Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

[JWIV]

Noble sirs, within the pages that follow, it will be my greatest endeavor to both enlighten and dare I say, entertain you with a story fraught with peril and high adventure!  Yet, lest it be so easily reduced and discarded as mere street trash and unfit for the educated reader, then I must also display, to what must be our collective shame and share with you the tragic and most unseemly behavior that we direct to those that we deem as our genetic and social inferior.  I refer to those children, born of ill-repute and circumstances most unfortunate.  The most astute of you have already deduced of whom I speak; the most tragic figures of our society; the dredge, the neglected, the most maligned; the half-orc.

This is the story of Traunk S. Bartleby.     It begins with a most dreadful crash of a zeppelin.   And now, we will turn to the writings of Master Bartleby.



Greetings friend Virgil!  You are kind, if perhaps more than slightly confused.  I fear that there are those that would take your confusion of my lineage of being that of Elven as an insult of sorts; perhaps it would be better if you spoke less of it.



We decided that our best course of action was to make straight away to the nearest town - a mining encampment of faded glory by the name of Shrouded Hills.   Our path was beset by wolves, but we proved victorious and arrived safely.    What great fortune, the first individual we met was a proud member of the local constabulary!  Surely, they would want to know of the great tragedy that had befallen us.

Alas no, the company of Virgil had left me ill-prepared for words most foul and behavior of a most unbecoming fashion.  It fell to me to remind this gentleman that regardless of situation and station, we must always strive towards a more enlightened stance.


Sadly, I found that many of this town had fallen into habits similar to that of its constabulary.   



I saw that I had much work to perform and after much discussion of the finer points of proper speech and behavior, I found myself fatigued and in need of respite before I ventured forth into a reportedly haunted mine and procured items for my new found friends within this town.

[trias_e]

Goddamnit.  Why'd you have to bring this game up.  Now I want to try to play it again, even though I know I will quit in the middle pissed off and annoyed.

[Strazos]

I'm just mad that you cannot reasonably play a hybrid magic/tech character, as you're gimped in both directions and get raped badly, especially by magic users.

[JWIV]

I'm just mad that you cannot reasonably play a hybrid magic/tech character, as you're gimped in both directions and get raped badly, especially by magic users.

I'm forcing myself to ignore this problem, since my inclination would be to make a hybrid.  I'm going to make a gun technologist and then if I want to do another playthrough, I'll go magic.

[JWIV]

This game may have been too awesome as my computer has  now blown up where even a simple reinstall of windows isn't going along nicely.

[Ingmar]

Such an almost good game.

[rk47]

Such an almost good game.

It just proves that despite what people say, RPG with terrible combat system will always have a serious flaw that prevents people from totally enjoying it. Arcanum has a LOT of content to be sure, but most of it revolve around COMBAT that cannot balance itself well. Either you are too powerful or too weak. The only thing that kept me coming back was the setting and the exploration.

That said, play a half ogre retard with 20 STR and be amazed with the dialogue and journal entries. I shit you not.  GRUNK SMASH!

[Ingmar]

It actually wasn't the combat that bothered me in particular, it was the endless slogs through identical looking caves and sewers and the preponderance of monsters that break your weapons when you hit them. There was just way, way too much of that. I guess the combat system is sort of to blame for that, since it was part of why it took so long to go through those sections of the game.

And yes I've played it in full retard mode, it is awesome. 

[TheWalrus]

You never go full retard. Never.

[Koyasha]

I disliked the ending, but that's my own personal taste, I would have liked some different ending options.  All the ones I know of felt like let-downs.

As for the combat system, I got bored of monkeying around with it and eventually just played overpowered characters to see the story unfold in different ways.  If you're the type that can enjoy the story without most of the challenge, this works pretty well.  Doesn't hurt to cheat in maxed teleportation (even as a tech character) to get rid of the annoyance of traveling around so damn slow, either.