frustrating garbage. Unique, but still garbage
The title seemed perfect because every single time I see someone defending the horrible combat system, they always say the exact same thing: "They made it that way on purpose," somehow implying that it was a genius move... Well sometimes it is just bad programming. The combat system will have you yelling at your computer! Yes, it is simple, you hold down left Ctrl and use arrow keys to swing, okay, fine; but you can only hit the highlighted target, and you WILL get swarmed.. I keep trying to enjoy this game, and I do enjoy it for the most part, but I find myself having to take very long breaks from it because the clunky combat system is way too frustrating to me. Combat training helps a great deal, but it takes a lot of training to do a serious dent in a lot of the AI. In addition to only being able to hit the highlighted enemy, there are times when you do hit them, and from either design or bug, you do NO damage (even though the sounds and graphics tell you that you hit them). At some point it gets beyond ridiculous, after I was level 2 in 1 handed swords, and at least 10 extra points into strength, and I was still getting crushed by wolves and lizards, not because I wasn't strong or "skillful" enough, but due to the horrible, horrible, HORRIBLE, combat controls/bugs/settings. I get killed by wolves because they ALWAYS come from no where and usually behind you! Lizards appear to only be damaged by certain swings (unless bug?) and they too will swarm. Currently, my strategy is trying to lure bad guys one at a time away from their groups by getting close, then jumping back; perhaps there is a better strategy I am yet to discover. Any ways, to top it off; in my opinion this is a great game with the absolute worst combat system I have ever seen, and I can imagine that it has ruined this game for a lot of people.. I would recommend giving it a try for yourself, just have a lot of different save files, and train, a lot.
You are one of 3 supervillains and you have a not so deserted island with a very small mountain in the middle which you are meant to build your superbase. It starts off very fun, as an obvious spoof on 007 and other spy flicks, and simple enough. Core gameplay is like any other building sim, you mark an area, builders/minions build in said area. There are different rooms that serve different purposes, i.e. barracks is for minions to rest, and also allows for more minions to be built. You can build traps and cameras. You can even build a hotel for all the tourists that show up. The way that you make needed money is another neat premise; you send minions all over the world to steal gold for you. Sadly enough, the awesomeness of this premise wears off quick as soon as the shoddy gameplay, horrible AI, and frustrating bugs, start to show. The traps you build in order to hurt or kill enemy agents, will kill your more valuable minions way more often. These minions will then have to be abducted, again, from the world map, before you can train more. One of these minion types are the Technicians, which are very important if you don't want your power plants blowing up often. These idiots can repair technical stuff, but they are too dumb to not die in my traps. Let's examine some annoying bugs. Builders getting stuck by building themselves into a corner can get annoying. The minion limit is bugged as well. I cannot figure out if it is the lockers or the bunkbeds that raise the limits because the limit was jumping around as I was adding stuff to the barracks; it went from 40 to 29 to 30 to 25 back up to 40! No clue why, I wasn't subtracting or moving anything from the rooms. And probably one of the worst issues with this game, NO save feature! You have to wait for autosaves, which seemed to be on a time schedule, or whatever it is, or you have to finish the objective, which are not always so obvious. Like explore island further when there is nothing left to explore
This game is utterly ruined by an awful combat system, a horrible camera, terrible AI, and a bunch of game breaking bugs, that's right, better have a lot of save files handy. The combat system is the absolute worst. Aside from "fighting" the camera, one click equals "one swing" so have a new mouse on hand because, because you are liable to break yours from all the frantic clicking. In addition to horrible combat design, it is also buggy as they come; so many times you will be frantically clicking/swinging and you won't be hitting the guy even though you are right next to him, many times you have to move over a bit just so your hits will start to land. Don't try to feed during combat because I find more times than not you will wind up feeding on a companion who needs blood even more than you! Smiths occasionally sell neckguards which I purchased for everyone, but i think that is only to protect you and companions from enemies feeding on you/them. I don't know where to begin with the camera, but there are so many other games where I wished for camera freedom like this, but somehow this game even messes up total camera freedom! I really, really tried to get into this game, the story and the acting and a few other aspects are very well done, which is only reason this is 2 stars and not 1 star. People whom are giving 5 star ratings must be using cheat codes, because there is no way this is even close to a "perfect" game! I got as far as Vienna where I am now stuck in this area, with sunlight everywhere and apparently I don't have good enough armor (couldn't even afford "good" armor for main guy at this point) it's because the quests are so linear there is absolutely no side quests or any way to "grind" for exp or money that I've found. This is one of the few games that have really, really gotten me angry and frustrated. It's not a good look for a 33 year old to be screaming at PC and slamming PC desk with fists over a stupid game.
I cannot believe I missed this gem growing up! Think classic fallout meets steampunk meets oblivion (if it were in classic fallout style), and you get gun-toting knights, or a Doc Holiday type, or a classic Mage character, or even a Gnomish merchant if you want. I absolutely love the character creation and the leveling up. It is the type of game where I can keep starting new characters, spend hours and hours on each and still not even finish 1% of the main story, there is just that much to do. I recommend this to any RPG fan. There is simply not enough space given for these reviews for me to list all the things I enjoy about this truly underrated and amazing game. I really wonder what Fallout 3 would've been like if these guys won the rights over Bethesda, and Bethesda has released some of my all time favorites, which this game Arcanum, is now one of.
This game sucks! You can't even build up a decent base before the cheating AI starts sending in waves of hunters and archers to destroy your school. I still don't know what I have to research in order to get actual soldiers; haven't gotten that far. All you can do after a few minutes is build hunter after hunter to attempt to defend city against their cheating BS! This game cheats worse than Empire Earth. I seriously cannot say enough bad things about this horrible, horrible, stupid, frustrating excuse for a game.
