Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura

The Good
This game generally fulfilled its vision of a new setting and story with the same sort of flexibility that worked for the Fallouts. The number of possible character choices and development paths is significantly greater and more diverse than in the earlier games. The interplay of magic and technology, and the different feel of each, is interesting. The evocation of a Victorian English feeling (with some more modern conspiracies below the surface) is particularly wonderful.

Perhaps most promising, the developers seem to have mostly grown up since Fallout2. The sophomoric "humor" is mostly replaced by more interesting and better developed characters. There are moral dilemmas and issues to think about. Many of the factions are drawn in moral grays instead of melodramatic monochrome.

Although some have complained about the "sexism" in the game, including both the lack of female art for two of the playable races (a production cost decision) and the inclusion of some gender discrimination in the world and character reactions (an integral part of the success in producing a Victorian flavor for the game world), I did not find the game particularly prejudiced, and in fact there is a strong subplot around issues of racism and racial exploitation.

The Bad
Not all characters are created equal - there were some balance issues.

One of the most interesting side quests was unfinished, and just leaves the player dangling.

The desire to make a "toolbox" game was not carried far enough to really catch on - in particular third-party adventures can't have a world map - but it was carried far enough to limit options for game scripting.

There were some annoying bugs in the UI even in the final patch.

Managing NPCs in your party was done well in general, but a technical character was not allowed to purchase items for magical followers and vice versa - shopkeepers refused to interact with opposite-aligned characters entirely.

The game was a slug on the best machines available when it shipped.

The Bottom Line
A fine, though not perfect, game and a landmark in CPRGs.

The Good
Arcanum directly continues the role-playing tradition of Fallout games, creating a similar RPG experience in its own original world.

Just like Fallout, Arcanum is a highly flexible, open-ended game, a whole world with vast possibilities and nearly unlimited freedom to role-play. In this game, you are what you want to be. Feel like talking your way out of any situation, charm people and have a huge party? Increase charisma, beauty, and intelligence, but be prepared for some tough combat. Want to talk like an idiot, but be a walking tank? Create a character with 3 points of intelligence and with maximum strength and constitution, and he'll talk grammatically incorrect English, but will beat the crap out of everybody who dares to stand on his way. You can be a good person, perform only good deeds, save families, towns, and kingdoms, or you can be a bad guy, shooting innocents on the streets and making deals with criminals and maniacs obsessed by world domination. You can be a powerful magic user, wielding ancient swords and defending yourself with an enchanted buckler, or you can be a skilled mechanic, make guns and rifles, and drift along with the new epoch of technology. In short, this is a game where you can do what your want, but you also have to deal with the consequences of your behavior.

But with all this freedom, Arcanum doesn't lose the track of its story, which is excellent, especially if we realize this is not a Japanese RPG that is all story and no role-playing, but a game that strives primarily to offer the player the ultimate experience of customizing, exploring, and experimenting. With all its heavy role-playing and its open-ended nature, Arcanum has an interesting, suspenseful story full of surprising twists and philosophical speculations.

The role-playing system in Arcanum corrects many things that were a bit underdeveloped in Fallout. You can raise your main stats, which is good. No more running around with measly 5 intelligence and eating drugs as the only mean to raise it somehow. Fight, perform quests, level up, and watch how you turn into a super-powered muscle mountain, or a respectable sage. Of course, there are also plenty of skills to develop in Arcanum. Whoever says most of the skills aren't necessary, like for example the gambling, probably preferred killing the ultra-tough undead pirate Pete with his skeletons, or performing his three tedious quests, instead of simply winning the ship you need, which you can do only if you are a master gambler. This is the beauty of this game: there are so many unique ways to shape your hero that you are likely to lose yourself entirely in all this experimenting. And think of its replay value!..

In an interesting twist, Arcanum offers three types of combat engines the player can select right from the beginning: real-time, semi-turn-based, and turn-based. Personally, I prefer the turn based combat, which I didn't find slow at all. It was more or less the same style as in Fallout clever, intelligent kind of combat, based mainly on strategy. You have action points which determine the amount of actions you can perform per turn. You also have practically no control over your party members. Of course, they would do stupid things sometimes, but I found the ones in Fallout much more stupid - they couldn't use almost any good weapons, didn't wear good equipment, and were sometimes shooting me instead of the enemies. Having Virgil in your party makes the combat much more comfortable, because his healing skill is extremely powerful, and he does use it when I need help. In general I found the battles in Arcanum to be on the easy side, but that only added to the immense amount of fun I was already having with this game.

Your party members in Arcanum are perhaps not as memorable as in Planescape: Torment, but to call them packhorses is an insult. Of course, just as in Fallout, they really make great packhorses, but have you ever seen a packhorse who falls in love with you? Or a packhorse who believes you are the incarnation of an ancient elven hero? Or a packhorse who will tell you how cruel you are if you kill an innocent person, threatening to leave your party for good if you do this again? Or a packhorse that was once the mighty ruler of dwarves, with a tragic, philosophical story behind? No, they are not packhorses, but great companions on your quest, and there a lot of them, too.

The interesting setting of Arcanum makes the already masterfully crafted game even more appealing. It is a unique mixture of technology and magic, but not in the sense of "science fiction magic", like in some Japanese RPGs, but a kind of an alternate Earth: "steampunk" era, similar to the end of the 19th century in England or North America. The game captures the atmosphere of the time, the clothes, the speech, the social structure, and paying attention to the smallest details - interior design of rooms, the growing power of technology, the general rise of activity among people, the desire to conquer and discover more, old-fashioned planes and trains, names of streets, the fight between the old and the new, etc.

Yet this realistic epoch is mixed with a world that strongly reminds of Tolkien's Middle Earth, populated by elves, dwarves, and orcs. All those creatures have now to deal with the development of technology by the humans, and to solve the problem in their own ways. Arcanum manages to seamlessly merge those two completely different worlds.

Just to illustrate how much detail was put into the game: try reading all those books scattered around the world of Arcanum. One of the books is called "The Orc Question", and the author discusses in a typical haughty manner of an English Victorian gentleman what to do with the orcs, how to deal with them, and whether they are really such villains as most people say they are. This book is interesting not only due to obvious parallels to our own reality, but also because the unique style of the 19th century European essays has been carefully preserved here.

Lastly, the music of Arcanum is outstanding, and deserves to be released on a special CD. The whole soundtrack is performed by string instruments. Without too many effects, limited by its intimate instrumentation, this music is both tender and deep, threatening and meditative, emotional and calm, and has a flavor of deep melancholy. The high-quality music of Arcanum can nearly be compared to pieces by Shostakovitch or Bartok.

The Bad
The graphics are functional, but that's all they are. Of course, RPGs are seldom distinguished by their graphics, but it's a real pity that outdated visuals attracted negative attention to the game. Such is the world we live in: games are often judged by their "clothes".

I couldn't get into the real-time combat. I found it way too fast and confusing. The game was clearly developed with the turn-based combat in mind; looks like the real-time one was added as an afterthought.

The game opens with a beautiful CG movie; there are a few others in it, but too few for my tastes. A game with a narrative of this quality could have been more cinematic, pay more attention to dramatic depiction of events.

Oh, and I almost forgot: the level cap! I rarely reach those when I play RPGs; but when I played Arcanum, I hit it at some point before venturing into the final location. Luckily, there is a "level cap remover" floating on the net somewhere; be sure to apply it!..

The Bottom Line
Arcanum is the spiritual heir to Fallout games. Like its famed predecessors, it is a remarkably open-ended game with meticulous customization and nearly unlimited possibilities to role-play. Set in a highly original "Tolkien steampunk" world and offering an interesting, well-written story, Arcanum is a true delight for the RPG gourmet.

The Good
As was with Fallout 1+2, the gameplay was, by and by, the main attraction of this game. The options for character development are massive; they put the majority of other games on the market to shame. The character creation is simple (and full of easy ways to waste your points if you haven't played the game before, or haven't consulted a guide), but as the game progresses, the player is given a massive range of options for character development. One of the nicer points about this game is that it is impossible to even come close to mastering more then a handful of the wide range of skills and abilities, it makes replays of the game a completely different experience.

Also worth noting is the great Steampunk setting, that is integral to the story, and also allows for a huge range of environments and characters for the player to explore and interact with. The background graphics add to the atmosphere; your characters explore everything from a industrial revolutionized town, to ancient elven cities in trees.

The story in this game is also well done, but often is ignored for long stretches of time in lieu of exploration and sidequests.

The Bad
The character graphics were abysmal for their time; the animation was jerky, the detail was low, and, in addition to that, the style was weak and generic feeling.

The battle system is good, but flawed. It is very close to Fallout's system, just not as well planned out and executed. There is also a "real-time" setting that is worthless except for the easy battles, as it moves far far faster then the player is able to command his character.

Also, even with it's final patch, the game still has terrible crashes and will occasionally eat a save game.

The Bottom Line
A brilliant RPG that needed just a little bit more polish to have achieved true classic status.

The Good
There's a lot to love about Arcanum, it's the first rpg to come out from the runaway splinter group of Fallout's developing team, and suffice to say that the pedigree shows.

The game provides a truly engrossing experience, in a completely unconventional setting, with lots of rpg-ing goodness and a wonderful character editing system.

Truly the game's strongest point is it's world, it's a mixture of traditional fantasy elements with a strong "steampunk" edge that makes for an incredibly unique gameworld (sort of like "Thief meets The Difference Engine"). A gameworld that is populated to the max with npcs, quests, and places to explore. This of course takes the focus off the main plot, but as long as you understand that, that half the fun in Arcanum comes from exploring and fooling around at your leisure, then you'll be okay. Arcanum appeals to those types of players that want to experience a game from end to end, not just 1 (one) adventure in 1 (one) setting. If you want everything tied up nicely with the main plot then you are barking at the wrong three. The game has millions of sidequests that both enrich and liven up the experience (if you are willing to put the storyline in the back-burner for a while) in fact, few games take you off the main plot to explore an X-files like conspiracy or have you solve murder cases, negotiate political treaties, or lots of impressive quests like the exceptional one with the fortune teller early on....Granted, the game has a bit of "filler" material, but it's nothing compared to the amount of innovative and truly interesting quests it has in store. And the story itself even though is starts out rather bland, gets way better as the game progresses, with a lot of good twists and situations.

