Customer Reviews

Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura (Prima's Official Strategy Guide)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Many strategy/guide books fall short of what their title intends, but not so with Arcanum.

This book is wonderfully detailed. Different chapters focus on different elements within the game including: character classes, technology, magick, monsters, maps, quests, weapons, armor, the lesser and greater gods, npc's, formulas and schematics and many other tidbits you never new were in the game until you read this book.

I was very impressed with the character creation sections and its very detailed explanations of customizations, auto-schemes, attributes and more.

The monster appendix is great, and identifies about 85% of creatures you will encounter with pictures and 100% with stats.

Weapons, armor, potions/elixirs, schematics/formulas are treated with the same detailed information and can really help you find/discover hard to locate parts or uses for objects that you will come across.

The chapter on Magick is also very detailed, much more so than the original manual and gets you excited about following that college of study within the game.

The maps are priceless, as they are pretty well laid out and complete. However, I did find a few minor errors that were mostly aesthetic. Namely, one of the maps the editors forgot to label (though the legend appears below the map...it corresponds to nothing), and another map is a bit blurry.

The walkthrough and quests are pretty complete from what I can tell and really aid in the hint department if you get stuck on a puzzle. But, I did think there were some obscure references to other quests that could have been explained better. It can be slightly confusing at times to follow the walkthroughs and quests for the page layout and cross-referencing is a bit odd. But, if you study it for a few minutes, you'll get it.

There are no color pics anywhere in the manual, the pics that do exist are in gray scale. Most pictures ties in directly to an object, character or map, but there are a few random pieces of steampunk art mixed in.

What keeps this book from 5 stars is the few errors I found that were probably an oversight from the editing process. Like I said a few blurry pics, a few missing labels, a strange layout in the walkthrough chapter, but otherwise a fantastic and 'very' detailed strategy book of any game I've seen in a while and well worth the cover price.

No doubt a wonderful guide, but, why the highway robery!? I can't believe people would charge so much for a guide you can still puchase from the publisher. (http://www.primagames.com/strategy/book/4633) -You guys should be ashamed of yourselves!

This game is great, and is filled with many secrets. With the book, all the hard problems are solved. Most of the towns are huge and hard to navigate, but the book solves that by showing you all the maps. Some of the quests get confusing at times, but the book always tells you what to do. I tried many times to beat this game without the book, and failed. I recommend this book to anyone who buys the game.

Prima guides are generally pretty good. The guide for Arcanum is not as good as some others (like Dragon Age) because it has much less to say about character builds. I played several times before I was happy with a build. It is tough to decide where to put the one point you gain when you advance a level (or two points every fifth level). Points can go into base stats (strength, willpower etc)or into skills (melee, pickpocket, dodge etc) or into technical abilities (chemistry, explosives, gunsmith etc) or spells. The guide does list the many auto-level options, but I found them less than ideal as I always like to create my own build.

Apart from this, the guide gives all the usual things you could want. Maps of everywhere with places of interest notated, monster lists, spell and tech lists, details on the equipment available through the game. There is a list of items that various types of merchants might have available for sale. There is even a brief listing for each quest sorted by location(there are lots).

This Prima guide does what it says on the packet. It is a good guide (I'd give it three and a half stars if I could give half a star), not that much fun to read, but certainly useful. Also, its usefulness stays over several playings. Over time the usefulness does not decrease, as you search for finer details, or the quests you missed.

I found this guide extremely helpful!! Order it from "GoodMan Books" for a more reasonable price of $18 dollars used. It is beyond me why the seller here is asking such an outrageous price!!

Given the physical limits of publishing in paper vs. digital, this strategy guide is pretty remarkable. You get 200+ pages of information on ever character, item, spell, ability, equipment, and location in the game.

Descriptions of items & quests are very brief at times, but that's only because they have to be in order to fit all the information in this book.

The walkthrough is solid, but is, strangely, only about 10-15% of the guide! Text / pictures are all in grayscale (no glossy color pages), but it's not a big deal.

For what it is, this guide is top-notch and worth a buy if you enjoy a paper guide vs. the ones available on the web.

Tough to play the game without this guide. Great breakdown of the character builds and how to proceed on each quest.

great but i can't understand why your chargin such a outrageous price for it. i mean i bought the GAME for 20 dollars and the guide is 45??!?!? something wrong with that picture...