A friend of mine was telling me about Bloodlines, and afterwards decided to lend me Arcanum as well. He was really trying to sell the game as pretty damn awesome, and I was wondering what you guys thought about it. I couldn't find an existing thread, so I thought I'd ask here.
League of Legends: Sorakanmyworld
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
The game is great and I wish there was more games like it but the thing that depressed me is that magic is very overpowered compared to the tech side of the game.
The 1.074 patch fixes most of the bugs. There are fan patches as well of course, but they add content or change quests. If anyone knows of a good fan patch that makes guns a viable choice, that might be good to use, however.
Not to say there aren't problems with it. There is a massive amount of skills to choose from, and it's very possible to gimp yourself. I'd recommend melee or magic to be your focus for a first playthrough. Combat isn't the main draw anyway though, it's the huge world and large amount of quests that make it so much fun.
Less awesome than Bloodlines but still entertaining. The biggest knocks against it are some of the mechanics/balance and the presentation.
The latter is due to a pretty crappy graphics engine. The game world just doesn't look like what they're trying to convey. Your industrial city is a dingy looking place where all the buildings look the same, whether it's a factory or a flophouse. Your vibrant city is a better looking place where all the buildings look the same.
Balance wise, tech just plain sucks compared to magic. Guns in particular get the shaft. The strongest characters are those that tend towards magic or are pretty neutral in regards to the two (fighters or rogue types that just use melee weapons to fight). I'll also note that evil mages get screwed out of a few things too, you can tell that some of the bonuses Troika had for skilled mages were afterthoughts put in at the end (I'm quite literal here. They didn't put them in until the idea was mentioned in a lot of forum threads at an IGN board), not that it mattered too much since you still destroyed everything as a mage.
Now that that's out of the way, I'll toss in that this was the RPG where it was the most fun to be a rogue before Morrowind. Guards weren't instantly alerted to your crimes if they weren't around and your weapon wasn't too loud (daggers great, swords good, clubs okay, guns bad). If they came across the body later and you were nowhere nearby, they might blame another NPC for the crime. NPCs followed schedules and went to sleep so you could sneak in and rob them. If you were really gutsy, you could literally steal the pants off of NPCs. That's worth a few points on a review right there.
The 1.074 patch fixes most of the bugs. There are fan patches as well of course, but they add content or change quests. If anyone knows of a good fan patch that makes guns a viable choice, that might be good to use, however.
http://www.terra-arcanum.com/phpBB/dload.php is the only site I know of with working links for arcanum mods. "krupp_aio_arcanumhackv1" under Dimensions of Arcanum Downloads Rebalances the firearms and gunsmithy techs without adding a bunch of retarded crap to the game, or breaking the skills.
I want to replay Arcanum so bad, I've never actually finished it due to getting a CTD bug in my first playthrough. Now whenever I get the urge to play I search for my disks and only come up with one of them
There's nothing I love more than male nipples in Starcraft, the two go together so well. - Tasteless
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augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
edited December 2007
This game is pretty awesome. But I did find tech to confusing and a pain in the ass and underpowered. the entire UI pretty much blows. Great game despite all that, though.
I'm not sure what, exactly, it takes for a game to keep me coming back, but I do know that Arcanum has it. Every word said about it so far is true, and, as with Bloodlines, Stalker, and several other games, I feel like I should warn people away from it rather than encourage them to try it.
It's flawed as hell, it looks more dated than Fallout, and techies get screwed hard without fan mods (I second the recommendation of Krupp's all-in-one), but it's one of my favorite games of all time. It's got a big world, a great concept, some beautiful music, excellent writing and acting, one hell of a plot twist, a versatile engine (what's the last RPG that let you blow open a locked door, or take a mallet to that trapped chest, or kill the chatty plotline NPC without breaking the story?), and a great character building system.
Of course, the thing it's missing is good gameplay to tie all that together. And yet, Arcanum is one of those special titles that keeps me coming back long, long after I've grown tired of more recent ones. Troika may not have been all that competent in development terms, but the RPG world is a darker place without them
Edit: If you'll pardon the blatant plug, I wrote a more formal review a while back. Had a heck of a time finding the mods all over again, I swear each year these older games get harder to set up properly.