The npcs that can be added to your party come in a nice variety, and add a lot of color to the game, they add info and comments on locations and have their background, motivations and will add their own participation to the storyline. Only a select few have this however (tip: choose the talking ones! ;)) and they don't add as much color as in other games like Baldur's Gate, but they bring a lot more to the game than more inventory space and fighting muscle. Whoever says they are merely packhorses hasn't taken Magnus around, or left Virgil early on in the game, didn't take Z'an A'zul Rhin (or whatever!!) to Arronax, left Raven to rot in Quintarra, or didn't even bother to check Torian, etc...

Another highlight of the game is it's powerful character editing system... Which again, will piss off players that have little grasp of what they want. I'm not calling myself an expert in this types of games, but I have seen newbie rpg friends stare blankly at the screen trying to figure where to put their skill points. One must certainly know what he wants when he creates his character, and must be prepared to steer him in the direction that matches his playing style. As in other skill-based rpgs like the Fallout games, the character evolves continuously, and is not limited by a particular class. However the character system in Arcanum goes a step further and in some aspects even surpasses Fallout's S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system. For starters it's based on points, which as even the remaining Black Isle developers admitted, works a hell of a lot better than Fallout's percentage system. You could sometimes add 15% to a skill and nothing tangible would happen, you always had to raise the percentages above certain "milestones" to get stuff to happen (say, 50, 70, 100, 150, etc.). On Arcanum you get a small number of points to add to any skill, but said points ALWAYS make a difference, so needless to say there's a great feeling of reward for every point earned, not to mention that you have considerable bonuses for excelling on each skill like being able to buy worn items, get any npc in your party regardless of alignment, etc.

Furthermore, the game allows you to put points into your basic skills, which is to me, another great choice. The lack of that option in the Fallout games placed you in a shell you had no chance of getting off in the game, once you assigned your points, it remained forever etched in stone for the rest of the game... effectively thrusting you in a class of sorts, a class made by you, but a class in the end. Sure, this system only works if you like this kind of freedom, but even if you don't Arcanum comes with lots of pre-made characters, and an auto-level up scheme which simplifies the whole process.

On the technical side of things, the game comes with a great soundtrack and good sfx. The graphics are dull at times, but they are functional enough. Oh, and for the millions of geeks that keep bugging about the lack of a decent viewing area, I should mention that my copy came with a big Arcanum FULL SCREEN start icon... I suggest you guys try it!

Oh, and you also get a multiplayer mode, an editor, and the chance to play mods! How's that for more player value?

The Bad
For starters there's the fact that the game has serious performance issues. I am well above the recommended system requirements and even so I experienced stuttering, and choppy animations... next time add some 3D stuff guys, if only to take advantage of hardware acceleration...

Also the cutscenes in the game are exceptionally well made, but are veeeery scarce. In fact, there isn't a real ending movie, and there isn't a proper epilogue to your adventure, just a rundown of how you affected each location and character in the world, which is a nice touch... but it's not an ending sequence!!!

Other than that there's the issue of fights and experience earning. The fight system is rather good, it offers a significant amount of options without becoming cumbersome and allows for an interesting set of options, I for one think the addition of a fatigue system works great, since it forces you to keep an eye on what your choices are. Unfortunately you have little to no control of your party members in combat, you can order them to stop or start attacking, but that's about it. Mind you, they work a hell of a lot better than in the Fallout games (whoever says he didn't cross his fingers and clench his teeth whenever any party member whipped-out a smg or minigun is lying his ass off!) but they still have weird quirks. The weapon selection is always weird ("ok Virgil, so you are telling me that Broadsword you can't even handle is better for you even when I'm giving you a filament sword??") and the AI on both opponents and allies is questionable at best. Your friends will take the most weird and stupid routes to get to their enemies, and they will make use of their most powerful spells in completely absurd situations. Ditto the enemies, whom most of the times I just tricked into targeting and following me (keeping out of his reach), while the rest of my party kicked his ass to his seemingly complete ignorance.

Regarding the exp. issue, the game has adopted a weird system. You get experience when you kill monsters, but also when you hit them!! Needless to say, you get very strong, very fast, and while in a decent town you will probably level up once due to the quests, in a typical dungeon you'll go 3 levels up minimum! It sure is nice to feel that you are always moving forward, but your character does get VERY strong VERY fast, especially if you do the altar quests. Memo for Arcanum 2: Fix up the exp. balancing.

The Bottom Line
A truly unique rpg that stands on its own, and even surpasses it's predecessors in some accounts. An interesting question was risen in a previous review, does Arcanum have a meaning? Yes it does, but not in the "You have to go and do this" kinda way. Arcanum's meaning is "You just got dropped on Arcanum. Enjoy yourself" :)

Completely engrossing and fulfilling, Arcanum is truly a landmark in the genre of crpgs, a game that sucks you in, and gets you lost in a brilliantly crafted world.

The Good
Arcanum was the first game made by the now dead company Troika. You know, the company founded by the famous trio behind Fallout.

What I liked about Troika, was that their games had this we-made-this-game-for-the-sake-of-just-making-this-game feeling to them. They weren't shiny, polished, 2 and half choice, above average storyline, romance novel characters games.

They were more gamey, flawed, humbler, yet more ambitious in some sense than Bioware's games for example.

Arcanum follows the Fallout school of game design. That means you can almost play any character you want. For example: a handsome "I'll talk my way out of this situation" human male or a dumb half-ogre with a kind heart who sprouts lines like "Flowers!!! They be pretty....ooh, butterfly!", or even a sexy half-orc female mage, who sold her soul to evil and delights in destruction and letting herself be abused my males and then kill them.

Sidenote: there are few scenes when you are a female character and when you want either to survive or get into some club you have to kiss someone's feet or have sex with him.

Aside from the larping stuff (the stuff that only happens in your head, and we don't judge the quality of games on that) the game really allows you to play in anyway you want.

But now to the most important detail. Choices and consequences. You can make choices in this game. I like choices. It respects the player. It makes me respect the game. Respect, Game.

tiny electronical voice: ...respect man....

Bob the Imaginary Gaming Friend: "Nice to see you holding your grasp on reality so well."

Well I think it's great when the game allows you to make choices, and also provide you with shitty consequences rather than hold your hand always and lead you safely through itself. Also shitty consequences is not the same thing as an unfinishable state. They just spice "choices and consequences" with certain element of realism and danger.

I actually would like to tell a little story that I just now remembered. It happened five years ago, in my first playthrough.

You see, somewhere in storyline you need to sail onto some distant island, and when you do get that far you need to get a ship to sail. And how do you get a ship? Well you could buy it for a very large amount of cash somewhere in tens of thousands (I only had like 500) or you could get one from an undead pirate called Pete.

Bob: "Now that's a brilliant name for an undead pirate."

Anyway there are three ways to get the ship from Pete, gamble for it (unfortunately I didn't find gambling skills important early in the game so I had not invested any points into it), kill Pete for the ship, which I tried but couldn't beat him since my character was built as a diplomatic character...

Bob: "Diplomatic character who doesn't have any gambling skills? Isn't that like an oxymoron?"

... or do three quests for Pete. Well what happened was that I screwed up one of his quests, I don`t remember how, but I do remember the fear that I was not going to finish the game and that all this was for nothing. So there I was, doing sadly some quests for some gnomish politician in hopes of earning some cash, when another gnomish guy comes to talk with me. He offered me a job as an assassin and the amount of cash was just what I needed. I remember this because I had serious moral issues with this quest, you see back then I played myself in RPG's, or at least an ideal of myself - a weak in body, charismatic, very handsome, unbelievably sexy and intelligent male with a kind heart.

Bob: "Oh God! That just screams white and nerdy to me."

He wanted me to kill the King of Caladon, it was purely political and purely for money, so I couldn't justify myself (if he would have said that kill the king because he rapes virgins then I would have had no issues with it), but I wanted to finish the game badly. So I did it, back then I felt that part of me died, that I lost my blood innocence, that I sold my soul to Devil and there was no redemption for me (I was fourteen at the time); nowadays I can walk and kill everyone on sight in games with no problems at all. That quest itself was greatly designed, with lots of sneaking and backstabbing... I mean how many quests from games do you remember after four years of playing it?

Bob: "And what was the point of all this? Memories of a gaming veteran? Oh, please!"

I thought it would be a lot better to illustrate the gameplay of Arcanum rather than trying to describe it.

And now I would like to talk about the other major brilliance factor for this game, it's atmosphere.

It's steampunk!!! Not steampunk like in the sense that Thief 2 was steampunk, and not steampunk in the sense that the dwarf has a gun, but steampunk like a 19th century Victorian England.

Bob: "And of course the dwarf does indeed possess a gun."

Everyone duck, the dwarf has a gun!!!

Bob: "That was lame."

Ah, I'm killing myself here. And of course the music, composed by Bill Houge and possessing a very 19th century feel, was a major contributor to the atmosphere. It wasn't always to my taste, but I have to admit that without it the game would have lost something. So kudos for Bill for composing a music closely tied to the style of the gameworld.

Bob: "I personally liked the newspapers, and the whole design of stuff that you can use in some way or another. You know, stuff like "Mom's Beans" cans and... the whole ambiance is great. Nothing wrong with that. The in-game books are also written in that 19th century way. Just great. And I can't believe that you, being a voice-acting buff and all, haven't mentioned Rino Romano yet."

Oh yes, the voice-acting. It was great. And Rino Romano's role as Virgil was great, because Virgil was the eternal companion (though optional) to the player and he grow and changed the most in the game. And of course, other voices were great to, unfortunately their characters were not that memorable.

And now something completely different...

