Arcanum

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magicka Obscura. The name alone pretty much tells you that you are in for a geekfest of awesome in a bottle of nerdgasm juice. This game was released in 2001, developed by Troika Studios and published by Sierra Entertainment. No I'm not going to give my usual history lesson as that was already covered around a week ago in my "Prelude" post.

Now, there are very few Steampunk themed games out there. Many claim to be steampunk but fail horribly (Final Fantasy barely counts). The only *good* ones that I can think of right off the top of my head are Steambot Chronicles for the PS2 (JRPG) and Machinarium (puzzle point-and-click adventure game).

The nerd in me just soiled himself.

Arcanum on the other hand, is a free roaming open ended western RPG in the same style as Fallout 1 and 2. The game plays from an isometric view with battles taking place in either real time or turn-based depending on how you like it.

This game pretty much takes everything Steampunk and brings it into one awesome game. Made of Awesome. The game itself takes place in a sort of 18th century Victorian England going through the industrial revolution with Magic and Technology being strongly opposing factors.

From the get-go it seems simple enough in RPG standards: You get to choose from the basic DnD races of Human, Elf, Half-Elf, Dwarf, Gnome, Halfling (Hobbits for all you unlearned plebs), Half-Ogre and Half-Orc. What truly stands out from other RPG's is that while you pick your name, race and portrait you are also asked to pick your background.

The good doctor enjoys walks on the beach, classical music and cutting himself open in the name of science.

Your background grants you all kinds of different starting stats from things like "Raised by Monks" giving you a small bonus to your wisdom but lowering your starting money, "Apprenticed to a Shopekeeper" giving you a starting bonus to your haggling skills or any other number of possible histories, some even being race and gender specific.

As you level up you can distribute your skills into 3 different places: "Skill" involves stuff like melee, dodge, firearms, bows, haggle, persuasion, prowling, pick locks, etc. All of these skills can hold up to 5 points and can also be trained by NPCs in the world depending on how many points you invest ranging from Apprentice to Expert to Master, each giving you bonuses such as experts of haggle being able to sell any item to any shop or apprentice bowmen getting to shoot 2 arrows at once. Overall there are 16 Skills to learn and master.

Then there is Magic. You have schools of magic like black and white necromancy, nature, divination, conveyance, summoning, etc. Each school has 5 spells in it and though it doesn't sound like much until you consider that there are 16 magic schools adding up to a whopping 80 spells to learn in the game.

Then there is Technology. There are 8 schools being Chemistry, Electrical, Explosives, Gun-smithy, Herbology, Mechanics, Smithy and Therapeutics. of these 8 skills each has 7 levels to learn, each one offering a new item you can craft with items bought in shops or found in the world, some of these creations even work as components for more advanced creations.

So much useless shit...that could be useful. They laughed at me. But now that I have a gun that shoots knives...who has the last laugh?

An example would be how Mushrooms and Aqua Vitae make a chemical called Hallucinite that works like a mage's confusion spell on enemies. Adding another component to it turns it into an Anaethisizer which knocks enemies out immediately. Adding a gun to that mix gives you a tranquilizer gun that pretty much lets a gunslinger have a great crowd control weapon to turn a group of enemies into a bunch of sleeping helpless victims.

While there are already 56 different things you can craft just from learning the tech levels alone, there are also schematics found all over the world in treasure chests, houses or sold in stores. If your skills in a certain school of technology is high enough, you can learn these schematics as well.

There are around 50+ schematics to be found out in the world coming an insane 100+ possible things you could have the ability to craft ranging from things like an electric powered lamp for lighting dark places or silenced pistols and trap springers for thieves all the way to cool things like grenade launchers, flamethrowers, time bombs, giant robot spiders and robotic automatons.

Robot Spiders. Every evil genius needs Robot Spiders

Of course this is not all open to you in one playthrough. The game itself limits your character to a maximum level of 50 with one point given per level and an extra point every 5 levels to distribute as you please. But really, once one has decided on a certain course to take their character, by the end of the game you are left with a wholly unique creation.