Arcanum is awesome, although the engine really held it back. Playing it was about as complex as operating one of those steampunk machines would be in real life. It's like an even less friendly version of Fallout. Still, the writing was top notch, and they created a world completely different from any RPG before or since, really. Troika should never have died Oh, and the soundtrack? SO GOOD. SO AMAZINGLY GOOD. It's all available for free at Sierra's site. Go to Media, then click on "Soundtrack" up near the top. The main theme alone is one of my favorite songs ever. Beautiful stuff.
TychoCelchuuu on
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augustwhere you come from is goneRegistered Userregular
The only bad thing about Arcanum for me was a cave early on which you had to go through in order to progress with the game. Full of Rock Golems or something similar. Good luck trying to actually kill them, as they'd make any melee weapon you'd use shatter like glass, bullets bounced off, and though I didn't try it I'm fairly sure they had some magic resistance as well. There is a trick to doing it however...
Build up a gigantic stockpile of grenades and bomb them into oblivion. Works wonderfully well, and you get the awesome feeling of knowing you killed a a Rock Golem with steampunk hand grenades.
After that though, the game becomes pure, concentrated spectacular. My first run was as a gun-toting Dwarf, and when I discovered the Mechanical Man Schematic, well, I had nearly thirty of them running around with me after a point. I'd just shoot an enemy, let them charge me, and in the split second it takes them to realise they should be attacking my clanking horde, they were torn to shreds. Worked on literally everything.
What they said. One suggestion: start with a mage, and build up your teleport spells until you get the one that lets you teleport between cities instantly. It saves a LOT of time.
Also, if you're an ugly enough evil halfling, your reaction will be so low people will try to kill you on sight
I keep re-playing through it every now and then, definitely in the top three PC RPGs of all time in my book. And I always keep finding new stuff since I try and make every character different, on my last run through I found what was probably the most convoluted and long voiced NPC interaction sequence, and it was only available to
Masters in Persuasion
, felt pretty awesome when I discovered it almost accidentally!
How about an ugly evil Half-Orc? Those bastards didn't get a break at all.
Ugly, evil, NAKED half-orc gets even more hate. Nothing like having people spit in your direction because you decided to steak through town one day.
One issue the gameplay had was that it took a while to actually grow into your abilities if you weren't a half-ogre or half-orc fighter. Melee depended on having good strength or backstab, dexterity, and a melee skill of 3 or 4 to be consistent. Ranged combat was even worse. I think the game would have benefited from making you feel competent more quickly. The system seemed to really be balanced towards the mid to high levels.
How about an ugly evil Half-Orc? Those bastards didn't get a break at all.
Ugly, evil, NAKED half-orc gets even more hate. Nothing like having people spit in your direction because you decided to steak through town one day.
One issue the gameplay had was that it took a while to actually grow into your abilities if you weren't a half-ogre or half-orc fighter. Melee depended on having good strength or backstab, dexterity, and a melee skill of 3 or 4 to be consistent. Ranged combat was even worse. I think the game would have benefited from making you feel competent more quickly. The system seemed to really be balanced towards the mid to high levels.
How about an ugly evil Half-Orc? Those bastards didn't get a break at all.
Ugly, evil, NAKED half-orc gets even more hate. Nothing like having people spit in your direction because you decided to steak through town one day.
One issue the gameplay had was that it took a while to actually grow into your abilities if you weren't a half-ogre or half-orc fighter. Melee depended on having good strength or backstab, dexterity, and a melee skill of 3 or 4 to be consistent. Ranged combat was even worse. I think the game would have benefited from making you feel competent more quickly. The system seemed to really be balanced towards the mid to high levels.
How about an ugly evil Half-Orc? Those bastards didn't get a break at all.
Ugly, evil, NAKED half-orc gets even more hate. Nothing like having people spit in your direction because you decided to steak through town one day.