The Bad
Arcanum is an open-ended game with a big world. But an open-ended game must keep the player interested. A big world might just turn out to be big island with lots of no-names (Morrowind for example). So how does an open-ended game with a big world maintain the players interest? Artsy main story about the nature of the man? No, not really, Planescape style doesn`t really work in a game like Arcanum, Ultimas 5-7 or Fallout. Interesting writing then, stylish presentation of dialogue? Yes, for example. And here we come to the first problem.

While Arcanum does indeed possess nice dialogue, but it's all style and no substance. The npc's in this game have no life.

Bob: "That sounds kinda hypocritical since you have no life either."

They seem to exist for the sole reason to give you quests or being obstacles before your path that you either kill or persuade. Everything they say is somehow involved with you. And when you gained what you got, there's no point in talking with them more. Especially considering the fact that some even don't have the dialogue tree after you've done with them. Let me give you an example. Here Bob, I need your help for this one.

The player character meets an npc, quite fittingly named Bob, before getting a related quest.

Bob: "Hello, nice weather we're having.
PC: "I must depart now."

The player character meets Bob after getting the quest.

PC: "I heard that you might know the whereabouts of Bla-bla?"
Bob: "Bla-bla? Yes that name does ring a bell, but I'm a businessman and I would be a poor businessman if I would freely give away such information.
If the pc persuades: "You are THE businessman Bob?!!? I'm your biggest fan. I have every one of your books: "Why good girls like rich fat men.", "Money and ethics", etcetera."
Bob: "You liked them?!! I mean of course you liked them, I am after all THE businessman Bob, ha-ha-ha! (I'm really enjoying this acting stuff) Hey, have you heard that story when I bought a dwarven kingdom with two broken shoes?

Then Bob rambles on, he gets in a good mood and gives you what you want for free. Now if you don't have enough persuading skill, then you must do a quest for him. Of course you can always kill him. If you gained what you want and then later come back to talk with Bob he'll only say something like "Nice to see you again, friend."

Now the dialogue is nicely written, but every single npc that is talkative (which means that you can have more than 2 responses with them) is related to some side-quest or another. And when you didn't have quest involving that npc then you couldn't talk to him. These npc's have no life, they are not real characters, they are obstacles that the player must overcome. And thus every sort of dialogue was oriented around the player. Which might be ego-boosting for some people, but for me it robbed the world a lot of detail. This game really needed some NPC that would be part of the world, rather than being part of the quest. Big worlds must have a sense of reality to it. Shallow npc's won't help with that. It made world feel empty.

Bob: "Actually, it's not that different from Baldur's Gate series."

My personal opinion is that Arcanum is a far better game than BG1 so I won't comment on that, but BG2, also an open-ended game, maintains the players interest with fully fledged-out party members, their conflicts with others and of course romances also. It gave the game an adventure novel feel. And what about the party members in Arcanum?

Most of the joinable characters fall into shallow category, Only party members that were worth taking were the voiced ones. And even those were kinda bland. For one thing, you really don't talk to them when they are in your party (you ask questions like "Can I look your inventory?" or "What do you know of this place?") and they don't talk to you, you talk to them before they join and they talk to you before going into the Void (the endgame part). It is somekinda weird mix between Fallout's and BG's way of interacting with party members.

Bob: "I just have to mention it, that everything you put as fault to casual npc's and party-members is done in Virgil."

Yeah, but having one npc doing all the character arc's and world-depth is too much for one character, voiced by Rino Romano or not.

Also another thing. Arcanum has some form of npc schedules, but they are primitive compared to Ultima 7. It seems that only shopkeepers and those npc's that you can steal from have time schedules and it looks like this: in the morning he or she gets up, stands in one room for 16 hours and then goes to the next room to sleep. Brilliant, eh?

Bob: "Well to be honest, the only npc's to have schedules are the ones that are involved in the thieves guild quests."

Yeah, but those quests were horrible. You get the person's name and object you must steal. But why does Cedric Appleby keep a Sword of Derian-Ka in his safe, or why does Fitzgerald own a Potion of the Darkest Evil? There's no reason for those things to be there. It's just fed-ex in it's vilest form.

What else can a open-ended game do, to maintain players interest - Background detail? Yes, Arcanum's background detail was very good. As Bob mentioned, many of the books were nicely written, newspapers were fun to read. But, everything that was talked about in books, every historical incident, the player most probably met all of these things. It caused the effect that the world turns around the player, it made the world seem small and without life. Again, to make a big world, have some background that the player won't experience himself, it makes the world look more alive. Like in Baldurs Gate or Morrowind, there were books that described events which the player had no chance getting involved with - the world had history. Or Ultima 7 where there lots were of fully detailed characters that did not have anything to do with the main story or side-quests - the world had life. Arcanum does neither of these.

Bob: "A game can still be good, if it doesn't do things like that."

But Arcanum flirts with those things. Arcanum does some primitive npc schedules and flirts with history, but when you dig deeper, it all falls apart.

And then the mystery plot. The plot did it's job when it kept most things secret (like most of mystery stories). Of course it jumped from one thing to another like a Dan Brown novel and is about on the same quality. But what really bothered me was, that after meeting Nasrudin, everything just fell apart. The revelations were too big, and since the player already has met all the historical character described in books, and when it comes around that everything and even the industrial revolution is related to the Big Baddie and the player... well it shattered the final shards of illusion of the world and made it look like someone's playground. And the final revelation was the worst one of them all.

The player meets the big Baddie.

Bob: "Can I play the Big Baddie?"

Sure, but I gotta warn the reader, that there be spoilers following.

SPOILERS START.

Player: "Die, big Baddie!"
Big Baddie: "No, I am not the big Baddie. He is!"
Player: "Okay, sorry! Wanna join my party?"
False Big Baddie: "Okay."

The player and the fake Big Baddie unite and go together to kill the real Big Baddie.

Player: "Sayonara, you big Baddie!"
The Real Big Baddie: "No, wait a minute. I must tell you why I am the big baddie."
Player: "Okay. I guess I can spare a moment or two."
The Real Big Baddie: "You see, when people live, they choose evil and kill and rape each other. They hurt each other. They die. And go to Hell. But what if I killed them all?"
Player: "Umm... I guess they would die. And still go to Hell."
The Real Big Baddie: "Oh, I didn't thought about that. My mistakey. Sorry. See ya!"
Player: "See ya!"

SPOILERS END.

Okay, the dialogue itself was written with more style and depth, but it really felt like that. There wasn't enough foreshadowing for the real big baddie, so he really felt out of place. Villains should have more presence in the story. He just jumped out in the last moment.

Bob: "His name was mentioned couple of times in some historical books."

Yeah, I already complained about how the player (if he is as obsessed in discovering all the secrets like I am) can meet every historical character and find every historical secrets mentioned in the game.

Bob: "The thing is, in a way it shows Arcanum's brilliance."

What you mean?

Bob: "Well, I've been patiently listening here to your complaints. And I must say that they are unfair. The good thing is that you have stayed away from the typical cliché's of Arcanum reviews - which are focusing just on bugs and the lousy combat. But you still pick only on couple of parts of Arcanum - the game world feeling kinda fake and the boring party members."

I'm not really following you here.

Bob: "You see, you're only criticizing the parts that to you are the essence of roleplaying games. But that's the biggest mistake to make with Arcanum. Arcanum, in it's very core, does everything that that people might associate with the word RPG. So you just can't pick on few details, because Arcanum isn't that kind of a game. Arcanum is an ambitious project and... well let's take a look at character creation for a moment: you can create any character you want (sex addict, inventor, gun-slinging adventurer, an elven mage with big boobs, etc.)

Now most games just end there, but Arcanum allows you to play any way you want.

Want to go hunting for historical artifacts and treasures - sure, check in the library, search in the ancient manuscripts and go all Indiana Jones on ancient burial grounds.

Want to just hack and slash like Diablo - sure, turn the real-time combat on and slaughter entire cities.

Want to kill anything you see and still be able to finish the game - sure, see the Diablo thing above.

Want to have tough moral situations a la Ultima - sure, and you are not forced in the role of reverend Eric Camden in fantasyland this time.

Want to have npc drama and romance a la Bioware - sure, the elven chick and Virgil embody that design.

Want to play this game without having any combat at all - yes you can, sure it's hard and requires deep knowledge of the game, but it's possible.

Want to have choices and consequences and branching storyline - sure, every quest has multiple solutions and outcomes and the evil and good paths of the game are strikingly different from each other (evil one being the more simpler one also).

Want to experience the legends and stories of the world - sure, books and and some npc's (and there were couple of guys, who were just there for giving the world some depth... well just one, but still) talk about the history and political tensions of the world. The last ride of the knights of Dernholm was my favorite piece of lore.

Want to experience a Japanese rpg like story with heavy philosophical themes - sure, just play the damn thing.

Basically, Arcanum does anything that a person calling himself a roleplayer, from whatever niche he is from (choices and consequences, story, combat, exploration, etc.) would find the things he wants from the game."

Wow, if you put it that way. That is pretty fucking awesome. Wow.

But, it does all this things worse than the games designed for these niches alone - hack and slash being disappointing for Diablo fan, story being disappointing for the Japanese rpg fan (cause it lacks emotional drama), romances being disappointing for Baldur's Gate II fan (cause there's not much else beside the sex in the romance), the world feeling fake for fans of Ultima 7 and Morrowind.

Bob: "Yes, Arcanum doesn't do some of the things as great as the games individually designed for those particular niches. But, in it's defense I must say - Arcanum is the only RPG that combines everything associated with the word RPG, and it kicks the living daylights out of Fallout with it's choices and consequences."

So, I'm a dumbfuck?

Bob: "Yes, yes you are. Just because Arcanum didn't deliver on things that for you are the most important element in roleplaying games, doesn't give you the right to dismiss it without taking into consideration the ambition behind the game - which was one step closer to The Ultimate RPG. And in this case the ambition is great enough to ignore the faulty design."

