Arcanum: of Steamworks and Magick Obscura (2001)

This is a game that certainly lives up to its reputation. Featuring an excellent plot, writing, world and voice acting (when it's present). I'm always a sucker for anything high fantasy or steampunk and this game combines the best of both! It's kind of surprising how few creatives have explored this dynamic and done so in such an interesting way. Having magic and technology be at ends with each other is clever and so many of the side quests inform and build up this dynamic. For example, in first town you visit a mage complains about a steam engine interfering with his magic and pays you to destroy it. It's something you probably won't think about this early in the game, but over the course of it's 50-60 hour narrative, this theme will recur multiple times and in different ways.

Another example of this dynamic being explored is how you have a magic and technology aptitude meter on your character sheet. The more spells you learn push you towards magic aptitude and the more tech you learn pushes you the other direction. Having high tech makes magic less effective against you, causing even healing spells to fail and not be as effective. Conversely tech becomes less reliable the more magically inclined you are. The game adds world building though on top of these mechanics. There are steam engine trains that allow you to fast travel between major towns, but if you're a mage you are forced to ride in the back of the train, to not interfere with the engine. You need to go through a TSA magic inspection. And if you are too powerful of a mage, you won't be allowed on the train at all. This type of interaction also applies to merchants, where tech oriented merchants, and even most blacksmiths, will flat out reject you if your magic aptitude is too high.

This type of adaptive interactions permeate the entire game and start as early as the character building. Your race, gender, alignment, beauty, charisma, intelligence and aptitude all affect how people will interact with your character. It's honestly very impressive just how much variety there is on this front. Sure you have your typical fantasy tropes of exploring racism through race in the world, but it's handled well and sometimes in more subdued ways that amplify the world building. For example, every gnome seems to always have 2 large half-ogre body guards... hmmmm I wonder why? Discovering this mystery does lead to one of the most brutal revelations in a video game while all being a side quest!

Something Arcanum does right and even better than most modern games is choice making a difference. Your choice on build, your choice in how you deal with a problem, all of this culminates into a bunch of end credit scenarios that tell you how your actions changed the world. Each problem has tons of solutions also making this game feel a bit like an immersive sim in that regard. Player choice is abundant and it matters!

This isn't a hot take, but combat does kind of suck and feels horribly imbalanced. Most combat encounters are just slug fests of you and the enemy planting their feet and swinging wildly. I found the early game to be very punishing. I actually had to reset my build because I hit a bit of a wall with progression. So early on it can be pretty punishing unless you are a pure melee build. Magic can be completely busted once you level up. I went with a pure mage build, which was a lot of fun. I got Disintegrate as fast as possible which is even stronger than the spell is in DND. It just straight one shots any enemy in the game, except for the final boss. It costs a ton of mana, but as long as you have mana pots (and late game there's a quest to master Force which halves the costs of all spells from that school) or don't mind waiting until your mana slowly recovers, you can slowly but surely one shot your way to victory. You can also learn teleport, so don't fret about being shunned and banned from trains. You can just teleport where you need to go! It can also be pretty silly to watch how stupid bows get in the late game, where if you swap to real time combat (the game is either turned based or real time by pressing space bar) the bows will fire as fast as a machine gun which looks as silly as it sounds.

Magic can be a bit daunting since there are so many different schools (I think 16 all with 5 spells each). Then there are a bunch of skills and tech options, plus crafting. But it is fun to interact with all the skills and systems, it just has a learning curve to it. This game has a very unique system. It has typical stats you would see in a CRPG but the way they function is different. Charisma allows you to talk out of a lot of problems but also affects how many people you can recruit into your party. Which is a pretty cool concept that makes sense.

Something that this game also pulls off well is with the true main villain. At the last second the rug is pulled out from under you and the true villain ends up being some other guy you've heard about in passing. This type of move is bold and rarely works. What makes it work here is the conversation you have with the presumed villain and then the true villain. It's just a really well written and voice acted set of interactions.

This game is janky, but the writing, world building and player choice make this a truly exceptional game worth experiencing. There's a learning curve and you may need to reset a character a few times to gauge which skills you actually want to use (I recommend specializing and not spending points all over the place). But it's worth getting over that initial hump. It's a rich world more than worth your time to explore.

Originale l'ambientazione steampunk, non si trova spesso nei videogiochi. Ed ha tanti altri pregi: trama molto curata, mondo vastissimo e quest numerose e profonde, ognuna sempre molto sfaccettata e risolvibile in parecchi modi diversi. Unica pecca il sistema di combattimento un po' macchinoso, ma per me i combattimenti sono secondari, tanto più che si può finire il gioco praticamente senza combattere.

Una piccola gemma, troppo sottovalutata.