Arcanum Arcanum is a bit shit tbh

[FriendlyMerchant]

Oh are we at Arcanum's turn for TL: DR shitposting again?

OP made some good points. Too many good points to just be shitposting.

 

[Ol' Willy]

I fucking love arcanum but this is a totally valid complaint. some assassin attacks you in a bar, then when you fight back, everyone joins in attacking you. it's retarded, no excuses.

It happens to me every time and i've never picked a karma amplifying background.

Haven't happened to me a single time

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Uuhhhh.... Arcanum has this...

Spoiler

NAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!

That's a special magic and technological advancement available.

 

[JDR13]

Here's your participation award.

 

[Terenty]

Pretty sure you are not supposed to take Arcanum's setting that seriously. I mean every companion and 80% of dialogue is comedy, not some grimdark edgy serious shit like Poe that comes off as cringe.

Precisely because the writing is good the setting and characters are engaging and fun instead of embarrassing and flat like Outer Worlds that tried it's best to be funny, but failed miserably.

 

[Impressive Organ]

Finally, wizard steampunk has been destroyed with facts and logic.

 

[Darth Canoli]

It still doesn't explain why my character is attacked by guards (and bartenders) when defending against assassins. Why don't they attack the aggressor and help a law abiding citizen?

I fucking love arcanum but this is a totally valid complaint. some assassin attacks you in a bar, then when you fight back, everyone joins in attacking you. it's retarded, no excuses.

It happens to me every time and i've never picked a karma amplifying background.

NPC interactions depend on your main char beauty, charisma and reaction modifier, if they're bad, trash-talking will go wrong.

Also, in 2021, who the hell doesn't know Arcanum was released buggy, that some bugs were never fixed and that Drog's UAP fixes erratic NPC behavior like guards attacking for no reason? (Among other things)

It never happened to me with UAP except when i really ask for it...

 

[octavius]

I'm using the UAP and don't trash talk.

 

[Ravielsk]

Well, yeah its a somewhat unfinished CRPG from a time when CRPGs were fading out of the market. It being somewhat shit is a given. I have no idea why anyone would argue otherwise. It would be like arguing that Fable was not rushed and therefore somewhat under cooked, or that Dark Souls 2 was obviously recut in its final year of development.

Its just a fact of how the game was made.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I'm using the UAP and don't trash talk.

Maybe the background you picked is buggy and wasn't fixed, also, NPC are racist (possibly misogynous too) in Arcanum, could come from this as well.

Also, guards don't really side with you in Arcanum, except maybe if someone attack you on sight for no reason (bandit with low karma) and you have a good karma and a good reputation in the city.

You're not an upstanding citizen since you're not even a citizen, you just got there.

 

[d1nolore]

It was pretty awesome 20 years ago, sorry you missed the magic of the era.

 

[luj1]

It still is. But plebs and hipsters always had undeveloped taste.

 

[Gregz]

In some cases worldbuilding overpowers otherwise mediocre gameplay, this is one of those.

 

[Cunt Dickula!?]

Jon Irenicus, the best villain in RPG and gaming history,

The soundtrack is also so fucking terrible, like holy shit.

TAKE THAT BACK!

 

[kinzadza]

This thread is a bit shit tbh

 

[Humbaba]

Pretty sure you are not supposed to take Arcanum's setting that seriously. I mean every companion and 80% of dialogue is comedy, not some grimdark edgy serious shit like Poe that comes off as cringe.

Except yknow the main villain

 

[jackofshadows]

Oh are we at Arcanum's turn for TL: DR shitposting again?

OP made some good points. Too many good points to just be shitposting.

It has so many shit points that OP come off as outright troll. Like terrible soundtrack, mc having no motivation, my favorite "assuming Arcanum 1885 world is identical to ours therefore..." etc.

I'm all for "tell me what's your favotite game and I'll tell you why it's shit" but any fan of Arcanum know its flaws anyway, no point in inventing a bunch of non-existent ones in order to try to prove or to provoke anything.

 

[Valdetiosi]

So if you insult someone they are justified in killing you? This isn't Albania. If I call that motherfucking constable a coward because he is then he really should not attempt to extrajudicially execute me, unless he's also insane. Same goes for Magnus that fag manlet, who will readily break your neck if you as much as insult his beard. This isn't even understandable behaviour by videogame standards. Once again, Arcanum fails miserably at immersion.

I would disagree.
I was nearly stabbed to death by bunch of high schoolers all because I told them they look like fags.

 

[Trashos]

Combat shipped like that because Troika prepared one mode of combat and the publisher wanted a different mode of combat. So in the end they put both in, and the unfortunate result is evident.
Everyone should play a fucking Gunslinger. It is not the most powerful build, but it is the most fun afaic.

