Let's get this out of the way - Arcanum has horrible, horrible dungeons, combat sucks, the end game is a rushed boring crap and there's a bunch of bugs (so use the fan-patches).

Yet, it's one of my favorite RPGs - voted by the RPG Codex the #5 best RPG of all-time.

How so? Because it excels at everything else.

The world is amazing, a clash of medieval fantasy with the industrial revolution. More than just a nice background, it's used to offer an intriguing magic/technology duality and raise complex questions like "should orcs receive equal pay to humans at factories?"

The classless character system is highly detailed and with several races, backgrounds, spells, skills, crafting recipes and technological schematics. You can play anything from a charismatic elven enchantress who relies on its 5 followers to a spiteful dwarf inventor, adventuring alone with his trusty flamethrower.

Moreover, the world will react to your choices. Expect to suffer racism if you play as orc or half-ogre, to be expelled from trains if you play a mage (who cares, you can teleport!), to be banned from men's clubs if you play a women, etc...

Quests are amazing. To hell with the "kill 5/5 X" MMO-ish garbage push out today, Arcanum has you investigating murders and rumors, debating economics and politics, dealing with prejudice and racism, etc. And they often have multiple solutions. Need to solve a murder? If you're a necromancer, why not raise the victim's spirit and ask him directly? FINALLY A GAME THAT UNDERSTANDS MAGIC!

Then there's the beautiful soundtrack, the gorgeous grid-based inventory with detailed artwork & item descriptions, the clever plot twists, the countless role-plying opportunities, the reactive companions, Tarant - the best city in any RPG... hell, this is a game where you can complete a quest and read about it the next day on the city's newspapers!

Arcanum is easily one of the most ambitious games ever made. Building upon what Fallout 1 & 2 did, it showed players just how rich, reactive and interesting an RPG could really be.

It has many failings, but no other game ever came close to its successes.

Roleplaying a dumb half-ogre. trying to get a job.
My bretheren reject me because too smart. went away on a ship to another city. Ship crash everybody die.
I find village. Everybody racist, mean, and insulting... and If I insult them back they try to kill me... so I have to be super polite.

Outsmarting the villain in the first sidequest with 4 intelligence is hilarious lol

The entirety of the dialogue is written for my dumb character. Even the journal entries. I love it.
I'm missing most of the game, without charisma or intelligence, but it paradoxically gives a tolkinesque feeling the world is larger than I see.

My companion even offers to talk for me! and he has dialogue!

Bad game wait for remake with in-game manual. I have my laptop wiki and the printed thing in front of me. Too much for small 2024 brain. Playing slowly. Worth. Great game.

A steampunk RPG from golden era of PC Games. Very interesting and enjoyable game with unique atmosphere among classical RPG worlds. Community created also unofficial update to Arcanum, that fixes bugs, restores cut content, enhances graphic and other tweaks.




🧾You can find more info about fixes for other (older) games on page: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/uPATCH

Arcanum of Steamworks and Magick Obscura is a very underrated and forgotten crpg. It was the first game created by Troika games, which was founded by several of the developers of the original Fallout.

Arcanum takes place in a Victorian era fantasy world. And has all of the staples of typical medieval fantasy elements. There's magic, dwarves, elves, gnomes, orcs and so forth. But they've all been adapted into a more modern world. Now there are firearms, steam power, zeppelins, and so forth. Intermixed with orcs that wear tailcoats and wield gattling guns.

The game plays very similarly to the original Fallout. But it allows you to select between turn based and real time, with turn based being the obvious better option. Arcanum was ahead of its time in a lot of respects. For starters it is a true open world game, allowing you to walk from the very start of the game all the way to the other end of the continent uninterrupted. It was also to my knowledge the very first game to feature preorder DLC, if you preordered the game you recieved an extra dungeon on a CD. The soundtrack is all classical music and still remains one of my favorite OSTs.

It's a fantasy version of Fallout set in a steampunk world. It's everything you've ever wanted in an rpg, released 15 years ago. Go figure.

This version appears to be the CD version of the game. It appears to work with Arcanum's widescreen mod so it's really a toss up if you wanna spring for the GOG version or the Steam version at this rate.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=754604562
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=755396888

Frame Rate Fix for Windows 8 and Up.
More specifically lag issues in caves and inventories

Copy paste the following
-doublebuffer -no3d
into your SET LAUNCH OPTIONS

I absolutely love this game and had to apply this fix for myself on Windows 10

If you are still having issues.

User Owlakki in the comments suggested an alternative fix for users still having issues.
please follow the following link

Owlakki 3 hours ago
I've actually found this fix doesn't work. I had to write my own guide on how to fix it.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=755396888

DISABLE STEAM OVERLAY IF YOU WANT TO BE ABBLE TO PLAY!!!!!

A masterpiece of an RPG. I played well over 1000 hours at this game when i was younger and had the CD version of it. Loosing that cd shatered my heart as this is, in my opinion the best RPG ever made according to what i have played so far.