The Bottom Line
Bob: "Anyway, bottom line, Arcanum is a faulty game. But it's one helluva game. And while it's not perfect, it's one step closer to the Ultimate RPG design. It's so ambitious that I can't just help admiring it. True it might mean that I appreciate the design of Arcanum more than the actual fruition. But I think it would be sad if Arcanum would be forgotten, since it shows that a thing like the ultimate rpg can exist."

Wow, I had no idea.

Bob: "And you even forgot to mention that Arcanum has one of the greatest optional side-quests ever ;)."

But to who would you recommend the game then? The way I understand is, that despite Arcanum being one step closer to the idea of the Ultimate RPG, it's still only manages to be enjoyed by people heavily interested in theoretical interactive media design.

Bob: "You could be right, but it's the people involved in game design who are doing new RPG's, and in RPG design Arcanum is very educational. I don't care what you say, but I'm not allowing this game to go with any grade lower than 5."

You need to have one of them final quotes also, just like in them professional reviews.

Bob: "Arcanum is an ambitious RPG, and while it has a lot of flaws, it's one step closer to the ideal of the ULTIMATE RPG and it would be a shame if this game would be forgotten."

Well that's nice, but I'm going to ignore you now. It's not nice to hijack my reviews, even if for a good cause. The design might have been ambitious, but the final product didn't satisfy me. So I can't give it the praise you have given. But I will take this new information into account when rating the game.

So good-night the mysterious voice inside my head. Now leave me alone with my booze to ponder on important thoughts about games.

The Good
Arcanum's setting is great. The blend of steampunk and fantasy is a welcome change from the Forgotten Realms or uninspired clones thereof that are all too often found in computer role-playing games. The setting goes far beyond just having gnomes with guns. It manages to capture a Victorian atmosphere and fuse it believably to its Tolkienesque world with a lot of attention to detail, from exploited orcish factory workers and a certain degree of racism towards orcs and half-orcs, including player characters, in general to mages not being allowed near locomotives out of fear of malfunctions, because the conflicting nature of magic and technology.

This conflict is also present in character generation, with a character that is strong in both magic and technology being just about the only thing you can't generate. Other than that you're pretty much free to do what you want. Like in Fallout, which was made by many of the same people, your character can be anything you want and the game is playable as almost everything as well. From stupid thieves to pacifistic chemists and from homicidal gunslingers to goody two shoes necromancers, anything goes. Many quests, including the main one, have more than one way to solve them, so the choice is really up to you, giving the game a lot of replay value.

The storyline is good, although it starts a bit slowly and even though is mainly linear, there are different paths and different endings depending on your choices along the way. The story will take you across the whole continent of Arcanum, from jungle islands to desert wastelands and from elven cities to dwarven caverns. All of these places are filled with side quests which range from simple delivery boy and assassination quests to elaborate conspiracies and political machinations. Still, there are entire villages that are completely optional, leaving much room for exploration. An interesting feature in this regard is that the whole world is like a huge canvas. If you keep on walking to the north east from Shrouded Hills, without going to the world map, you will eventually arrive at Tarant, just as if you'd traveled there via the world map. While doing this would be tedious and pointless, I appreciate that there's the possibility as it gives, to me at least, the whole world a sense of coherence as it doesn't just consist of isolated locations but also of the wilderness between them.

I also enjoyed how characters react to you differently, depending on your race, gender, reputation and technological or magical aptitude, even on some your equipment, like barbarian armor or a smoking jacket and that a character's equipment is reflected in both his graphics and his inventory. If you kill a servant, you'll be able to take and wear their uniform and if somebody attacks you wearing plate mail and wielding a broadsword, you will be able to take and use them as well after you defeat him. Assuming, of course, that the armor is your size, because small armor will only fit half-lings, dwarves and gnomes and elven chainmail is too small for half-ogres.

The Bad
However, just as most of Fallout's good aspects are present in this game, so are some of its not so good ones, unfortunately. First of all, there's the issue of bugs. The release version had lots of them and even after the final patch a couple of them remain. Mostly minor stuff, but annoying nonetheless and distracting from the game's otherwise great atmosphere. Also, the tile-based graphics are best described as functional. Streets are always at right angles and most buildings look exactly the same. There's little variety in the way dungeons look and most animations are wooden. Even special effects like spell animations aren't really spectacular. The graphics weren't state of the art when the game came out and certainly aren't now, but they get their job done.

Finally, there's one aspect that wasn't handled quite as well as in previous games and that's the combat. The game offers both a trendy real-time mode and a turn-based alternative. Unfortunately, neither works as well as those in other games. The real-time mode is not pausable and very hectic whereas the turn-based mode doesn't give you clear information how many action points each action is going to take. Additionally, real-time combat seems to favor ranged fighters whereas melee specialists seem to have the edge in the turn-based mode. Combat is arguably neither the focus of the game nor is it very hard as characters can get very powerful very quickly, but it's a pity it wasn't executed better.

The Bottom Line
Overall, the game is a worthy successor to Fallout and a true computer role-playing game. If you like role-playing games in general or Fallout in particular, this game is for you. If you like unusual settings in general or steampunk in particular, this game is also for you. However, if you like flashy graphics and lots of gunslinging action, you'll probably have to look elsewhere.

The Good
The gimmick behind Arcanum is that it’s a fantasy role-playing game with technological elements. Thus, a steam-driven train might take you past the burial grounds of a dragon, halfling thieves might shoot at you, or you could fight a mechanized spider in a dungeon illuminated by electric lights. This does not mean that magick and technology work in concert however. One of the many storylines in this game deals with the struggle between magick and technology. This plays out in several ways regarding character development and means that as you progress towards either technology or magick, your ability to use the oppositional skills wanes. And it draws interesting parallels to the often antagonistic struggle between science and religion in our world.

So the question then, is how well does the gimmick work? Like the Fallout series, Arcanum presents a class-less role-playing system. As your character progresses you may specialize in thief-type skills, magic ones, etc. and through this create your class. Unlike Fallout, as a fantasy game you have your pick of races including human, elf, dwarf, and orc. These races have unique benefits and detriments and some close off gender options- Gnomish women, for example, are never seen. Arcanum does not make use of Fallout’s SPECIAL attribute system, but presents a similar one, which like Fallout, really affects game play. Most RPG’s don’t well integrated attribute systems, but every statistic in Arcanum really affects gameplay. Intelligence determines conversation options, Beauty affects how people react to you and Dexterity determines how fast you move. There are also statistics such as hit points and fatigue which are based on combinations of attributes and the level of your attributes determines how far you can advance in certain skills.

Which brings me to the skill section, which is the most complex system I’ve seen in any RPG. The skill set is broken down into three sets: character skills, magic skills and technological skills. These sets are then broken down into subsets such as combat, specific magic school or specific technological discipline. As you advance in level you apply points to these skills to increase your ability. You can also receive training in the character skills and advance from Apprentice to Expert to Master. Often training is purchased, but Master’s require special quests. Now you can also apply points to your attributes and you only receive one point per level. Therefore, deciding how to spend these precious points becomes strategic.

One final thing regarding the character: alignment. Your character begins the game with a neutral alignment. Depending on your actions (the quests you complete and your interaction with people) your alignment will shift towards good or evil. This is a dynamic system which does away with the complications of the traditional AD&D system and works very well within the game.

Actual game play resembles other RPGs, perhaps too much. You go on many mini-quests while uncovering the larger story. Talk to dozens (hundreds) of people and gain followers. Opinion of the usefulness of the followers seems to be mixed, but I felt like mine were great characters that did far more than carry heavy equipment. I was never able to make use of my dwarven technologist, but I think this was more my fault than his. They have wonderful conversations, fought very well, had interesting reactions between themselves and added to my enjoyment of the game.

There are many areas to explore and several major cities. Talking to the people in the cities results in useful information and interesting quests. During the game I played, I had to solve several murders, track down missing nobles and I found a fun X-Files themed conspiracy regarding half-orcs. There was seldom a time when I did not have at least one quest to work on and I usually had several on the backburner.

Graphically, this game is dated since it does not use 3D graphics, the graphics are good but result in some performance issues. Sound is wonderful. The string score is beautiful, voice work is consistently well above average and ambient noises are realistic and appropriate.

This is a very long game but highly replayable. As a non-thief character, I missed the extensive thieves’ underground, as a melee character I never got far into magic use and technology, and as a good character I didn’t touch on the dark side of Arcanum (however I did perform some evil acts for the greater good and some of my good acts resulted in bad outcomes). Finally, like the Fallout Series, at the end of the game, you get to see how your adventures affected the places you went traveled to.

The Bad
While the story in Arcanum was very good, it is unclear for most of the game. I think I prefer games where you know what points is from the get-go. Several major themes seem to disappear near the end of the game including the one with hero/villain technologist Gilbert Bates (Bill Gates?). Although, this could just be how I played the game. I also wished for more of the steam-punk, Victorian fantasy setting that the box seemed to advertise. While there was a mix of magick and technology in the game, most of the Arcanum world is entrenched in a pseudo-Tolkien setting. Pratchett’s Discworld books present a similar idea more convincingly.

The attribute/skill section I described above is very complex and since the game has a level cap it pays to plan ahead. I was very unhappy with the level cap because I wanted to do more with my character and if you can’t advance in level any more- why go on quests? I found myself very apathetic towards the end of the game, tired of the subquests and solely interested in the end of the game.

Of course one of the reasons for the level cap is the extremely poor balancing in the game. I was simply too powerful too soon. I was also very wealthy, so money oriented quests didn’t matter and I had all the items I wanted. While the ability to increase your attributes was fun, I was able to become almost superhuman. I think they needed to reconsider this element in favor of the traditional RPG feeling that attributes are carved in stone and only acts of God can change them.

While I mentioned some interesting quests, too many of them involved searching dungeons for a person/item. With all the dungeon crawling combat, you level up way too quickly. In short, elements of this game suffered from the Monty Haul syndrome discussed in AD&D books. RPGs have to be about more than who has the more points/gold, etc. By the time I got to the final battle, it was a joke. I was successful in a few minutes and never felt in any danger. The story and framework of Arcanum deserve more than a Cheaterz Diablo-type romp.

