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PC Arcanum: Of Steamworks
and Magick Obscura
Developer: Troika Games | Publisher: Sierra Games
Rating: B+Kane
Type: RPG Skill Level: Intermediate
Players: 1 Available: Now

The long-awaited RPG, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura is finally here! Set in a completely new type of environment, uncommon in mainstream RPGs, and given a unique classless system, Arcanum is one RPG that truly shines. The fundamental aspects of Arcanum are obviously largely influenced by many other recent major RPGs, but while the game borrows much, it also further develops them as well, giving Arcanum its own distinct sense of style.

The best aspect of Arcanum is its story line and well-written dialogue. The story has an enormous amount of depth and is simply epic. The epic story begins with your character being the survivor of an airship explosion and in the wreckage, a dying survivor requests that you take a ring to someone. A religious convert then comes up to your character and claims that your character is the reincarnation of some holy supernatural entity. Arcanum's story line is not just built-in, it also is affected by your every actions and adventures or misadventures. The whole world of Arcanum is filled with characters that are much like the type of people you would have to deal with in the real world. Unlike other RPGs, Arcanum's NPCs have their own unique traits and react differently to certain lines and tones of dialogue. You'd have to deal with racists, snobbish aristocrats, arrogant veteran adventurers, government officials, and complete morons that think they know everything and have are simply insufferable.

Arcanum takes RPGs to a whole new level with a highly innovative classless system. The classless system makes it so that no characters are alike, which gives a unique sense of individuality. You can either select a pre-made character or totally create your own with a vast array of races, abilities, and backgrounds to choose from. There are eight basic stats to upgrade, a dozen other stats derived from race or background, sixteen primary skills, eighty spells within sixteen colleges of magic, and fifty-six technological degrees within eight disciplines. With such a variety of abilities to choose from, you can practically mold your character into anything. The diversity and possibilities are absolutely enormous, unlike many RPGs in the past.

The backgrounds are the most interesting part in customizing a character. Your character could come from a variety of backgrounds ranging from an educator to even an arsonist! Character attributes also greatly influence reactions from NPCs and they also either expand or limit your dialogue choices. For example, if your character is big and strong but none too bright, you're stuck with dumb sounding dialogue choices when talking to an NPC. Since you decide what sort of tone to use when conversing with an NPC, you can either be civil and a true people person and have them like you or you could be a complete jackass and have them hate you to the point they would go as far as attack you. You could even get an entire town or an entire city to turn against you. It's your choice, but of course, I wouldn't recommend that.

But though the developers attempt to make Arcanum a great revolutionary RPG, Arcanum has a huge set of flaws. Arcanum probably has a poorly done combat system, which is just as bad as Might and Magic VIII's terrible battle system. In real time combat, the whole battle simply degenerates into a mob clashing with a mob with no real tactics. In real time combat, victory is usually determined by the size and strength of your party and/or how fast you can click. The turned-based option is just as worse. Again, no tactics really exist since your party members' AI aren't exactly top-notch as they just rush right into battle no matter how weak they already are. Battles can be very frustrating due to the AI party member's incompetence and the lack of any tactics for battle. There's not even the classic defend option. Magic and technological abilities can make battles less of a chore, but only to a small degree.

While Arcanum has great gameplay, it's graphics, sounds, and bugs are its biggest weak points. The graphics could have been much better given the level of technology available. The backgrounds, buildings, and even simple objects have marvelous detail, but seem a bit dated. The character designs are poorly done and battle animations are far worse. The battle animations seem so poorly to the point that they're just ridiculous. The sound effects are superb. The sounds of the airship in the intro, gunfire, and explosions are well done and the character voice acting is quite decent though nothing too special. But the music on the other hand is not exactly the best feature in the game as it tends to get monotonous. The music could have been done much better. It doesn't really give a true sense of atmosphere and far from being exciting. It's as if the developers spent more time on all of the little details in the backgrounds rather than paying any attention to the character design and music quality.

Despite its dated graphics, Arcanum still lags on even a highly advanced machine, but perhaps that adds to the atmosphere of it depending on one's perspective - the lagging would probably make you feel that you're using an old machine from the mid 19th century. Don't trust the "minimum requirements" label one bit. Despite the fact I was playing on a 1.2 GHz computer with 256 Megs of RAM, I still encounter problems with slowdown. Arcanum requires takes up a whopping 1.2 gigabytes of hard drive space! The final release of Arcanum is infested with a multitude of bugs, which cause the game to crash from time to time and even has some problems with NPC characteristics. Downloading and installing the patch is a definite must.

Despite its flaws, Arcanum still lives up to its promise of a unique new RPG. While drawing upon the systems of past RPGs, Arcanum develops the concept of a role-playing game even further by allowing the player to decide which way the story would go or how the NPCs would perceive the character. It's whole unique classless system and its absolutely colorful world makes up for its many flaws. Though some may find it tedious, given a good amount of patience, Arcanum can easily be a highly enjoyable and exciting RPG experience.

· · · Kane


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Rating: B+Kane
Graphics: 7 Sound: 7
Gameplay: 9 Replay: 9
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