Arcanum: Played it? What did you think?

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Arcanum: let me the count the ways in which it stank. The AI of both your enemies and your allies is terrible, the interface is clumsy, balance is poor (magic in the game world is supposed to be balanced by technology, but magic is a great deal more powerful). And don't even get me started on the graphics - they look worse than my backside.

And you know what? It's one of the best games I've ever played. The virtual world, Victoriana meets Dungeons And Dragons, is one of the most beautifully realized in any game ever. It's completely believable, and the details: books of philosophy lying around, the newspapers which report your exploits, scores of citizens going about their daily business, oblivious of your presence. Perfect.

It is a sad fact that most of your companions have no more personality than bread mould, but the depth of NPC interaction more than compensates for this. People react to who you are, what you are, what you've done and how you look (try neglecting your appearance and see how far it gets you).

The game world is even deeper than BG2 and Planescape Torment. There are more subquests than you can count and more secrets than you can hope to unlock in a lifetime. You can be a hero(ine) or a very bad person indeed. It has almost infinite replay value.

And the graphics aren't that bad - they're certainly bearable. Certainly you quickly learn to ignore them as you get carried away by plot and character development.

Baldur's Gate 2 and Planescape Torment are still my favourite games of all time, but Arcanum pushes them close. What do the rest of you think?

 

PT choke slams Arcanum. BG2 kicks it in the groin.

Yes, the best part of Arcanum is the few libraries of books it haves. Reading them is more exciting then playing the game. Being a full blown technologist is fun, but the novelty wears off. The rest brings it down. All the reasons you mentioned. Especially NPC AI. Overall, something's not quite right with Arcanum. It's a B at best compared to the A's that PT and BG2 are.

 

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Arcanum rocks. Granted, the graphics are, in a word, thesinglemosthideousthingonthefaceoftheearth, (one really long word), the AI could be better, and the game balance could use some work (I hit the level cap halfway through my first time through), but the incredibly detailed world, the unusual setting, the character interaction, the absurd number of choices about character development, all of it adds up into a truly excellant game. The sheer number and variety of the quests, the plotline, at first so standard and overdone, soon takes an unexpected twist, heck, the fact that it actually had a structured evil game path was a big plus for me.

Plus, it proved what I've always believed: Gnomes are evil!

 

Ditto the rock thing.

The interface needed a little bit of work. And there's the whole "Control your Gun, and keep it in your pants, please" thing. String Theory is fun, except when developers have too much free time to think of the social ramifications.

Anyways, I never took the evil route. I always played a half-elf, and spent more time building things than actually playing through the game. If the total game time took 30 hours, I spent at least 20 just making stake launchers and power armour.

Gawd Dam It, I hated that addiction. That was the most un-productive addiction I've ever had. Whoever made the final call on the whole skills and schematics needs to get beat. Also, whoever decided on the fixed 800x600 and limited scrolling of the area map needs some kind of reward. Swift kick. Something.

 

Arcanum is a very good game, and I actually happen to like the graphics

 

Arcanum's definitely a good game. The character development is awesome. I did not like the graphics, but I thought the music was great. Too bad there was so little of it.