One issue the gameplay had was that it took a while to actually grow into your abilities if you weren't a half-ogre or half-orc fighter. Melee depended on having good strength or backstab, dexterity, and a melee skill of 3 or 4 to be consistent. Ranged combat was even worse. I think the game would have benefited from making you feel competent more quickly. The system seemed to really be balanced towards the mid to high levels.
How about an ugly evil Half-Orc? Those bastards didn't get a break at all.
Ugly, evil, NAKED half-orc gets even more hate. Nothing like having people spit in your direction because you decided to steak through town one day.
One issue the gameplay had was that it took a while to actually grow into your abilities if you weren't a half-ogre or half-orc fighter. Melee depended on having good strength or backstab, dexterity, and a melee skill of 3 or 4 to be consistent. Ranged combat was even worse. I think the game would have benefited from making you feel competent more quickly. The system seemed to really be balanced towards the mid to high levels.
Anyway, I recall being able to max out several skill paths through normal leveling, so you shouldn't be able to gimp yourself unless you really want to try everything out. Also, at the start make a decision whether to go tech or magic. If you start out in tech then decide that magic is cooler and start throwing points into that, then you're just making everything suck.
My favorite character was a half-elf with full Charisma, Beauty, Wisdom, and Dark Necromancy. He'd walk around in a smoking jacket, and everyone who wasn't actually in combat with me was at +150 reaction or something. If anybody started making trouble, I'd summon 8 mummies or skeletons around them and just watch.
Bursar on
GNU Terry Pratchett
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
I actually completed a run-through of this for the first time less than a month ago. The dwarf ruins with the rock golems really killed me the first time I played, and the game ran so poorly on my machine at the time that I shelved it.
As others have said, the music, writing, and voice acting are absolutely fantastic. What I did this last time, and what I recommend for a new player, was a human fighter type with the occasional point thrown in charisma and persuasion for more dialogue and party options. High str/dex and a pyrotechnic axe makes combat a joke, but combat was one of the game's weakest points so it isn't a big deal.
Wow, I remember wanting this game really bad around when it came out. I never bought it though and then just kind of forgot about it. This thread really makes me want to play it now
Wow, I remember wanting this game really bad around when it came out. I never bought it though and then just kind of forgot about it. This thread really makes me want to play it now
Why isn't it on GameTap! They have Sierra games!
Why isn't it on Steam? Bloodlines is.
I never got around to buying it either. Or acquiring it from friends in any other manner, either.
Guns got viable after awhile. The looking glass rifle I believe kicked all kinds of ass it was pure awesome.... and don't forget paralyze gas grenades... you could kill entire cities using them. Some of the guns were not well implemented like the acid gun... didn't seem to do anything.
Arcanum is awesome, although the engine really held it back. Playing it was about as complex as operating one of those steampunk machines would be in real life. It's like an even less friendly version of Fallout. Still, the writing was top notch, and they created a world completely different from any RPG before or since, really. Troika should never have died Oh, and the soundtrack? SO GOOD. SO AMAZINGLY GOOD. It's all available for free at Sierra's site. Go to Media, then click on "Soundtrack" up near the top. The main theme alone is one of my favorite songs ever. Beautiful stuff.
This link isn't working for me -- ftp.sierra.com never connects. Is it working for anyone else? If not, is there anywhere else to get it?
Anyway, I recall being able to max out several skill paths through normal leveling, so you shouldn't be able to gimp yourself unless you really want to try everything out. Also, at the start make a decision whether to go tech or magic. If you start out in tech then decide that magic is cooler and start throwing points into that, then you're just making everything suck.
My favorite character was a half-elf with full Charisma, Beauty, Wisdom, and Dark Necromancy. He'd walk around in a smoking jacket, and everyone who wasn't actually in combat with me was at +150 reaction or something. If anybody started making trouble, I'd summon 8 mummies or skeletons around them and just watch.
I remember going to insane lengths to get my Human Archer's Charisma as high as possible so as to have the maximum number of companions. Sogg Mead Mug with a Pyrotechnic Axe, along with that Dwarf fellow you find close to the beginning, also with a Pyrotechnic Axe? It wasn't even fair.
