Arcanum is

[Helton]

Yeah a lot of the mechanics suck. Black Mountain Clan (owe) sucked hard. But your character's motivation is that this order of assassins keep coming to kill him. There may be more than that, depending on how you play it, but that's the universal. Assassin's out to kill you is big motivator, yah?

 

[jagged-jimmy]

Well OP is certainly right about boring combat "alleys". Those super dull roads full of gorillas and stuff. Its like if Publisher said "we need moar combat, place some stuff at random between quest places." So getting from point to point got tiresome sometimes. Other than that it has great design.

 

[mlc82]

I thought it was an interesting, ambitious game horribly marred by unavoidable, neverending dungeon crawls (and a terrible combat engine), and the usual cliched story that gave me no motivation to finish the main quest.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

I thought it was an interesting, ambitious game horribly marred by unavoidable, neverending dungeon crawls (and a terrible combat engine), and the usual cliched story that gave me no motivation to finish the main quest.

Thats what i meant.

 

[jagged-jimmy]

Actually i never said that, i said "roads", implying, that there were some unavoidable roads/jungle/dungeons with Gorillas/Hydras or whatnot you HAD to kill to get to the place you wanted to get. That might be okey, but they were uberlong and thus tiresome. Thats all.

 

[Helton]

How the fuck are you reading "buildings" and "cities" when he says "roads"? "Alleys" brings to mind the hedge maze and so, I'd say, is appropriate language.

 

[Gay-Lussac]

Lulzy thread is lulzy.

 

[masterridley]

I agree with the OP that the characterisation of the PC was way shallower than that in FO. Thus I didn't give 2 shits about what happened to my char.
My motivation came mostly from the excellent RPG mechanics (C&C) plus the HUGE world. Sure it did have some major flaws but you have to admire the scope of the thing.

 

[ushdugery]

The excellent C&C and the cool character screen/crafting mechanics drew me but drawn out long bashes through combat areas bored me to tears and stopped me finishing it just after a few of the elven city quests.

 

[Murk]

cloaked figure for "best intro to rpgcodex" award runner-up

 

[Carrie Underwood]

There's only one way to enjoy Arcanum.

... by not being a completist.

Remove that mentality, and you'll love it.

 

[oscar]

This is the game that got me into the RPG's. The Victorian setting, being treated like a black person in the 19th century if you were an Orc, the game was just wonderful. Far and away the best character creation I've seen in any game.

But I never got to finish it, that bloody puzzle in Tulla, and most of the time your save file got corrupted. But still probably my favourite game ever.

 

[sportforredneck]

being treated like a black person in the 19th century if you were an Orc

You're treated very well and paid handsomely for your services? Awesome, I should be an Orc the next time I play.

 

[rpgcodexusername]

parts of it were bloody boring, the dungeon crawls were not relevant to the storyline,

In Fallout the dungeon crawls are short and usually end up advancing the story. In arcanum it was just - kill everything.

The wolf monsters were silly, earlier in the game you had level 3 wolves attacking you and later you get level 11 wolves, big difference!

The Dwarf and Elven cities were boring as hell,

It wanted to be another fallout but was just too long and too much hard work.

 

[hakuroshi]

Combat there may be flawed and there is too much of it, yeah, but it's the only valid complaint of the game.
You can skip most dungeon crawls, and ones you can't usually relevant to the story.
Not motivated? It seems that people can't be motivated unless you put a gun to their head. Anything allowing them to think for themselves is oblivion larping.

 

[Kavax]

Those that dislike combat, might find that you can bypass all of it with:

a) Prowling skill (Hard to do unless it's nighttime or easy dificulty, or you're the master)

b) Invisibilty spell (Easy to do as long as you have decent fatigue)

c) Stun spell (Make sure to carry lots of blue potions)

d) Charm spell (As long as you have blue potions...)

e) Stun Grenades (Not too hard to make, but you'll have to carry many of them)

f) Knock-Out Gas (The best option, it makes lots of enemies fall unconscious at a time, but it's hard to make)

 

[Radisshu]

I really like Arcanum, but yeah, the dungeon crawls were ridiculous.

 

[MetalCraze]

Arcanum is just a flawed gem. Imbalanced, with poor combat, without a great storyline (then again the storyline is not something Troika ever did on A+), with some boring dungeons (there weren't many of them so quit complaining). However the design - not only art design but quest design - where the huge amount equals high quality - is something I haven't seen in any game that came after Arcanum.
And non-linearity, huge amount of choices and consequences, a huge steampunk world and twisted storyline ending made me love this game.

 

[Lemunde]

Then by all means, please stop wasting your time playing this game. It definitely had some serious flaws, but the overall goodness vastly outweighed the bad parts for me. This argument is old and frankly sort of boring.

Then by all means, please stop wasting your time arguing over this game.

 

[OSK]

Wow. I think skyway summed it up perfectly.

 

[Ion Flux]

Then by all means, please stop wasting your time playing this game. It definitely had some serious flaws, but the overall goodness vastly outweighed the bad parts for me. This argument is old and frankly sort of boring.

Then by all means, please stop wasting your time arguing over this game.

My pleasure. Besides, there's surf right now so you can have your lame intarweb RPG forum.

 

[Jedi_Learner]

Whoever designed the combat system in Arcanum deserves to be executed. Painfully.

 

[Jedi_Learner]

Why praise someone for making something shit?

Fixed.

 

[thesheeep]

You don't really think that the combat system is great, do you?

You can choose between realtime and turnbased. Realtime is utter shit, unbalanced, confusing and unfair like hell, so thats 50% that suck right away.
The turn-based one is rather meh, since the action points system isn't really well thought-out, some actions just take weird amounts of time and characters that have the most action points simply win in most cases.

I mean... playing with turn-based isn't that bad, and can be a lot fun, actually. But it is far from being great.

 

[Jedi_Learner]

Alright Cloaked Figure, who are you?