This is my Arcanum story. Back in the day, 2001 or 02, I played a demo of Troika's Arcanum. Two things came into my mind: a) for a 200X game the graphics were horribly outdated, even back then, b) my computer back then was barely able to run the game. I played the demo for some time, but then, after a few bugs and crashes, some produced by my low-end computer, some by the game itself, I lost interest in Arcanum. About half a year ago, I picked this game up from gog.com, but being swamped with a bunch of other games and a stressful time at work, I never got around to actually playing it. Checking out gog's holiday calender thingy, my interest in Arcanum was finally reinitiated, and now, more than nine years after its release, I used this very boring day to set the game up and, well, finally play it. What can I say? This is, despite of the awful graphics, one of the most complete and addictive RPGs I have ever played. I have played now for twelve hours straight and I am completely sucked in. For those of you hungry for a game world that is NOT world war 2, post-apocalypse, Afghanistan or... Farmville, this is the game for you. You will quickly look beyond its obvious shortcomings, be it the sub-par presentation or the clunky (but functional) interface. Arcanum shows how much more impact a game can have if most of it has to happen in your head, in your imagination. Arcanum does exactly that and it is still up there with some of greatest RPGs of the past few years, even if i looks and feels like something your grandma would have coded. Get all the neccessary patches and start your own adventure in Arcanum now, I guarantee, you won't regret it! Signed, an Arcanum newbie.
