Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (PC)
Arcanum is a role-playing game created by Troika Games and published by Sierra Entertainment in 2001. Like in most role-playing games, one can find elves, dwarves and orcs in Arcanum, but one thing that makes this game truly stand out from all other RPGs is the concept. The concept is just brilliant and it revolves around a magical world undergoing an industrial revolution. A land that was once ruled by swords and sorcery in Arcanum is facing huge technological changes. Magic is slowly being replaced by flintlock pistols, steam engines and other inventions, while previously segregated races such as elves, orcs, dwarves and humans are trying to coexist together in this new world.
Swords and sorcery combined with flintlock pistols and other inventions of "Victorian" era give the game a unique feel that you will not find in other role-playing games.
You are not forced to choose a class in Arcanum, because the levelling system allows you to pick and choose which skills to focus on as you play the game. You start by choosing one of eight races, each with its own strengths and weaknesses, which are even more deepened by the sex of your character. Females usually have lower strength and higher constitution and are throughout the game asked for sexual services, while males have no modifiers leaving them with higher strength and lower constitution. There are many attributes and skills you can chose from and you have complete freedom in deciding how to build your character. Furthermore, one of the central themes in Arcanum is the battle between magic and technology, which not only gives the game unique lore and feel, but also directly effects the gameplay and character progression. This is the closest thing Arcanum has to classes, since a character that is versatile in technology will not be able to be versatile in magic, whereas a skilful magic user will make a poor technologist.
The beauty of a classical role-playing character screen. This right here tells you that you are playing a true role-playing game.
To make your characters even more interesting, you can assign to them unique backgrounds which come with their own set of advantages and disadvantages. For example, a character that is afraid of the dark will get a perception bonus due to always peering into dim corners and dark shadows to see if something is there, but he will also suffer panic attacks if he enters dark places, resulting in penalty to his dexterity and intelligence. The options seem almost limitless and overwhelming considering the fact that there are over 60 backgrounds to choose from.
The gameplay is very similar to Fallout series, which is not surprising because some Arcanum creators were also behind Fallout. This means that you play your character from isometric top down view using your mouse. The controls are pretty simple and intuitive, but the field of view is somewhat short, which results in the player constantly moving the camera away from the character to be able to see what is ahead. This small annoyance was later resolved by resolution patches, which made the game not only sharper and more beautiful, but it also made the field of view much wider. Just like in Fallout, most of your time you will spend exploring the world, talking with people and solving their problems in different ways depending on your stats and role-playing tastes. This is another aspect in which Arcanum truly shines - the freedom of choice.
Good old days - when developers still cared about the quality of dialogues and games were not all about killing things.
I do not know why game developers today do not understand what role-playing is all about, but back in the days when I played Arcanum, I looked brightly at the future of the role-playing genre. Unfortunately, a few years later Troika went bankrupt and the whole gaming industry turned towards streamlining games for wider audience to increase the profit margin. Troika understood that role-playing was all about freedom of choice and Arcanum delivered a lot in that department. It wasn't perfect and the game suffered from many bugs, but many of these problems could have been avoided if the publishers gave the game a few more months of development. Bugs like broken quests or save corruptions certainly lowered player's enjoyment, and this probably contributed to poor sales. Despite these problems Arcanum managed to create a huge fan base, which worked on fixing the game even after Troika went bankrupt and stopped supporting the game. This certainly wouldn't be the case if the game didn't have all the necessary qualities that make a great classic. The result is that today anyone can play Arcanum the way it was meant to be played and this makes Arcanum one of the best role-playing games I have ever had the pleasure of playing.
High resolution patch allows you to play Arcanum on modern monitors while at the same time making the field of view much wider.
Arcanum is a huge game and while many quests can be solved in different ways, there is no lack of combat. Unfortunately, this is also Arcanum's biggest flaw. Fans can fix the bugs, graphic can be sharpened, but one can do nothing about changing the gameplay mechanics. In Arcanum you can switch combat between real-time and turn-based, but neither option feels completely satisfying. While real-time option is basically unplayable, because it happens so fast that you can barely keep track of what is happening on the screen, turn-based combat is repetitive and unimaginative. Since you cannot aim at specific body parts like in Fallout and you cannot control your party members beyond a few basic commands, Arcanum's combat feels like Diablo in turn-based mode. It's not awful, but it's not as enjoyable as it could have been if there were only a few more options available.
Arcanum's combat feels like Diablo in turn-based mode. Please note that this is not a compliment.
Luckily the game can be played in many ways, but it does seem to favour melee trained characters with high strength and dexterity, since most equipment you find is made for a lone melee warrior. Technologists will have more trouble finding a good gun while bullets are scarce and expensive. One can even argue that magic users are superior since their 80 spells give them a wider array of powers in comparison to only 56 technological degrees. This however does not mean that playing a technologist is less enjoyable than playing any other character build. Since magic users and technologists are dependent on high intelligence you will probably find many occasions where your intellect will be useful. For example, high intelligence grants you more dialog options which can open otherwise inaccessible content. So even though the game favours melee warriors when it comes to equipment, it rewards other character builds with additional quests and dialog options which very often allows you to avoid combat altogether. Playing Arcanum again and again, with different races, skills and stat combinations shows just how much work and effort Troika put into making this game. No matter how many times you play Arcanum, it will always be a different experience and you will always find some new detail that you missed before.
This is how a true roleplaying game handles inventory.
I will not say much about the story, except that it is inspiring and superbly done, something that most games today seem to fail at. The originality, concept and execution are light years ahead of what most games today tend to offer, but Arcanum is not a game for everyone. Since it is so diverse, none of its aspects are perfect, and it demands from player devotion and patience, but if you give this to Arcanum, it will give you in return a gaming experience that no modern game today can offer. In your adventure, which should take more than 50 hours to finish, you will be overwhelmed by the size and depth of this game.
Final score: 8.5/10