Finally, I mentioned that graphics were outdated. On my new system, I experienced several lock-ups because the game wasn’t making use of my 3D card. Characters weren’t particularly well animated, combat animations were minimalist, and the dungeons were visually unimpressive. There were some excellent rendered scenes, but they occur late in the game.

The Bottom Line
I played this voraciously and still don't know how I feel about this game. I definitely want to replay this game as a completely different type of character. As it stands now, I'd describe it as a failed masterpiece.

The Good
I played many games and IT IS a good game...

The universe is original, it merges mechanic and magic, and the political context between the countries of Arcanum is an important side of scenario. In short the universe is very rich and well used.

The first 2/3 of the game are very very good. Even better than the famous Baldur Gate...

Important point : before starting the game, you can choose to play the official game OR to play games made by gamers or by even you (but not easy to make one). Then it's like if you play a whole new game in the Arcanum univers. There are a few ones on the Internet that you can download.

The Bad
Nothing except that an important thing looks obvious to me : I think they finished to develop the game in a hurry and past the 2/3 of the game you can really feel it. Some important areas of the game that you heard of are small and not as great as announced in the game, some crucial movies are more slideshows than movies and the quality of the end is very disappointing. Too bad... because it could have been the best game I ever played without that.

The Bottom Line
The universe of Arcanum is so rich that I can only advice you to play this game. But be prepared to a decreasing quality on the end and maybe you will like the game as a great one.

The Good
In missed Arcanum, when it was first released in 2001. Some years later, I stumbled onto the game while searching the ‘net for new RPGS to play. I was almost immediately drawn to the game. It was from Troika, a developer made up of former Fallout designers. Since I loved Fallout, I became even more interested in the game. How had this gem of RPGS escaped my attention?(Maybe I’m slipping in my game prowess;) The setting of the game intrigued me as well, I downloaded the demo, to ensure that Arcanum would run on my new PC. And to see if the game was a cool as it sounded in the reviews I had read. To find that the answer to both questions was a resounding, yes!

Got Magick? Or Perhaps A Bit Of Technology?

In Arcanum: Of Steamworks And Magick Obscura, you begin by either picking a pre-made character to play, each with their own back-story. Or as in most PC RPGS you can create your avatar. The character creation system is deep and similar to Fallout, if anything it is even deeper. You have control over gender, race, skills, and even back round. The races run the gamut from human, elf, dwarf, to Half-Orcs, and everything in-between. Some races, I.e. dwarfs do not allow you to play as a female, and while some may see this as a draw back it is a small one at the most. Skills are what you are proficient at. From magick, to tech, every thing is at your fingertips. You can be a mage dwarf, a tech Half-elf, or anything else you can imagine. Attributes correspond to skills and vice versa. For example gamers that prefer using guns, will need a high perception. Back rounds are optional, but can enhance the gameplay, if used. You can choose from tons such as, “Child Of A Hero”, “Inheritance” , etc. These often add something extra to your avatar, but act as a double edged sword as they often also take something away. As the “Inheritance” back round, will allow you to start with more cash. As well as penalize your willpower attribute.

What about classes Mr. Megid? You ask. Well allow me to educate you, no pun intended. In Arcanum, classes, such as fighter, mage, thief, etc. Do NOT exist. At least not in the traditional since. Arcanum never tells you what your class is. In a gameplay sense, it more depends of how you play the game. If you are proficient with magick, you will gain spells as you continue leveling up. As there are many magick “colleges”, I will not go into it. But you can master one such group, or mix and match, it is your choice.

More fun is the technology “classes”. Like with magick you can choose what if any tech stuff you wish to learn. You can be a gunslinger, a gunsmith, or both. You use mechanized armor, as well as create items, like some kind of mad scientist. So you could be a gun slinging thief. Or a sword-wielding inventor. Or just about another eclectic combination you can conceive.

“There Can Be Only One Living One!”

Arcanum, begins with an attack on the Zephyr. A newfangled Airship. It goes down half-way to it’s intended destination. Upon waking up in the wreckage of ground zero, you desperately search for other survivors. And discover a gnome, he implores of you to “…find the boy”. He hands over a signet ring, and dies, with his cryptic message ringing in your ears. Near the wreckage you meet Virgil, a human cleric. Among his ramblings he revels that you may be the chosen one. “He Will Be Born Upon Wings Of Fire…”. That could be you, after all you were sort of born of wings of fire. From here you are directed to find Virgil’s mentor as he could explain the prophecy in more detail. The plot thickens as you learn of assassins, known as the “Molecan Hand” are out for your blood. The dwarfs of the “Black Mountain Clan” have gone missing. And dark elves are trying to see the return of Arronox, a villain from Arcanum’s colorful past.

The plot is one of the game’s strongest points. Every time you think you have an answer you inevitably end up with more questions. It is very mysterious, and paced superbly. I always found myself wondering how everything fit together. I was practically glued to my monitor from start to finish. Now mean feat considering Arcanum has a lot to offer, with a 30-40 hour campaign, plus tons of side quests, and optional areas to explore, they game can easily take up to 60 hours to complete.

The side quests are very fun to do. Unlike a lot of other RPGS that shall remain nameless. But in the end the main quest steals the show. And the plot twists are is a word genius. I won’t divulge them here, but rest assured you will never see them coming.

There Ain’t No Party, Like An Arcanum Party, Cause An Arcanum Party Don’t Stop!

In Arcanum, as in many other RPGS you can amass a party of followers. However the party or follower system works a little differently than what you may have seen in other RPGS. The number of followers that can join in your significant quest, is based on your charisma. The higher it is the more people will follow you to the ends of Arcanum.

Building a diverse party is as per usual in RPGS is the key to success in Arcanum. Having a mix is more fun as well as help make the game easier. My party consisted of a cleric, Half-Ogre ass kicker, a loyal dog.(A.K.A. Worthless Mutt, somewhat a misnomer as he is far from “worthless”) A tech-inclined dwarf, and last but not least, a smoking hot elf babe with a penchant for the mystical arts.

Certain characters will not join you if you are either too good or too evil, too magick or too tech. Giving the game replay value. Some are more talkative than others as well. Virgil for example will always have something to add in verbally. He greatly enhances the plot, and gives a better understanding of the world of Arcanum. Raven, the aforementioned smoking hot elf babe, will often provide you with good info as well. And if you are playing as a male human, elf, or half-elf, she may fall in love with you, if you treat her right.

I Want To Live In Arcanum!

Another of the games greatest strengths, is the unique fantasy world that is Arcanum. As I mentioned earlier, the world is in a turn of the 19th century fashion. With the once magick only world of Arcanum, now going through a technological revolution. Magick is aversely affected by technology, and technology by magick. At the same time there are ancient ruins, as well as high tech “Metropolis” inspired cities. Elven forests and vast railroad networks. And unlike the setting of some RPGS, Arcanum never stumbles and makes this eclectic mix seem believable. And always interesting. Very few other RPGS every manage such a unique world. For some reason many RPGS neglect to make the fantasy world believable, despite the fact that it is a very important in not the MOST important role of fantasy is to make the world seem real. A few other RPGS that also pulled it off include, Planescape: Torment, Jade Empire, and Shadow Run.

“Vae Victus!”

The combat in Arcanum comes in various flavors. There is the traditional turn-based, fast turn-based, and real time. The real-time combat is probably the worst as you have no control over the fights. Fast turn-based, is just that, a faster turn-based combat.

I found that the tried and true, turn-based works the best. It is very similar to Fallout. As in you have meter that is color coded. Green dots are your action points, with these you move, attack, use items, and magick, if you have any. When you deplete points the dots turn red, and yellow, as the enemies attack and your follower perform actions.

You have no direct control over your party unlike many such games. However they often do what is expected of them, so you do not need to worry about shitty A.I. Doing stupid things, They will attack, or heal, or whatever is most needed.

Outside of battles, you can have your party members trade items, heal you, or discuss various things.

Beyond Good And Evil

As with your class, your reputation, is based on what you do, not what you pick as in games like Baldur’s Gate. If you act like an evil prick, people will treat you like one. If you are good and act heroic, people will treat you like a hero. Or perhaps you shall be born with a heart full of neutrality, once again it is up to you.

Followers will also react to your choices. Some may be coerced in to doing evil, others will not, and will let you know it. Some do not care either way. And of course evil followers do not like “little goody two shoes”.

There are also “fate points”. They can be earned by doing heroic acts as well as evil acts. A fate point is used to automatically help you pick locks or persuade someone, despite your skill in the said area.

Reputations can also be gained. For instance if you report to the newspaper printer, that you are the sole survivor of the Zephyr, citizens of Tarant, will be nicer to you. You can also gain negative reps, such as Tarant Pervert, if you run through the streets naked.

The visuals and audio in Arcanum, are pretty good as well. Firstly the graphics, you likely have noticed that for a game from 2001 Arcanum looks a little dated. After all, this was the same year that gave us the amazing visuals of Morrowind, as well as Neverwinter Nights.

This is likely due to the fact that Arcanum is based of the graphics engine of Fallout and Fallout 2. And was in development for quite a while. Do not misunderstand me, the graphics are good, but not mind-blowing. Besides I like the look of 2D RPGS, a rarity these days.

The sound and music are overall better than that of the visual department. One could easily say that the sound is excellent.

The score is can be epic, and also quaint. It also fit’s the game very well. And sounds proper, for a game set in a world similar to the late 1800’s of American history. The sound effects all sound excellent, and work very well in the game. In this area Troika’s Legacy really shines. From the slash of blades, the arcane whirl of magick, and the boom of a shotgun, it all sound amazingly realistic. They even have the ambiance covered. When near the ocean, you can hear the waves crash on the shore. In dense forests the various animal sounds let you know you are not alone, in the wilderness.