In Arcanum, freedom is the name of the game. Of course it is still a game and is restricted by the amount of content it has but even then, there seems to be an endless stream of it. Make any caracter you want, from a fighter, mage, gunslinger, armorer, archer, thieve, assassin to a diplomat, you can do it. I cannot guaranty your build will pull you out of every situation but nothing ever will eh!

It has its few bugs and old graphs but this doesnt mar the beauty of the game itself, not to speak of the godly steampunk-violin soundtrack wich only helps in keeping you immersed.

Overall, i spent way too much time on this game when i was younger and still spent more recently and i cant seem to get bored.

Worth a big 10/10 to me, worth buying anytime.

Arcanum. The game that was released nearly 20 years ago, and still considered one of the ten, maybe one of the hot five best games in the steampunk setting. And one of the deepest RPG universes, with all those magic vs. technology Yin/Yang collisions, with so much diversity in the possible playstyles, characters, situations, and all that jazz. And It Is actually one of the greatest videogames I ever played, all hands down. It still has its 'one more quest, one more turn' needle of the strong addiction. I've played it on the release, and I still enjoy playing it now.

But.

With all that deep immersion, all those tons of quests, stories, and other nice and cozy stuff, Arcanum always had that ugly taint of the bad coding. Only the list of its technical problems can be longer than the compilation of all dialogs in many modern RPGs.

It all starts with the resolution. '800х600х65536' was already dated when the game hit the shelves. I remember some tweaking we did about it with other boys from the neighborhood, and it was before we get access to the Internet, because it was much more expensive and overall complicated than now. And you know what? Every time when I was reinstalling Arcanum after that, there were some new issues to fight with. But every time, it was something about weird resolution and screen behavior, for starters.

And what about now? Is it working? Is it dead, or still alive?
Well, you can play it out of the box, just by installing the game (thanks to the GOG release with resolution fix, I presume). Like I said from the start, it is still one of the greatest isometric RPGs. It is still providing just as much delight for any genre connoisseur, as it did in 2001. But, there are 95% chances that you'll need to download some unofficial, fan-made patch, to fix something. So tread consciously.

Speaking of the overall rating for Arcanum, it's a really complicated issue for me. For the provided content, it's kinda 9.5/10. For the technical realization, I dunno... 5/10? It's bugged as hell, and it still bothers me even with the latest patch installed. I love Arcanum, and it haunts and hurts me. A great game. Burns like the summer sun.

I remember when I first played Arcanum. A good friend of mine introduced me to the game a ways back. I'd forgotten about it for a while but when it came to a game that had options this was the game I always mentioned and came back to in my memories (though I forgot the name) and now, it's on steam.

Arcanum has a lot going on and can be fairly overwhelming at first look. With some things such as 18+ schools of magic, 8 tech schools, and 4 skill bars along with each one having around 4 to 5 (in the case of the technology skills) skills/tiers each. A morality system and a bar that gauges how inclinded to magic or technology you are? That's a lot. Thankfully the game has built in tool tips to give a bit of information by overing over the stat or bar.

So lets look at some of the game's highlights
1. Choices affect the ending - For those who have played a game like Dragon Age Origins, say is here, your choices through the game no matter how small they may seem, can have a huge impact on the story's ending.

2. Inventory - Inventory is one you have to think about, in the later Mass Effect game for example, the more weapons you took effected your use of powers/abilities. The same applies, you have a weight limit and like in Diablo and early Fallouts, you have limited inventory space, More weight will mean less actions in battle and it means being less prepared in some cases. You have party members (max 2) who can help carry items, but in all its something to easily lose track of until you get in a pinch.

3. Allies React - This has a few meanings, like if you have a low intellegnce or take a background that makes you seem like an idiot, your allies and the people you meet will react to that, they also react to your moral choices through the game. Do too many evil deeds with a party of noble characters and they'll turn on you, like wise for a party of evil characters and doing too many good deeds, only people I've seen never leave are Virgil (first party member) and the Dog.

4. Magic vs Technology - The game offers a lot in play time, replay ability and just general ways to do things. The big focus though is magic vs technology. If you are too allied with Magic, Tech shops will demand you leave (and sometimes assault you to make you leave) Like wise going tech and into a magic shop, this gets even more complicated when you realize there's 4 potions, 2 tech and 2 magic (your cursor changes to show which type is being used and they are different) use the right tools for the job, don't use Salves (tech potion) on a mage, you might actually use 6-10 before you get a single heal, same with magic healing (potion or spell) on a tech character.

5. Combat - You can change the combat to turn based or free flowing in the options. Personally I like turn based as it gives me time to plan. You have lots of options in combat from spells to melee to inventions and guns. The main things to watch are of course your HP (if allies die, they're dead unless you have a skill/tech that can revive them) and the blue bar, it's not mana, it's Fatigue and if it hit's 0 you faint in battle. This isn't like pokemon where you go back to the inn, it means 100% chance free hits on the character! It can be useful though as weapons have a HP damage and Fatigue damage stat and you can drain your enemies fatigue to give yourself an edge.

