Summary
That's the way to show those bast... uhh... I mean... good hit sir!
The Good
I have rarely seen a game that was so unfairly treated by both "professional" critics and many players as "Arcanum". Instead of opening their eyes and enjoying this fantastic role-playing experience, people were busy criticizing the game's unspectacular graphics and other minor, insignificant issues. "The game doesn't run smoothly on my brand new PC - so it's a bad game!" - when I hear such things from somebody, I feel like kicking this person's rear end.
"Arcanum" is continuing the role-playing tradition of
Fallout. Just as both Fallout games were incredible, so is "Arcanum". It is even more flexible than "Fallout" in his character customization, and is more balanced as a party RPG. I'm not saying "Arcanum" is better, but it undeniably belongs to the same league. If you loved "Fallout", there should be no reason for you not to love "Arcanum".
Just like "Fallout", "Arcanum" is an amazingly flexible, open-ended game, a whole world with unlimited possibilities, unlimited ways to play the game, unlimited paths to take, and unlimited amount of things to do. To program a game like "Arcanum" is already a wonder of technology. 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 to 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 your 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, to make guns and rifles, and to 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 incredible freedom, "Arcanum" doesn't lose the track of its story, which is excellent, especially if we realize this is not a console 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 a story, which is interesting, suspenseful, and full of surprising twists. The somewhat philosophical story, that mainly concerns the nature of human being, has a lot in common with Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings". If you feel like playing an adventure with a linear story, you can do that in "Arcanum"! Just ignore all the side quests and concentrate on the main plot, and you will have what you are asking for.
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 to 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. You see? Everything in "Arcanum" has a meaning.
The combat is also one aspect of "Arcanum" that was criticized a lot - for nothing. If you think the real time combat is too fast for you, don't choose it and play turn based instead! And if you think turn based is too slow, why not to try the mixture of turn based/real time? The game offers you a choice between virtually all possible kinds of combat - and you are still not satisfied?! 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" - a clever, intelligent kind of combat, based mainly on strategy. You have action points, that 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 from "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. Most people say leveling up in "Arcanum" occurs too frequently, but I loved it! There is no better feeling while playing a RPG than by leveling up and seeing your character become stronger, quicker, and wiser. It was much more satisfying than the crawling leveling up in
Baldur's Gate, for example.
Your party members in "Arcanum" are perhaps not as memorable as in console RPGs or 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 that will tell you how cruel you are, if you kill an innocent person, and that threatens 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 setting of "Arcanum" is one of its strongest sides, a unique mixture of technology and magic, but not in the sense of "science fiction magic", like in some console RPGs, but a truly original kind of an alternate Earth, the end of the 19th century, probably somewhere in England or North America (although all the names of locations in "Arcanum" are fictional), maintaining the atmosphere of the time, the costumes, 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 to discover more, old-fashiond planes and trains, names of streets, the fight between the old and the new - "Arcanum" is incredibly deep in its realistic way of portraying a whole style, a whole epoch. Yet this realistic epoch is wonderfully 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. It is fantastic how "Arcanum" manages to squeeze those two completely different settings into a very convincing whole. Just to illustrate how much detail was put into the game: try reading all those books scattered around in "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.
Many people also complained about the music in "Arcanum" being too monotonous. All I can say that if a person doesn't like classical music, it is entirely his loss. The whole soundtrack of "Arcanum" is performed by string instruments, and its music deserves to be released on a special CD. It is simply a masterpiece and is definitely one of the best soundtracks I have ever heard in any game. Without too many effects, limited by its intimate instrumentation, this music is both tender and profound, threatening and meditative, emotional and calm, and has a wonderful flavor of deep melancholy. The high quality music of "Arcanum" can be compared to pieces of Shostakovitch or Bartok.
The Bad
Technically, the graphics are a bit outdated, but this is really the only negative thing I could find in "Arcanum".
The Bottom Line
An amazing masterpiece of profound role-playing, delivered in one package with a cool story, fantastic setting, and wonderful music. What do you need more? Play it as an RPG, play it as an adventure, play it as you like. Make it linear or unlinear, short or long, as a strategy game or as an action game, fight a lot or convince people instead of fighting them, enjoy the setting, enjoy the story, enjoy everything. One of the best RPGs ever and one of the best games in general. Don't listen to the critics, let them play
Diablo and think this is role playing. If you are into quality gaming experience, grab "Arcanum" and you'll be fully rewarded.