The Bad
There are often graphical glitches. And the game tends to become unbalanced. As in the first 10 hours or so, the game can be very challenging. Yet the mid and later portions of the game are WAY to easy

Other quibbles include: sometimes party members do not understand, and action. For example in one side quest, about halfway through the game. You must kill a elf that is possed by a demon, thereby freeing his soul. The problem here is that your good party member often do not understand, that you are killing a man, but to save his soul. And therefore they will bitch. And may leave the party.

Also sometime a follower will not listen to you, and ignore your request to healed. And as you get stronger healing spells often fail.

And finally the ending may disappoint some. My beef with it however is this: to achieve a perfect good ending, you have to solve most of Arcanum’s main problems if, you should fail one, you will get a worse ending. And as some of the events you must fix are early on in the game, you likely will miss at least a few. But then again the multiple ending possibilities as well as gameplay problems will provide many reasons to replay the otherwise amazing game.

The Bottom Line
At the end of the day Arcanum is one of those ever so rare games. The ones that are flawed, but for every flaw there is also something that overrides it. And makes you forgot all the flaws.

This combined with the vastly original setting and enthralling plot, help make Arcanum, one of the most fun and most complete RPG experiences that I have every had the pleasure of playing. Trust me I have played hundreds of games.

And since the sequel was cancelled, this is as good, as it gets. The sequel was going to be a first person RPG in the vein of Deus Ex. Too bad, it would have been cool to see the world of Arcanum is glorious polygons. As well as would have given us another P.O.V. of one of gaming's most unique RPGS.

The Good
This review is long. I apologize; I didn’t intend to waffle. If you decide not to read this because of its length, I perfectly understand you, and probably would immediately join you for a beer. But for the sake of my favourite genre, role-playing games, I have to explain in detail the errors of Arcanum. Because they are legion, and because they are fundamental. And now that you’ve made it this far, you could actually go on and read the whole text.

The Bad
Know this then: Troika Games consists of the people who created Fallout. Fallout was, and is, one of the most perfect role-playing games ever designed.
It is important to know these two things to understand the scope of Arcanum’s failure. Because everything that Fallout did right, Arcanum does wrong. On the plane of consciousness on which the game was created, which is certainly not our own, this might even be some sort of achievement.

Arcanum is not a bad game. In a certain respect, I wish it were; you can feel pity for the cripple, but a bore moves no one. As it is, it is hard to understand how Troika could have the cheek to publish a game that is so obviously outdated without making absolutely, perfectly certain that there is a healthy body under the rags. Instead, the garb covers a slip of a game dragging itself along.

Enough grumbling already. Let’s hear the facts.

I will never tire of stressing the brilliance of the Fallout skill system; in my book, it can hardly be improved. Arcanum exemplifies this point nicely, as they tried. To be fair, Arcanum’s skill system is still its strongest point; the specialization works reasonably well (although the game not nearly enforces it well enough), and the tinkering with technology is great fun. However, Troika confused quantity for quality and bred confusion. The problem is really simple: you have so many choices that you cannot decide on one. This might be called freedom, if it wasn’t for the game’s lack of guidance. You can only guess which skills might be useful; in fact, many aren’t at all. Any master gamblers out there? More: Why is there one point for all talents? Fallout showed how a wise structuring of skill areas can greatly improve comprehensibility. Why must the basic skills be changeable? That makes your character a wobbly turncoat instead of a clearly defined specialist. Why do Arcanum characters level up so frequently? This greatly diminishes the overall importance of levelling. If you play Arcanum and understand why freedom is not always a boon, the game may have a purpose after all.

Arcanum is the Might & Magic of 2D role-playing games: lots of insignificant quests, almost insulting in their stupidity, piling up like trash along the main road. I have nothing against a variety of challenges, but I demand exactly that: variety and challenge. At best, I hope for side-quests that arise naturally out of the game world and are motivated through the plot. Look at Baldur’s Gate 2, for example, where the desperate need for ransom money forces you to do menial tasks, or where you are – brilliant idea! – unexpectedly offered quests that concern one of your party members. Disappointingly few of Arcanum’s quests are sensible in this way, even less are remotely interesting.

Even worse, this is also true for the dungeon mission, regardless whether they are plot elements or not. Sad highlight is the Tarant sewer, an endless maze of blue-grey tunnels in which the designers threw in monsters at random, but forgot to throw in some sense as well. Even the randomly created dungeons of Diablo are more varied (and a lot more thrilling) than the hand-made corridor deserts of Arcanum. Pinch me, maybe I’m ungrateful. Probably it’s asked too much that dungeons are exciting, and an extra dose of enemies always makes up for the lack of those other things, wosname… puzzles.

You might not have noticed, but you have companions. Yeah, the guys that join your group until the next fight, when they die. Party members can be a great utility to increase a game’s depth. Take a look at Baldur’s Gate 2 once again to see how gripping a cleverly designed party can be. But try and answer me this question: What good are the companions in Arcanum? Please, this is serious, think! My little brother has put it perfectly in one word: packhorses. They carry around extra stuff. That’s all. And that’s sad. Generally spoken, companions could, and should, serve two purposes: contribute useful additional abilities to broaden the choice of actions, and enrich the atmosphere. The second job is more important and generally paid less attention. The Arcanum companions serve neither purpose, as their talents are of little value (Virgil has not opened one single lock successfully for me, Magnus can build utilities that I don’t need, and so on), and they follow you around speechless like zombies, when they could enhance the atmosphere so much by commenting on each situation, quest or person -- a huge chance wasted. If a game feature is useless, then it should either be improved or removed.

Oh, the fights. I cannot help but think that Troika would have preferred doing without. The battle system of Arcanum is, well, functional. It serves it purposes, i.e. killing evil guys. Sorry to insist, but I have another question: Why do you fight in Arcanum? I believe there is an answer to this question on a general level, but it doesn’t apply to Arcanum or to many other games. Somewhere along the line of RPG creation, the purpose of battles must have been lost. Fights should first and foremost be challenges. Tactical challenges. A good RPG fight is always a matter of superior intelligence against superior strength. Only then can a battle be thrilling and rewarding. It doesn’t matter whether the strategy is correct use of weapons, spells, formation, action points, timing, you name it; what matters is that you can use it, and that you can win by using it correctly. The Fallout fights were tactical in their use of action points, weapon choice and targeting system; no surprise that they were refined into a full-fledged strategy game (Fallout Tactics). In Arcanum, battles serve only the two lesser purposes: as obstacles and delays (a use which sooner or later exhausts the players’ patience), and as a means of acquiring experience points. Hey, think hard, was there a memorable fight in Arcanum? On second thought, don’t strain your memory.

If you played Arcanum, you probably know that there is a skill cap at level 50. I find the necessity for caps dubious on principle, but in Arcanum it is actually understandable: Your hero simply grows too strong too fast. This is only one of the effects of bad balancing. There are many more. Take the plot, for example. Actually, the story of Arcanum could be quite interesting. Unfortunately, it is stretched so thin over the first half of the game (up to the Isle) that it hardly moves at all. Especially in the beginning of the game, a fast pace is essential to wake and bind the player’s interest. In short: things need to happen. In Arcanum, things happen very, very slowly, and those that do are not really thrilling (“Oh, you found me! Now search that mine”). So, the plot would have needed tightening. Also, as a friend of mine pointed out very rightfully, the program does nothing to encourage a decision for either magic or technology. Again, don’t mistake that for freedom. A strong, early opposition of forces would not only create dramatic tension, it would also increase the replayablity a great deal -- after all, you’d like to see the other side, too. But again, a chance had, a chance thrown away.

Lastly, and most importantly, there is the issue of technology. Mind you, I can live with Arcanum’s graphics, even though I feel that sting when I look at the other games on the store shelf and the 40 bucks in my hand. But what I cannot live with is the game’s speed. In fact, to publish a game that looks like a mid-90’s relic and jerks like a slide show on a PIII is an unbelievable impudence. I don’t know what technical challenges the programmers faced, and I don’t care; I expect a working product for my money. If a TV salesman told me “Did I say constant viewing? Well, it shows static every few seconds, of course”, he’d see static for more than a few seconds. This technical botch-up is not only unnerving, it is also a genuine mood-killer; if the screen is drawn once a second, I can no longer enjoy the illusion to explore the exiting city of Tarant, but I am constantly reminded that I’m sitting at my desk and staring at a computer.

Thank you for your patience. If you were clever, you scrolled down directly to this paragraph in expectation of a summary. Here it is: Arcanum is a mediocre game in every respect, as it disregards basic guidelines that every game, especially role-playing games, should follow: pace and flow, guidance and soft pressure, depth without confusion, atmosphere and credibility, and especially, meaning. Meaning in a computer game? Not in the philosophical sense, not necessarily. But in a down-to-earth, every-day sense: telling the player what he has to do, and why. If there is meaning, what follows is motivation.

The Bottom Line
A huge disappointment for RPG fans, Arcanum tries to fly to the stars with a wooden rocket. Compared to Fallout, Arcanum is not one step, but a fair afternoon walk backwards. How on earth this could happen is beyond me; if anybody knows and is willing to tell, he could restore a distressed man’s sleep.

The Good
If there was one RPG game that deserves an award in originality, story, concept, and everything else you can think of...this would be it.

I feel in love with the game almost instantly. It was odd, weird, unique, different, that was the feeling I got while the first cinematics played. It was unlike any game I've ever seen before...and I haven't even started playing yet. The music sank right in.

I must say I'm impressed by the Arcanum world. For some odd reason, no one really actually imagined a "modern" medieval world. It was either future or medieval. A world where they combined a world where technology and magic exists caught me off guard. I thought the concept was brilliant. Well, technically not that original, but it's worth the effort in my book!

I thought I was in love the first time around. Then I saw the character creation part. I don't remember the last time I felt this exited as far as RPG's go. Wow! They may have something going here. I always felt that the soul of RPG's is in either character creation or character development. They overdid themselves in the character creation department.

Ah, now we start playing. Oooh, stuff to pick up. Just like Ultima all over again. I'm really liking this game. Haha. They did a good job with the story line too. I felt almost like reading a book while I played the game. Well, close enough.