A retarded but highly likeable Ogre? Possible. A pyromaniac technologist who focuses on using stealth and planted explosives to clear a room before pulling out a flamethrower and molotov cocktails when forced into battle? Easily doable. A pacfist Gnomish politician who goes through the game making his fortune through persuasion and lies then falling back on mind control through either magickal or technological means? Very doable and in fact was the basis of one of my playthroughs. The possibilities for true Roleplaying are endless.

So...many....options...

Thus far I have only covered the character creation. "But what of the story?" you may be asking. Well it works just as most open ended RPG's do. It starts off as a sort of investigation, trying to find out why you are suddenly thrust into what appears to be a series of unfortunate events leading to eventually having you become a prophesized savior of the world all the while being enmeshed in what appears to be one of the largest conspiracies in the history of Arcanum.

Though the story itself is not all that original, there are some genuinely nice plot twists to keep it all fresh and the fact that you can do it at your leisure means that you never feel like you are being forced into doing anything. If you want, you can simply say "Fuck this" and go do your own thing. There are so many quests to be done in the world as well as locations to be discovered and treasures to be found. On top of that, of the hundreds of quests you can do, there is usually more than one way to complete them allowing for roleplayers to really do things the way they want.

An example of this would be one that takes place near the start of the game: A bridge is being held up by thieves demanding a toll. You can choose to simply steal the key to get past the locked gate across the bridge. Kill the thieves by any means you think appropriate, stike a deal with them to destroy a nearby bridge being built so they remain in control and give you a free pass or even talk them into leaving by making them think you are a representative of the Thieves Underground and that they are encroaching on taken territory.

So far I have done nothing but praise the game. I suppose it is time I pointed out some of the weaker points. For one the graphics and interface feel dated. Personally I like the way the game is represented, but for those not used to the isometric style games like Fallout, Baldur's Gate or Planescape it might be a little difficult to get into at first.

Train! Monkeys love trains! :D

The sound is very decent with guns, explosions and other effects sounding as one would expect. The music is very appropriate, adding well to immersion and voice acting being superb but sadly limited to only a handful of NPCs. The Cutscenes are few and far between. While some are very nice, others are almost a bit of a joke, either being just a bunch of slides with a voice over or losing their apparent "epicness" due to obvious time and budget constraints.

Gameplay is good enough all things considered. I mentioned before that it played very much like Fallout 1 and 2. You could either play realtime or switch to a turn based mode and while it feels clunky at first, it doesn't hinder gameplay at all and becomes quite intuitive when you get used to it. Though I can't really say much for companions who (to be perfectly honest) are a tad retarded in their AI which sadly can not be tweaked.

The game world itself is huge. Each area/town/city is sort of set up in a semi-large map of it's own. There are no real loading times to speak of and all buildings are accessible and part of the overall map (in the exact same vein as Fallout).

This is pretty much the entire United Kingdom rolled into one country.

The only times you change to a different map when going to an interior in when entering the basement of a building or entering a cave or dungeon. When reaching the outskirts of an area you have the option to either keep going by foot (though it may take you literally a few real life hours to walk from one city to another) or switching to a world map view where you can click on your destination and your character will start crossing the map with the possibility of a random encounter taking place (once again, exactly like the Fallout games).

One glaring issue I need to point out is that the game suffers from an immense amount of seemingly random game crippling bugs. Thankfully installing the official patch and the unofficial patch (known as Drog's UAP) pretty much removes around 90% of the bugs and it is very rare that you will even come across them at all after the patches are installed.

There is also a world editor that allows people to make their own maps and custom modules which can be switched quickly and easily from the main menu. This is very similar to Neverwinter Nights and with the advent of this tool does leave players with some very nice possible options to make their own custom content or download those of others.

Not much else I can say really: The game is great. No. It's better than great, it's a flawed masterpiece and a one of a kind experience. There are few games I would heap this much praise on but the simple fact of the matter is that you would be doing yourself a disservice by not giving it a chance.





You can buy the game here for less than 6 dollars.
Patches, custom content and other goodies can be gotten here for free.