terra-arcanum.com/downloads/ and here's a link for a couple of unoficial patches, mostly fixing typo's and other stuff: http://www.gamershell.com/all/arcanum/downloads.html Anyways, this is a great game, and it comes highly reccomended! :D

If you remember old Fallouts fondly, or if you are into tech/fantasy worlds, I'd say try it out. The gameplay is sadly rather awful and character development a bit hard to figure out (and if you mess it up you can have hell of a hard time), but the multiple endings and immense world with a sense of both tragedy and black humour hovering about can be worth it. The music is awesome, the atmosphere of the Industrial revolution going all wrong and magic trying to survive is really unique, and the game has just a very different feel about it than most games of the fantasy genre. Pity the interface and combat are bad, though not entirely horrible. If you decide to try it - worth the money, I'd say - be prepared. This not the RPG of today. You die fast even to the lamest, three-legged, two-teeth wolf.