The Bad
Unfortunately, as much as I have respect for the game, as always, I must focus on the bad stuff that almost ruined the game in my perspective.

Well, the first thing mistake is mine. I have a habit of downloading patches before I play the game, and unfortunately I read a little to much information about the game than I should have. I knew the existence of the NPC's before I even played the game. This got me to a lot of thinking and planning. The problem is, when it comes to games, I'm a perfectionist. I MUST have it all. The though that there were NPC's that I couldn't bring a long was TOO much for my brain to handle. So I had to narrow it down to a few NPC's. It seemed that any NPC that had a voice was invaluable not to have. Then that stupid dwarf started complaining about the death knight as company, I started to get irritated. Oh well, restart game...let's try to be careful handling NPC's.

The more I learned about the game, the more I was a little put off. The fact that I found out there was a level limitation on my character kinda put me in the fits. This means I have to PLAN my character development. If I didn't browse the net, I wouldn't have known. Oh, well, restart game. Time to plan ahead.

Oh, it appears that having this ability at the start is much better than the other one. Oh, well, restart game.

Oh, it appears I should've solve the puzzle this way rather than that way. Oh, well, restart game.

Do you know that being a perfectionist is absolute TORTURE? Try restarting a game for 7-8 times, each lasts more than 10 hours long. You'll understand what I mean.

Then I realized something awful. I started comparing the game to Fallout 2. It started going waaay down hill after that. I discovered that combat was BORING. I had a hunch brushed aside, but I'll get to that later. I remember the extreme joy in Fallout 2, everytime combat initiated. The smell of blood, sounds of crushing bones and spilled guts. Hey, what happened? Suddenly combat was Ho-Hum. I actually resented that I had to fight. They took the fun out of combat. Must be the lack of sound or something. Whatever it was, it didn't feel the same.

Now comes to my hunch. Hmm...why are they making this game semi-real time/turned based. Why not either real-time or turned based why don't you. Why did you have to have both? Then it triggered another fishy hunch I had. Then a word popped up in my mind! Gasp! Diablo 2.

My god, is it me or is this a little similar with Diablo 2? Hey, Diablo's a great game, but honestly, as an RPG...welcome to pre-school. Diablo has incredible cinematics, but as an RPG...a kiddies game. My second fishy hunch was on character creation. They had an option for "quick" character creation. It bothered me to think that someone would actually play this game without going through the detailed character creation. Oh my god! It occured to me...they wanted non-serious gamers to also enjoy the game! NO! The shock was to much for me. Now I see it. That's what's wrong with the game...they bowed down to capitalist demands of the market! Well...not that I blame them, but they sure hell screwed up somewhere. Enough drama.

Then comes the bugs. Had to restart 3-4 times just because I found so many god dang bugs, that messed up my saved games. Well, eventually, all the stress said above and the bugs finally popped my rocker. I was so dang pissed. I really tried to play this game, but it wasn't easy. I finally retired the game, fearing my high blood pressure would get the better of me.

When you play this game, you'll know that is one of those games that comes once in a life time...but it didn't become the perfect masterpiece because they with-held it to become the masterpiece it could, should or would have been...for the sake of...well...the common folk.

Well, I tried. I really really tried.

The Bottom Line
As I said. Almost perfect. But unfortunately, I am sad to say that Fallout 2 is better. Maybe after my temper cools down, I'll pick up this game again...and finish it.

The Good
Let me preface this review by admitting that my relationship with Arcanum is... strained. It has taken me multiple attempts at playing the game over a period of nearly seven years finally to muster up the will to play the game to its conclusion. Perhaps this difficulty stems from a case of excessively impossible expectations on my part. Ever since I first read a preview of the game in late 2000, I had incredibly high hopes for the first CRPG by (the now defunct) Troika. After all, Troika was founded by the creative masterminds behind Fallout, perhaps my favorite game of all time, and the company's maiden voyage into the realm of PC role-playing seemed destined for greatness. It promised all of the elements that had made Fallout such a legendary game: a uniquely interesting game world, an intuitive and deeply flexible “classless” character creation system, and tactical turn-based combat should my in-game actions necessitate armed conflict. Even after receiving my preordered copy in late 2001, I was still unable to play the game for a few months due to a lack of free time to commit to such a massive RPG. Nevertheless, I found myself glossing through the game's massive manual, elaborately envisioning what sort of character I was going to create when I finally got the chance to venture into the world of Arcanum. It was just short of borderline obsession with a game I had yet to install on my computer's hard drive.

Perhaps it was simply inevitable, then, that my actual experience with the game fell far beneath my lofty expectations. Regardless, there remains a definite conflict within me as to just exactly how I feel about Fallout's half-brother, and this review is partly my own attempt to reconcile that conflict. At its core, I find Arcanum to be a mind-boggling mix of ingenuity and mediocrity, a rather peculiar blend that manages simultaneously to please and to repulse the gaming palate. Out of respect for my younger self's initial optimism for this “unique” RPG (not to mention the requirements of the MobyGames review format), let's start with the appealing elements of the game.

There are certainly plenty of things that Arcanum does right. First and foremost, the game world – or at the very least its premise – is one of the more appealing and well-conceived settings in any RPG period. Like Fallout before it, the world of Arcanum is highly innovative: a steampunk setting based on the real-world circa 1885 mixed with Tolkienesque high fantasy, elves and all. It is a world of conflict (and what good setting isn't?), but this conflict is more ideological than anything else. Technology – Victorian-era devices such as the steam engine and the locomotive – has revolutionized the world, and the old order of feudal kingdoms, chivalrous knights, and eccentric wizards is giving way to what one in-game personality loosely refers to as “pistol-brandishing cowards.” Of course, the technological-magickal conflict has a physical element as well: the two forces do not mesh, causing direct conflict not only between the forces themselves, but also between their respective adherents. Powerful mages are denied passage on trains due to the possibility of malfunction, there is animosity between the magickal elves and the tech-minded dwarves, and healing magicks have little to no effect upon those who practice technology. Even if it is not implemented as well as it could have been, the ideas such as these behind Arcanum's setting stand as a testament to innovation in game design.

Also like Fallout, Arcanum possesses a deep and flexible character creation system. In fact, Arcanum's system is quite possibly the most in-depth and intricate system I've ever seen, providing an unprecedented amount of freedom for players to create the kind of character they want to play. Want to be the best fighter ever to walk the land of Arcanum? Build up your Strength, Dexterity, and Melee and Dodge skills. Aspire to be the greatest, most feared necromancer who ever lived? There is a bevy of spells to choose from. Simply wish to dabble a bit in both roads to power so as to maximize your ability to get rich? Balance your skill point distribution among select spell colleges and technological disciplines as you see fit. The number of combinations of skills and attributes – not to mention special character backgrounds that provide both a special benefit and a drawback – is ridiculously high. Of course, it would be easy to feel a bit overwhelmed by such a daunting number of options (more on that later), but to those who invest the time and effort, the character system is one of the best ever devised.

Of course, the most skillfully crafted settings and characters mean nothing without a compelling reason to explore them. Fortunately, Arcanum delivers in this area as well, starting players off with an intriguing action-filled beginning that provides a definite adventure hook. The zeppelin on which the player's character is riding is gunned down, and the only other survivor dies shortly after giving the character a mysterious ring and instructions to “find the boy.” The player is then informed by a bystander – a neophyte religious devotee – that he is the reincarnation of an ancient elven deity. Shortly thereafter, mysterious assassins begin targeting the player. The opening is a magnificent call to adventure, and despite its propensity for disappearing for extended periods of time, the main storyline is highly compelling. It touches on a number of robust issues, from the costs of technology and resource usage, to race relations, to the philosophical implications of death and banishment. Though several key plot points are eventually dropped or forgotten, there can be no denying that the tale woven by the designers is if nothing else a wonderfully fitting excuse to explore and adventure in a strange new world.

The Bad
Though the creative elements of Arcanum are mostly praiseworthy, the technical elements (i.e. the gameplay) leave a terrible aftertaste. For every ingenius design decision as far as setting, character flexibility, and so on, there is an equally bafflingly terrible decision in the implementation thereof. I'm not quite sure whether this is better described as Newton's third law of gaming or as Murphy's law of gaming, but the fact remains that there are just as many (if not more) things that Arcanum does wrong as it does right.

For starters, the combat system in Arcanum just plain sucks. Why the designers of Fallout, which had one of the best RPG combat systems ever, were unable to implement something better than this is beyond me. The biggest contributor to this lackluster gameplay element is the fact that combat can be run in either turn-based or real-time mode, as Sierra insisted that the game not be solely turn-based for marketing reasons. On the surface, this appears to be yet another way of providing choice to the player, but such a choice is ultimately deceiving. Instead of being tactically sound like Fallout's or strangely addictive like Diablo's, Arcanum's combat systems are horrible shadows of the ones in those games. Combat becomes tedious, ridiculously easy, and flat-out pointless very quickly, as enemies seldom do anything other than charge into melee with the character. This battle conundrum is certainly due to the fact that it is difficult enough to balance a single combat system; trying to balance two separate ones within the same title is a near impossibility.

This lack of balance is without a doubt the game's biggest issue, not only in combat but in all aspects of the design. A lot of this problem comes from the designers' sheer ambition in providing unprecedented freedom in character development. There are so many things to choose from that it's simply impossible for all of them to be equally useful and/or represented in the game world. Some skills are useful maybe once in the entire game, while others (such as Melee and Dodge) are practically indispensable. In fact, pure melee characters have an almost ridiculously easy time with their adventure in Arcanum, due to the fact that experience is gained not for defeating an enemy, but rather for each successful attack. Melee characters thus level up at an alarmingly fast rate, and therefore obviously have a distinct advantage – a fact that even the game's manual is quick to admit. Other character types have a much more difficult time of things. “Hybrid” characters? Forget about it. Sure, they CAN be played, but the game is so ridiculously unbalanced against them that it's not advisable. Such is the double-edged sword nature of open-ended “free” game design, I suppose.

