Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

"Screwed gameplay"

Well, the same good friend of mine who taught me everything about the D&D rules to successfully play Baldur's Gate II and Icewind Dale II told me about a good game called Arcanum. It looked nice on first sight, this friend having told me lot of good things about it. After hesitating a bit, I finally bought it. It was fun...until I realized how screwed the gameplay is. It's sad, since the game looked pretty fun overall. Oh well, let's get on with the review.

Arcanum is an open-ended rpg game, which means that there are many ways to complete it, and the gameplay is non-linear. You create a character with a variety of stats, and you go out in the wild, trying to find out where to go next. This non-linear type of gameplay is fun, but it is screwed in many other ways. Let's get to the details:

STORY: ??/10 (but I would say AT LEAST 9/10)

The sad thing about this game is that the story looks quite great. Unfortunately, I haven't played long enough to know a lot about the story, but it has a nice 19th century feeling. The theme is the rivalry between magic and technology, and the atmosphere is unique in many ways. Rarely have I seen an rpg with this kind of story, and it's sad to see such an original story ruined by a poor gameplay.

AUDIO: 5/10

No, the gameplay is not the only bad thing about this game. The sounds are very average, and the music is boring. The music is also repetitive. How many times have I heard the battle music...so many times, and it was a boring tune. The audio is definitely mediocre, and requires improvement.

GRAPHICS: 6/10

One word to describe the graphics: average. The user interface looks like it was done in 256 colors mode. The characters themselves aren't ugly, but they lack some details, and some portraits could have been better. Oh well, I guess the graphics do their job, but they could have been better, hence the average rating.

GAMEPLAY: 3/10

All right...where to begin... Let's start with the bad experience system, which is, IMHO, the most negative aspect of the gameplay. Normally, in a good rpg, you fight monsters to gain experience, and you gain levels. As your level get higher, it is harder to gain further levels, and reaching a high level can take a long time. In this game, gaining levels is hardly a challenge. The game's weaker enemies are worth WAY TOO MUCH experience. So, you could easily gain 10 or 20 levels just by killing the weak wolves in the beginning. The max level is 50, and I didn't even complete 1/20 of the game and I was already level 25. Was the game easy? You bet it was!

Next thing, there are serious balance issues in this game. Stealing is way to abusive. I mean, you go see a merchant. He or she has about 2000+ golds on him/her. So, just steal the cash and buy the stuff! Hey, one of the women in the first town has around 7000 golds on her! And what if you KILL them instead? Well, they will eventually come back! And with a new load of money for you to steal! But then, you have some quests which REQUIRES you to steal. Like, a lady will give you 100 golds if you steal an amulet from a rival. The amulet gives you a 40% resistance to magic, and why should I give it away for 100 golds, when I can just steal from the merchants anyway? Yes, it gives you freedom. But this kind of freedom isn't fun.

Next, the stats. Some stats are nearly useless, while some others are TOO useful. High strength will make your blows extremely devastating, while agility will make you insanely fast(and you have no idea how powerful agility is...). However, Intelligence does almost nothing and Perception is only useful to learn spells(but does not improve their effects). Oh well, to compensate this, you have a nice array of skills you can learn, and this is good. However, there should not be any useless stats, especially since some backgrounds focus on these stats, and gender has an effect too.

Speaking of gender, let's talk about the lack of character customization. There are many races, and that's good. But the programmers are misogynists, and they didn't want any female gnomes, dwarves and ogres. Either they thought all women had to be skinny and sexy(hence why you still have female humans and elves), or they were simply too lazy to make graphics for female dwarves and ogres. Another bad thing is that you cannot customize the colors of your character(e.g. hairs and skin). So, if you choose the portrait of a greenish orc, you cannot make your skin green, even if you're an half-orc. If you are a human with a blond woman portrait, your avatar will have black hairs, and you can't do anything about it. Yes, it's not THAT bad, but that kills some of the fun of playing an open-ended rpg.

Guns VS Swords. Guns should win, right? Nope, sorry, not in this game. A sword user with a high strength will be more powerful than the most technological gun. Oh, and you can also take MANY bullets before dying. Get my point? The game is unrealistic is some ways. It's much easier to be a mage with a sword than it is to be a scientist with a gun. I mean, we all know a dagger can be stronger that an AK-47, right? This is basically how the game see it. And if you want to be a mage with guns, well...good luck. It's quite hard to use BOTH technology and magic, because if you use one, you become less good with the other. Maybe I'm wrong, I haven't played for a very long time, but technology seems to be inferior to magic in so many ways.

There we go. The gameplay is completely screwed. Sad thing, since the story was so nice...(sigh).

CHALLENGE: 4/10

Is this game hard? It could be if it wasn't for the fact that it's so easy to obtain strong weapons and armors by stealing, and it's so easy to gain levels. So yes, the game have strong enemies, but they aren't strong enough for you, because your level will be too high, and your weapons too strong. Heck, I could easily have killed everyone in the first city, including the ''dangerous'' bandits and the guards. But here's an advice: kill wolves instead. Weak they might be, they are worth almost as much experience as the bandits and the guards. Yes, I was being sarcastic.

OVERALL: 4/10

The story and atmosphere helps saving the score from a 2 or a 3. Buy or rent? You probably can't rent it, and if you absolutely want to buy it, make sure you download a mod to get a better experience system. Maybe I will try to play it again sometime with a good mod, but if you need a mod to make a game fun, then it's a really bad thing.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 01/30/04