You’ve Aged Well: Arcanum

Upon installing a fresh copy of Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura, one of the editors at Bitmob has discovered that Troika’s original 2001 offering holds up nicely given its age.

…Arcanum continued the happy tradition set by Fallout that placed you in a game world in which you can practically do whatever the hell you want. That was another alluring element of the game — if I wanted to strip off all of my armor and streak through the town while drunk, nothing could stop me! Well, except maybe the local constabulary, of course. Still, the freedom to actually pull off a stunt like that was a refreshing take on stuffy video game parameters that typically shunted you from linearity to linearity.

Of course, there were a few hair-tearing moments. It mostly had to do with the slip-shod performance of the actual game rather than what was contained inside it. Arcanum shipped incredibly bugged and it took the work of a few dedicated gamers to eventually squash all the problems that had cropped up. Besides the technical hiccups, there were a few spots in the game where I was reminded of why I tend to shy away from RPGs — namely, when I got teared apart from an overly difficult encounter due to my party not having the chops to survive. Fair enough, I would wander off and gain a few more levels to ease the pain…oh, and I would probably construct one of those big freakin’ Tesla cannons that you can craft. Yep, that’s awesome.

Thanks, RPGWatch.