6. The world - The map is a very big one, and you have the options of either running place to place the long way or when you reach the boarder of an area, click the map button (turns to a blue globe) and click points to fast travel. Now obsticles will still be in the way, so if a mountain is in between you and the point you want to go to, you do have to map around it. And it can be a trip, along the way you can be attacked by monsters/wildlife (bears will hate you) and it's not always a cake walk as it can be an enemy you're used to or it could be a horde of bears (had 3 at once before) but there's lots of points to visit on the map and they become active just by passing them. Keep in mind, though you can go to areas such as the final dungeon from the beginning, the game will punish you for it in combat.

7. Character Creation - Probably should have led with this, but oh well. You pick how your character is set up before going on the Zephyr. You pick a portit (that's the easy part), gender, race and background 1st. These all effect how your party memebers and NPCs react to you. Females get races of Human, Elf, Half-Elf, and Half-Orc while males get those, dwarf, halfling and gnome. Each race has unique backgrounds, abilities and reactions and each background effects reactions too. Exaple if you take the Idiot Savant background, you have a huge bonus to your intellgence, a penalty to your strength and everyone talks to you as though you have a intellegnce score of 2 (which leads to some entertaining commentary). After that you get 5 points to level things, you have 8 stats and a ton of formentioned skills. Everything takes only 1 point to level, but is effected by a skill, like to learn Tech tree blue prints you need the matching level of intellegnce(or be really lucky and find the blue print for sale in a store) all magic is learned through the schools here (no buying spells, sorry fellow mages) So planning a bit a head is a good idea, but not manditory. Then you have the option to buy some gear (background effects starting coin) be it some bullets, a gun (you get one fairly early) or just some fair armor/sword to make things a bit easier at the start.

8. Criticls Effect nearly EVERYTHING! - That's right, from haggling to lockpicking. Shooting to pickpocketing its effected by a crit chance. Some aren't that bad on a failure, like haggling and you might just have to pay a bit higher price, in combat you can kill yourself with a crit fail, lockpicks can jam the door/chest (don't worry you can just break it down/open) But if you don't have the skills, you can ask a party member to do it (or they'll voulenter) for you.

9. Leveling - as you've noticed probably in the pictures, there's 2 red bars in the middle of the screen. Those are your experience bars (yes, bars) The top, thick semented one is your to next level bar, fill it up, you gain a level and a point to invest in a skill/stat. The small thin red bar undereanth it, that's also an experience bar, max it out to gain a portion of the other experience bar. How do you fill that little red one? Do anything but walk and you'll fill it. Make inventions, hit/miss in combat (yeah, hitting yourself with crit failures gives EXP) everything you do will give points to that bar. When you level your HP and Fatigue are restored (you can level mid-combat from crit failing as long as it didn't kill you)

10. One member's trash is another's treasure - There's no real 'vendor trash' items to the game. There's that stuff you'll probably never use like a mage character has no use for old rags or coal. But a tech character can use those things to make explosives and bullets provided you have the recipe. Now you're probably going "but earlier you said tech merchants won't sell to mages?" That's true, but there's also general stores who sell the odds and ends of tech inventions like rags and fuel and batteries regardless if you went tech or magic.

Now somethings I'd call 'Cons' to the game (everything else, take it as you like.
These are kinda big now a days. There's no autosave feature. So save often especially in an area you're not famliar with!
The main 'bug' I've found that would be the 2nd "con" for me, is you can't tab out. What this means is if you click alt+tab and then go back into the game, it causes a strange graphics glich that will corrupt that game. You can play like that, but it prevents you from saving.

All in all at 6 USD as a base price, this game has a lot to offer besides it's rich story and deep lore.

Baldur's gate 3 but with racism

This is the best game ever.

Made by Troika Games, authors of Fallout and another bugged, unbalanced, yet cult game Vampire: Bloodlines.

Arcanum has horrible graphics. It has horrible combat. And its 'balance' is nonexistant. You can literally walk through the entire game by using ONLY one spell. The one you can start with.

Yet still Arcanum is the best game ever. It has one of the most captivating settings. It's a wonderful world, a merger of steampunk science and magic. It has lots of characters and story choices, most of them hidden and not given out in the open like in most modern RPGs. Of course sometimes even in Arcanum you have an option 'you either go here, or go there' but there is always a third way. And a fourth. And in most cases a fifth and a sixth.

Almost all quests in Arcanum have 4 or even more ways to finish them (and several to fail). This brings enormous replayability, and even after years you can find out that some quest could've been completed differently.

Arcanum is offering all of it. The moral dilemma, the ambiguity of your choices, the vastness of the world. If you can tolerate the graphics, clunky combat system and the fact that all skill choices are unbalanced, you're in for a treat. Dumb Half-Ogre? Halfling-thief? Intelligent Half-Orc? Elf-Engineer? Selfless or selfish, savior or villain, or anything inbetween. Possibilities of real roleplay are endless here.

This is and will stay my only review for a game on steam. Just because this one is the one I deeply care about.

And the soundtrack. Best soundtrack for a game ever written.