How does Arcanum compare with Fallout 1&2?

[La_Anarquista]

I bought the old Fallouts for a couple bucks a long while back. I played the first one and had a little fun with it, but i didn't have any mods installed and I let it go. I am getting really close to the end of this game and I really enjoy it. I've been playing nohting but RPGs recently. What are your favorite things about Arcanum? About Fallout? and What things do you think Arcanum does better than Fallout and Fallout better than Arcanum?

[ArlekinV]

Well, Arcanum were created by three man who stand as "Origin developers" of Fallout. So, the Arcanum is more complicated fantasy-version of Fallout (rough article). Fallout is crazy mix of drugs, mutants, child-killing (sadly, Bethesda censored this part, some mods use this feature for character development) and WASTELAND. And actually Fallout was inspired by the game called Wasteland (You can find its modern siquel on steam and gog). Main idea of Arcanum was creation of CRPG that wasnt about medieval (In this time all rpg's was copy\paste of same idea, or D&D). Which game is better? Hard to tell - Arcanum and Fallout are both classic crpgs with good story, combat (oh well, combat isnt so good) and possibilites. I dont have much playtime on steam, only because i bough this games as support and teenager memories. And well you have to heavily mod all this games to have smooth expirience with them.

[fauxpas]

Both games are great but Fallout feels alot more "polished" mechincally then Arcanum does. On the other hand Arcanum is set in a magical steampunk world and tries to do a better job of holding to "universal" prinicples, if you can cast a spell on one NPC you can cast them on all for example, and you can summon up the spirit of pretty much every dead body you run across. (Even if almost none of them have anything useful or even interesting to say.)

[Muro]

Fallout 1/2 has better combat. Arcanum has more replayability.
Most other things are either comparable or different-but-both-good.

[Simocrates]

Oh hai Muro.

[♡ Katalina Aryze ♡]

I like Arcanum more, for the fact that it mixes the worlds of magic and steampunk... kinda in a similar way to what Victor Vran does. Idk how but it just works. Fallout 2 is definitely more polished but I tend to favor the overall experience of Arcanum because it still is unique today...whole there are alot of post apocalyptic rpg games like Fallout today.

[Bluebeak]

arcanum plays extremely similarly to Fallout. Since it was made by many of the same devs

[ImHelping]

While it varies in how well it is implemented, Arcanum also has one of the few cases of at least TRYING to adress "Magic and Science does not mean one is better than the other" mechanically.

Guns are sadly not as useful as they could be, but the tech melee stuff was pretty sweet "Yes, I'm going to learn to backstab with a monofilament sword a wizard would chop their own face off with. And also borrow library books to nudge my skills up juuust high enough to build a mechanical spider".

The game also has a method of trying to open an ancient magical plot seal the bad guys are using that I find personally amusing+interesting, once it's revealed how exactly it works. As much because it's a big screw you to a common cliche so many people think is the most clever thing ever, when it's used in Magic's favor.

[Bluebeak]

Originally posted by ImHelping:

While it varies in how well it is implemented, Arcanum also has one of the few cases of at least TRYING to adress "Magic and Science does not mean one is better than the other" mechanically.

I wouldn't say it was the most original idea. It was done in the tabletop Shadowrun

Originally posted by ImHelping:

Guns are sadly not as useful as they could be, but the tech melee stuff was pretty sweet "Yes, I'm going to learn to backstab with a monofilament sword a wizard would chop their own face off with. And also borrow library books to nudge my skills up juuust high enough to build a mechanical spider".

Tech is fairly balanced. What is tricky though is it's really hard to make a tech character that's viable at first level unless you have played the game extensively and are aware of the crafting system. Like a tech character can easily double dip into crafting explosives at the start of the game and decimate the bandits at the bridge.

This was something that was mostly fixed with the Equilibrium balance mod. Which boosted the strength of tech related disciplines and made the game much easier for a firearms character.

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by Owlakki:

Originally posted by ImHelping:

While it varies in how well it is implemented, Arcanum also has one of the few cases of at least TRYING to adress "Magic and Science does not mean one is better than the other" mechanically.

I wouldn't say it was the most original idea. It was done in the tabletop Shadowrun

Originally posted by ImHelping:

Guns are sadly not as useful as they could be, but the tech melee stuff was pretty sweet "Yes, I'm going to learn to backstab with a monofilament sword a wizard would chop their own face off with. And also borrow library books to nudge my skills up juuust high enough to build a mechanical spider".

Tech is fairly balanced. What is tricky though is it's really hard to make a tech character that's viable at first level unless you have played the game extensively and are aware of the crafting system. Like a tech character can easily double dip into crafting explosives at the start of the game and decimate the bandits at the bridge.

This was something that was mostly fixed with the Equilibrium balance mod. Which boosted the strength of tech related disciplines and made the game much easier for a firearms character.

Hah, no. no. Not quite.

See, it's not the "Mix magic and Tech in same setting" that's the special part.

It's the "Hey, Tech can **** over Magic just as much as magic can **** over Tech". THAT, is what is not done nearly as much. Shadowrun is alas, still very biased towards magic being far more relevant to the setting, lore, and metaplots despite all the cybernetics and matrix runs.

Maybe if you could be so good at motorcycle driving and drone building, that magic and bug spirits couldn't touch you. That would be comparable to Arcanum, then.

As for the basic progression my first succesful playthrough settled on for techy types? Basic survival skills first, then work my way to being a Science ninja. Because it's much easier to get by at the start wearing plain old normal equipment, but not yet very good at Science.

Hard lesson after some false starts with with several schematics, lock picking, and then betting my skull caved in after I backstab or shoot one enemy out of several. Besides, I already need to know how to swing a melee weapon well, if I want to put a monofilament sword or Pyrotechnic axe to much use.

I was a silly person who was playing without fan patches, way back when.

[fauxpas]

To be fair cyber used to make it harder to be targetted with magic.