There is, however, ample evidence of a lack of polish and sufficient care in crafting the game that leads me to believe that there were certainly just plain bad decisions made in the game's design. Many gamers have often cited the outrageous number of bugs – not only in Arcanum, but in every game that Troika ever made – as a major drawback. There are definitely quite a few annoying bugs; I had issues with a random memory leak that slowed animations to a near crawl, as well as the fact that the game would fail to reset my display's brightness upon exiting the program, leaving my desktop a strangely luminescent white color until I manually went back in and reset it. There was nothing game crippling, but the bugs were annoying nonetheless.

The bugs, however, are minor compared to the overall lack of quality control that plagues Arcanum. Aside from the usual underdeveloped areas, quests, and NPCs (especially late in the game), there are many things that happen in gameplay that simply don't make any sense. For example, right before confronting the Schuylers about their dealings, I recruited the dwarven tech specialist, Magnus, who also had a beef with them. Without spoiling anything, I will simply say that Magnus and I decided to put an end to them, and emerged victorious in combat. Magnus thanked me for siding with him and permanently joined my party. Months of game time later, however, I asked Magnus to wait for me for a few minutes while I took care of a minor quest in one of the game's towns. When I asked him to rejoin me less than five minutes of real time later, he angrily refused. “Wait a minute,” he exclaimed, “you've been off making friendly with those Schuylers behind my back, haven't ye?” Umm, no Magnus, we killed them about nine months ago in game time, remember? Weird scripting errors like this one litter the game world. Characters remind me of things that we never talked about previously, I am given dialogue options detailing things that have never been mentioned in the game, and so on. While a few instances of this sort of thing are to be expected in any game of this magnitude, the sheer number of such errors in Arcanum falls just short of offensive.

The Bottom Line
I'm still not quite sure what to think about Arcanum. On the one hand, it's extremely appealing and outstanding; on the other, it's maddeningly inconsistent, poorly actualized, and sadly mediocre. Perhaps the best way for me to sum up Arcanum is as an ambitious failure, a flawed experience that is nevertheless appealing. I have made no secret of my mixed feelings toward this once-promising game, but after seven years and numerous playthrough attempts, I can finally say that this game has been an overall positive experience for me. This game certainly doesn't hold a candle to the upper echelon of CRPGs like Fallout or Planescape: Torment. Due to its incredibly unique and immersive world, though, it is still worth experiencing and enjoying – if its faults can be overlooked, that is. If you admire it for what it's trying to do and what it represents instead of what it ends up doing a lot of the time, you will find that it's a gem of an RPG, albeit an unpolished one.

The Good
You WANT to play this game. It's Fallout garbed in Wild Wild West and Dungeons and Dragons finery, with scents of Ultima VII. You want to play until you have figured the use of all those trinkets, filaments, metal shavings, sprockets, watch mechanisms, and so on, and so on. Until you have built something out of a broken flintlock pistol and a small tube (answer: a working flintlock pistol). Until you have pieced together the fascinating story of this engaging parallel world. Perhaps I have explored as much as one hundredth of the world of Arcanum, perhaps as little as a thousandth. I want to see more, to explore it all. Most likely, I never will. Why?

The Bad
It started gradually, my annoyance growing slowly, slowly. Little, tiny wee pieces of aggravation which I was all too willing to put up with, so eager I was to play on. Then it exploded like a soap bubble. Joachim's trail of notes told us, Virgil and me, to go next to Stillwater. Oh, we'd come across a mention of Ashbury too, but Stillwater seemed the logical next stop. No Stillwater, no Ashbury on the World Map when we consulted it, though. So we decided to board the train in Tarant. As I went to buy tickets at the booth, my mouse pointer turned into a sword. Wot? Combat mode? What had I done to deserve that? I quit, reloaded, and was careful to watch my step this time. Combat mode again?! Was it something I'd eaten? (too much garlic, maybe?). After a few reloads, Virgil and I just decided to walk to Black Root and board the train from there. All went well. So the Tarant incident must have been a bug. But... wot? Stillwater was not on the time table, but Ashbury was. So we rode to Ashbury, which then, and only then, showed up on the map. We really had no interest at all in fixing their problem with the ghouls, zombies, and assorted undead in their cemetery, and Dante, who had eagerly joined us, seemed such a shady necromancer type that we quit again, and reloaded. That is when the bubble burst.

The bugs, the inept combat, the needle-in-a-haystack errands, everything.

The bugs. I just mentioned one. Another is during combat, when your followers, or the beasties, appear to go into an infinite loop, leaving you there, waiting for your turn, forever and beyond. And then, the odd screen freezing solid, but we're used to that.

The inept combat. The blurb on the game box is a farce. Don't you believe a word of it. The so-called turned-based combat allows you no tactics. In Fallout, like in X-COM Enemy Unknown, you know in advance the cost of moving here or there, and how many movement points you will have left for an attack. In Fallout, for every weapon you had, you knew the cost of using it, so many movement points for a shot of the sniper rifle, so many for the Desert Eagle pistol, so many for the sledgehammer, and so on. Nothing of the kind here. You just now how many movement points you have and the "speed" of your weapon, whatever that is. But you never know how many moves away you are from your target, how long it takes you to reload... why, as far as I could figure out, there was no reloading time, so that the only difference between a one-shot flintlock and a six-shot revolver was only damage and range. This is grotesque. Reloading a flintlock must have taken 30 seconds in real life. Shooting the next round of a single-action revolver? Cock the hammer, pull the trigger. A split second. Now all those things were nicely taken care of in Fallout. Here? Nothing. Combat has become a mindless brawl, a sorry farce. And I am cutting it short. I could rave on for two pages and more, count your blessings.

Next, the maps. Everytime you enter a town you can bring up a local map of it. The map is unrealistic and useless, because there is no "fog of war" so that the parts you have not explored are just as clear to see as those you have, and, typically, you never know whether you've already been here, or there, or if it remains to be explored. There is worse. If you have strolled along, oh, say, Devonshire Way in Tarant, and looked at the number plates of the houses there, they will show as question marks in the map, and, hovering your mouse pointer over them, the addresses will be revealed (good)... but not all places so observed will show with a queriable question mark (bad, very bad). Try that in Black Root especially. Some of the locations will have been recorded on the map, most not. This is particularly infuriating when, having found Sarah Boone in Dernholm, solved her problem in Tarant, and hoofed it back to Dernholm to tell her the good news... you have forgotten where she lived, and you have to visit every single godforsaken shack in godforsaken Dernholm to find her again (no-one you meet knows about her). Your journal is completely, utterly useless there. Why, you can't even jot down your own blog in it (remember Ultima Underworld?).

So Virgil and I resolved to download the two patches (5.4M in all), in the fond hope that they would make the game playable at last. We had learnt our lesson, too, namely, that if you take on many quests (errands, rather) you soon become lost. Er... yes... we got Colonel Eric von Stroheim's silver dentures from the Dark Elven Ruins, but where does he live again? With a great deal of luck your Journal has it: 36 Alexandrov Prospect. But in what city? Tough luck. You should have made a note of it on good old real paper with a good old modern real ballpoint pen. Imagine: all those technological gadgets in Arcanum, and they didn't even think of inventing the PIP Boy! Or at least, some proper paper and a proper goose quill, to keep with the Victorian England retro style.

So Virgil and I started all over again, from scratch, swearing never to take on a new quest until we had solved the current one.

And thus we came to the Mayor of Black Root, burdened as we were with the task of convincing him to pay his back taxes to the King of Cumbria in Dernholm. The mayor asked us to find his ceremonial dagger, his symbol of office, stolen by thieves "on the outskirts of town". We searched the outskirts of Black Root high and low, left, right and centre, east, west, south and north, to no avail. We interrogated every single living soul in Black Root. Not a clue. We downloaded a walkthrough, which said: follow the path leading out west of town, eventually you will find the thieves' camp. We did follow the path, and beyond, when the path petered out. Nothing. We trekked back and forth, forth and back, south and north, north and south, west of Black Root. In vain. And no wonder, a screenful covers an area of about 20 metres by 30, and after trudging 20 screens worth at least, you still find yourselves only a pixel away from your point of departure on the world map. We switched to the world map view, picked a point a longish way due west of Black Root, clicked "Go". Never a whiff of a thieves' camp.

Navigating the local maps is an infuriating business. Want to go from Madame Tussaude's to Delores Boston's place to deliver a crystal ball? Theoretically, you scroll the map, mark way points by clicking, then click the "Go" button and there you... go. First, why do you need intermediate points? Why can't you just click on your destination and be done with it? Second, you often get this hair-tearing message: "your path is blocked" when, in fact, the two points are within plain view of each other, without a single obstacle in between. Third, sometimes, you just don't make it there because a wandering pedestrian has chanced into your path, and the AI is too stupid to have you walk around him. You have to take over and do it yourself.

A similar "path blocked" message often flashes on the world map when trekking from one city to another, even though there is nothing in the way of your destination. You just have to find another way point, not "blocked", a few pixels away.

And the world map is bogus. I talked Virgil into taking a break on our way to Black Root to take a look at the bridge over the river (what's its name? No names for those rivers on the world map). I was expecting a breath-taking view of a feat of Victorian engineering. I clicked on a point carefully picked slap bang in the middle of the picture of the bridge... go! When we got there, lo and behold... no bridge, no river. Just grass. We went in ever widening circles looking for the bridge. We didn't even find the river. But just try clicking your first way point on the west side of that non-existent river, the second on its east side... "path blocked". To get through, your two way points must straddle the bridge exactly. Ridiculous.

The Bottom Line
1. Combat is a brainless, preposterous farce. Don't put up with it: find a character editor and pump up your and your followers' strength and dexterity right up to the maximum.

1. Don't rely on your "journal", keep your own, either on physical paper using a physical pen, or repeatedly hitting Alt-Tab to access your favourite word processor (mine is NoteTab).

2. Be prepared to be frustrated.