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Also, make sure it's patched up.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
Not to say there aren't problems with it. There is a massive amount of skills to choose from, and it's very possible to gimp yourself. I'd recommend melee or magic to be your focus for a first playthrough. Combat isn't the main draw anyway though, it's the huge world and large amount of quests that make it so much fun.
The latter is due to a pretty crappy graphics engine. The game world just doesn't look like what they're trying to convey. Your industrial city is a dingy looking place where all the buildings look the same, whether it's a factory or a flophouse. Your vibrant city is a better looking place where all the buildings look the same.
Balance wise, tech just plain sucks compared to magic. Guns in particular get the shaft. The strongest characters are those that tend towards magic or are pretty neutral in regards to the two (fighters or rogue types that just use melee weapons to fight). I'll also note that evil mages get screwed out of a few things too, you can tell that some of the bonuses Troika had for skilled mages were afterthoughts put in at the end (I'm quite literal here. They didn't put them in until the idea was mentioned in a lot of forum threads at an IGN board), not that it mattered too much since you still destroyed everything as a mage.
Now that that's out of the way, I'll toss in that this was the RPG where it was the most fun to be a rogue before Morrowind. Guards weren't instantly alerted to your crimes if they weren't around and your weapon wasn't too loud (daggers great, swords good, clubs okay, guns bad). If they came across the body later and you were nowhere nearby, they might blame another NPC for the crime. NPCs followed schedules and went to sleep so you could sneak in and rob them. If you were really gutsy, you could literally steal the pants off of NPCs. That's worth a few points on a review right there.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
http://www.terra-arcanum.com/phpBB/dload.php is the only site I know of with working links for arcanum mods. "krupp_aio_arcanumhackv1" under Dimensions of Arcanum Downloads Rebalances the firearms and gunsmithy techs without adding a bunch of retarded crap to the game, or breaking the skills.
It's flawed as hell, it looks more dated than Fallout, and techies get screwed hard without fan mods (I second the recommendation of Krupp's all-in-one), but it's one of my favorite games of all time. It's got a big world, a great concept, some beautiful music, excellent writing and acting, one hell of a plot twist, a versatile engine (what's the last RPG that let you blow open a locked door, or take a mallet to that trapped chest, or kill the chatty plotline NPC without breaking the story?), and a great character building system.
Of course, the thing it's missing is good gameplay to tie all that together. And yet, Arcanum is one of those special titles that keeps me coming back long, long after I've grown tired of more recent ones. Troika may not have been all that competent in development terms, but the RPG world is a darker place without them
Edit: If you'll pardon the blatant plug, I wrote a more formal review a while back. Had a heck of a time finding the mods all over again, I swear each year these older games get harder to set up properly.
Now playing: Teardown and Baldur's Gate 3 (co-op)
Sunday Spotlight: Horror Tales: The Wine
Shit, I have a game going right now actually.
The game world is just dripping with content, my thirst cannot be quenched.
Valve had a sequel planned in late 2006, but legal pressure from Sierra caused the project to be shelved indefinitely.
Uh, I thought Troika had a sequel in the works utilizing the Source engine. Then they went out of business.
After that though, the game becomes pure, concentrated spectacular. My first run was as a gun-toting Dwarf, and when I discovered the Mechanical Man Schematic, well, I had nearly thirty of them running around with me after a point. I'd just shoot an enemy, let them charge me, and in the split second it takes them to realise they should be attacking my clanking horde, they were torn to shreds. Worked on literally everything.
I think Troika was gone by December 2006 no? When I read the PR I thought it said Valve.
Valve wouldn't start production on a sequel to game they didn't own the right to.
Oh, I found it, Valve was involved because it was planned to be made on the Source engine.
Also, if you're an ugly enough evil halfling, your reaction will be so low people will try to kill you on sight
Well, they made a Vampire game somewhere between those two things. A Vampire game even better than Arcanum.
Well, they made a Vampire game somewhere between those two things. A Vampire game even better than Arcanum.
Ugly, evil, NAKED half-orc gets even more hate. Nothing like having people spit in your direction because you decided to steak through town one day.
