Arcanum : Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura

by Sierra Online

Product Features

• Character Creation: No More Character Classes. Arcanum uses a classless, point-based system where players use points to "buy" attributes. You're only limited by your own creativity in guiding your character's development.
• Complex Stat-Driven System: Take charge or your own growth in the game environment. A deep and complex statistical system underlies every event that takes place within Arcanum. These include:
• 8 basic stats (including Strength and Charisma), and more than a dozen derived stat (such as Poison Resistance and Character Speed)
• 16 primary skills (such as Gambling, Healing, and Lock-Picking)
• 80 spells within 16 colleges / Take the adventure online co-operatively or competitively over the Internet or LAN.

Product Details

• ASIN: B0012REQZK
• Media: CD-ROM
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #15,665 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Old School, January 3, 2010

By 

rhenom (Poulsbo, WA) - See all my reviews

= Fun:3.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Arcanum : Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura (CD-ROM)

I couldn't in good conscience give this game 5 stars like the other reviewers. One thing to note as I kick this review off. This game does work with Windows 7 on my computer...with only a few hitches. There is a minor graphical glitch with the cursor that is easy to ignore for the most part. What wasn't easy to ignore was right toward the end of the game when I hit level 50 (the max level in the game) The game would crash every time. I had to go back to one of my older save games and replay a portion of the game and purposely avoid gaining experience.

With that out of the way I'm gonna do this old school pro and con review here to try to avoid being too long winded.

Pros

-Story is fairly interesting involving technology being introduced into a magical world

-Interacting with the NPC's is great, one of my favorite parts of the game, the dialogue trees are great and often humorous

-Lots of sidequests that flesh out the gameworld

Cons

-"real time" combat option is useless as it happens so fast you don't have time to do anything

-Graphics are bland, even for a game 10 years old

-You have to read a strategy guide if you want to make the most out of the game, there are a lot of nuances that you WILL miss if you just play through on your own

I noted the sidequests as a pro, but you need to be careful with them as there are enough that you could go a while ignoring the main story and forget what is going on.

You can be good or evil in this game (theres even an evil alternate ending), it actually reminds me a bit of Oblivion in the variety of gameplay, often the quests are varied and fun.

Being how old this game is there are modern games that do all this same stuff with more production value (Oblivion) But if you like lively NPC's to chat with and great humorous dialogue trees this is certainly one way to go.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Dated, but still shines., February 23, 2010

By 

Bailey Z. Rose (Orlando, FL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Arcanum : Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura (CD-ROM)

First, a disclaimer: Arcanum is buggy, and even the patches don't fix EVERYTHING. The graphics are dated, even for an older game. There, now that's out of the way.

Upon playing Arcanum the first time, what really struck me was the sheer love that went into the game. By love, I don't mean "truckloads of money for graphics tweaks and all-star dialogue". I mean the world of Arcanum seems almost to live and breathe because of the amount of care and effort put into fleshing it out.

Arcanum is set in a Steampunk fantasy world -- magic and the mysteries of 'nature' are disappearing, being pushed deeper and deeper into dwindling areas of wilderness while technology and urbanization spread across the land. Wizards and railroads; swords and rifles; crystal balls and telescopes... it's all in this game. While the storyline keeps you moving in a fairly straightforward path from objective to objective, there are TONS of side-quests to do, and they're pretty compelling. None of the bland 'go to x and gather x number of x items' quests that plague modern RPGs.

The story is creative and full of genuine surprises; item creation and management is fun in and of itself; combat is nothing special but not bad either; the many races and cultures are historically and sociologically fleshed-out, giving the player a sense of being in a 'real' world that's going along at its own pace, not a world that's 'frozen' and waiting for the player to complete quests and move from point to point. Also, the soundtrack (almost entirely in pieces for string quartet) is unique and outstanding.

I could go on and on about the game but will summarize it like this: if you want a compelling plotline, opportunity to explore, mature storywriting, and a 'fresh' spin on fantasy RPGs, but are not overly concerned with cutting edge graphics... this is worth a shot.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Old School CRPG action!, July 1, 2010

By 

Nicholas A. Radloff (ATL, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: Arcanum : Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura (CD-ROM)

Arcanum is one of those games that few people know about, but should be heralded as one of the better CRPGs of the last 15 years. In Arcanum, you are presented with one of the most unique scifi-fantasy universes, a land where steampunk and high fantasy meet! In fact, they not only meet, but are at odds with one another! A key theme to the series is that an industrial revolution has hit the land and those who once held power through magic and the old ways are now falling to the rise of technology and mass production.

The character creation screen, as with most isometric games like Baldur's Gate and the like, you choose a race, their portrait (a small set of premade portraits are available), and their attributes. One can focus on being a warrior or archer, mage or priest. But the interesting aspect is the inclusion of technology into the mix. Technology and magic don't get along in this world. If you're a technologist, magic doesn't work so well for you and can oftentimes either not work or hurt your character. The same goes for magic users. According to the game lore, magic alters the way reality works, so instead of having easily turning gears in a machine, they start to seize up and break. Technology has a greater chance of failing in the hands of a magic user.

The story is pretty straight forward as far as epics go. Humble beginnings, dangerous enemy, twists and turns in the plot. A number of the characters are memorable, mainly your first companion Virgil, but a good many of them are so stereotypical it makes one wonder if the developer couldn't have tried a little bit harder to make them more dynamic. For instance, there is a dwarf. What do dwarves do? Drink and fight and talk about honor. Congratulations, you've described one of the characters. The elves are the same way. Reclusive, good with bows, and wise. Its hardly honorable to talk bad about dead men, but Troika really kicked themselves in the butt by making such forgettable characters.

Luckily, its the plot that shines and not the characters. I don't want to spoil it, so I won't say much, but be prepared for an adventure unlike any you've had in a game before!

If you love CRPGs, have a deal of patience, and want to see a good story like you haven't seen in this genre before, this is a game you must play. If you can only play games with gorgeous visuals, the latest graphics, and everything voiced over, go play Call of Duty. Anyone who loved Baldur's Gate will love this game.