Even though the combat is shit, Arcanum has an interesting setting, some awesome AWESOME quests that to me set the desired standard for other games as well, a lot of creativity in various systems which is always interesting (eg, inventory, crafting system at that time, news criers etc-etc) and possibly the best character creator of all time (definitely the best at that time and for long after).

So to me Arcanum is great mainly because of the character creator, the quests, and the abundant creativity.
A consequence of the awesome character creator is how much fun I have every time I level up, and how much I desire to level up while playing it.
A consequence of the abundant creativity is that the love that has gone into it is evident, and to me infectious.
The great quests are just that, and I also suspect that they inspired other developers.

Fwiw, bear in mind that even if you don't like Arcanum, it probably inspired some of the developers you like.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Arcanum is unfinished but still a very solid game, i prefer an unfinished but ambitious game that the generic garbage that plays all the same that we have today. Game manuals not only disappeared because they don't want to waste paper/ whatever bullshit reason they might give you, it's because all games play the fucking same, if a remember right the manual of Arcanum included food recipes, how cool is that?

 

[gaussgunner]

My character (Half-Ogre Melee/Magic) is lvl 23 now, and the thing that bugs me most is not the combat (since I was mentally prepared for the worst combat since Ultima IV), but how NPCs behave. I mean how they suddenly will suicide themselves during dialogue, and how other NPCs will attack the player when you are attacked by the Moloch (sp?) fanatics in bars and inns.

It doesn't happen so much if at all if you don't pick the karma amplifier origin and if you don't piss off drunkards.
Dialog matter, it's a RPG with easy combat but still, you can't get away with insulting people while you're still at the bottom of the food chain.

I fucking love arcanum but this is a totally valid complaint. some assassin attacks you in a bar, then when you fight back, everyone joins in attacking you. it's retarded, no excuses.

It happens to me every time and i've never picked a karma amplifying background.

Almost happened to me first thing in Tarant, but I killed the assassin, the bartender told me to cut it out, and that was that.

I guess it's to be expected with the first impression "reputation score" you get when NPCs first meet you, based on beauty etc. As a Half-Orc I realized that was gonna be a problem in Tarant so I changed into nicer clothing before I even went into the bar. It makes a big difference, the humans don't treat you like a nigger.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

It makes a big difference, the humans don't treat you like a African American.

They kneeled before you even after burning their cities in peaceful protests?

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I generally learned to run from everything as fast as possible and get the dog and fill out companions ASAP esp if i was a max char bitch. Then go back and level up and search everything. Seems WOOF levels with you and so do companions (at least before patches). I haven't played it in forever. I know i seem to recall they'd level as you did. Maybe I'm wrong. I loved thieving, char bitch, gunslinger, murder solo hobo, mages. I had a lot of fun just fucking around and not even messing with the quests. Thieving was funny as hell. Hobo engineer was cool as i would crawl in garbage can bottoms to maybe find junk. Just sooooooo damn slow on that computer.

I'd have to look up best patched setup and maybe mod it since i missed out on that shit.

In the meantime... i found an old DL of Typing of the Dead and it actually works on my win10 machine. All that golden voice acting.

 

[octavius]

I've seen a dog mentioned a couple of times.
I found "Worthless Mutt" in Ashbury, but it was dead.

 

[Cryomancer]

Some good critiques, like the firearms points, however most of the points made by the OP are bad and wrong. Not every RPG needs a villain. You can make a great RPG all about solving water problem in your "village", can make great sandbox RPGs like mount & blade and can have a game with no good guys like fallout new vegas.

As for combat being unbalanced, again FUCK BALANCE!!! Fun >>> Balance.

Arcanum has problems? Yes, but still a amazing game where you as a necromancer can even talk with deceased NPCs and the game reacts a lot to the player. With crazy high CHA, you can even convince the final boss to kill himself.

Here we have two conflicting instances: in one, magick overwhelms tech and in the other tech overwhelms magic. So what is it? If they cancelled each other out, then neither the generator nor Jongle Dunn would be able to serve their respective functions

It is explained with magical aptitude mechanic. Someone with low magic aptitude will suffer interference from high tech, however, someone with high magic aptitude will cause interference. Not a conflict. You can't use magical stuff in high tech cities if your magical aptitude is low.

It is a example of game mechanics and lore being amazinly in line

what counts a technology exactly? Why are ships not affected?

Simple, just like you have tier 1 magic and tier 5 magic in arcanum, you have low tech and high tech. Something simple which can be obtained by bronze age technology is "low tech", a robot is "high tech".

ssue for literally thousands of years can just be talked out of his grand scheme by a random gnome with a master's degree in persuasion

Someone with max STR can do inhuman stuff with his muscles. Why with CHARISMA/persuasion is not different? That is great that you can do something like that.