One issue the gameplay had was that it took a while to actually grow into your abilities if you weren't a half-ogre or half-orc fighter. Melee depended on having good strength or backstab, dexterity, and a melee skill of 3 or 4 to be consistent. Ranged combat was even worse. I think the game would have benefited from making you feel competent more quickly. The system seemed to really be balanced towards the mid to high levels.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Ugly, evil, NAKED half-orc gets even more hate. Nothing like having people spit in your direction because you decided to steak through town one day.
One issue the gameplay had was that it took a while to actually grow into your abilities if you weren't a half-ogre or half-orc fighter. Melee depended on having good strength or backstab, dexterity, and a melee skill of 3 or 4 to be consistent. Ranged combat was even worse. I think the game would have benefited from making you feel competent more quickly. The system seemed to really be balanced towards the mid to high levels.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Ugly, evil, NAKED half-orc gets even more hate. Nothing like having people spit in your direction because you decided to steak through town one day.
One issue the gameplay had was that it took a while to actually grow into your abilities if you weren't a half-ogre or half-orc fighter. Melee depended on having good strength or backstab, dexterity, and a melee skill of 3 or 4 to be consistent. Ranged combat was even worse. I think the game would have benefited from making you feel competent more quickly. The system seemed to really be balanced towards the mid to high levels.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Ugly, evil, NAKED half-orc gets even more hate. Nothing like having people spit in your direction because you decided to steak through town one day.
One issue the gameplay had was that it took a while to actually grow into your abilities if you weren't a half-ogre or half-orc fighter. Melee depended on having good strength or backstab, dexterity, and a melee skill of 3 or 4 to be consistent. Ranged combat was even worse. I think the game would have benefited from making you feel competent more quickly. The system seemed to really be balanced towards the mid to high levels.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Ugly, evil, NAKED half-orc gets even more hate. Nothing like having people spit in your direction because you decided to steak through town one day.
One issue the gameplay had was that it took a while to actually grow into your abilities if you weren't a half-ogre or half-orc fighter. Melee depended on having good strength or backstab, dexterity, and a melee skill of 3 or 4 to be consistent. Ranged combat was even worse. I think the game would have benefited from making you feel competent more quickly. The system seemed to really be balanced towards the mid to high levels.
Steam Profile
3DS: 3454-0268-5595 Battle.net: SteelAngel#1772
Anyway, I recall being able to max out several skill paths through normal leveling, so you shouldn't be able to gimp yourself unless you really want to try everything out. Also, at the start make a decision whether to go tech or magic. If you start out in tech then decide that magic is cooler and start throwing points into that, then you're just making everything suck.
My favorite character was a half-elf with full Charisma, Beauty, Wisdom, and Dark Necromancy. He'd walk around in a smoking jacket, and everyone who wasn't actually in combat with me was at +150 reaction or something. If anybody started making trouble, I'd summon 8 mummies or skeletons around them and just watch.
PSN: Wstfgl | GamerTag: An Evil Plan | Battle.net: FallenIdle#1970
Hit me up on BoardGameArena! User: Loaded D1
As others have said, the music, writing, and voice acting are absolutely fantastic. What I did this last time, and what I recommend for a new player, was a human fighter type with the occasional point thrown in charisma and persuasion for more dialogue and party options. High str/dex and a pyrotechnic axe makes combat a joke, but combat was one of the game's weakest points so it isn't a big deal.
I'm rather glad I have no idea where my Arcanum disks are, otherwise I doubt I'd be posting right now.
Why isn't it on GameTap! They have Sierra games!
Why isn't it on Steam? Bloodlines is.
I never got around to buying it either. Or acquiring it from friends in any other manner, either.
Kind of want to give it a shot.
I WONDER WHO HE IS SUPPOSED TO BE
*starts digging*
This link isn't working for me -- ftp.sierra.com never connects. Is it working for anyone else? If not, is there anywhere else to get it?
I remember going to insane lengths to get my Human Archer's Charisma as high as possible so as to have the maximum number of companions. Sogg Mead Mug with a Pyrotechnic Axe, along with that Dwarf fellow you find close to the beginning, also with a Pyrotechnic Axe? It wasn't even fair.