New Arc Line - Arcanum-inspired, modern Party-Based RPG - now available on Early Access

[Morgoth]

Oh well, that was a rather short demo. And it wasn't a good first impression. Apart from the dog shit performance (Unreal Engine!!) and the horrific camera, the writing seems rather mid, and the core design barebones. But it got soul and very good art, at least.

Also these fucking kittens everywhere...

This game deserves more dev time.

 

[R@tmaster]

The design of that double-barreled dwarf gun.... optics in center, barrels waaaaay off to the side.

Looks fine to me!

 

[lukaszek]

i second camera concerns. Its annoying. City might be nice to stroll but not with this abomination.
Combat was awfully easy, or perhaps pistols are op as I could just pew pew everyone to submission.
Writing is bad. At the same time it doesnt support bad guy approach, neutral at best, so you cant just laugh at people face when they make stupid requests. Demo got only single quest: guy wants you to fetch doctor for his wife because... he is tired

 

[Oropay]

Demo runs on Unreal Engine 5.4. Horribly CPU limited, ugly as sin. Doesn't support basic gameplay features like key binding (that I saw at least in the demo) or graphics features like DLSS. There's a combat turn order, but as far as I can tell there's no way to see which enemy's turn will be next. Dialog boxes aren't responsive. Not enough polish to be out as a demo in my opinion. Played for about 10 minutes and dropped

 

[AndrewCC]

At least the game seems to not suffer from the bane of current-day western games: ugly female character models.

 

[Serus]

At least the game seems to not suffer from the bane of current-day western games: ugly female character models.

Sure, this is a fine dwarven woman on the right. However I don't find the female on the left appealing.

 

[Litmanen]

At least the game seems to not suffer from the bane of current-day western games: ugly female character models.

Sure, this is a fine dwarven woman on the right. However I don't find the female on the left appealing.

The one on the right is evidently inspired to Conor McGregor.

And that's not a compliment.

 

[Dark Souls II]

This game, just based on visuals and aesthetics, looks much worse than Arcanum.

 

[Fargus]

At least the game seems to not suffer from the bane of current-day western games: ugly female character models.

Sure, this is a fine dwarven woman on the right. However I don't find the female on the left appealing.

 

[Serus]

Yeah, this is decline in "art" style. In this game's cover the "dwarf" looks like a short human. In Arcanum one he has some distinct features. His nose for once looks like a monster from Cthulhu mythos. I say it as a good trhing. This is at least a vision of dwarfs with a little originality but still remaining recognizable.

 

[Dark Souls II]

Yeah, this is decline in "art" style. In this game's cover the "dwarf" looks like a short human. In Arcanum one he has some distinct features. His nose for once looks like a monster from Cthulhu mythos. I say it as a good trhing. This is at least a vision of dwarfs with a little originality but still remaining recognizable.

Arcanum's dwarf was made by Glenn Fabry, a renown comic book artist known for his work on Slaine, Preacher, Hellblazer etc. It's got that classic late 80s / early 90s fantasy art style, similar to Simon Bisley.

Look at this dwarf. He's got a soul. The full drawing of the mage looks even better:

Look at this guy. He's out the club at 3:40am in his fake Rick Owens shoes from Alibaba ready to sell you red Mitsubishi pills for $5 each that are supposed to be pure MDMA but are just ephedrine laced with fent. It's pure soul.

Now look at this, presented without comment:

 

[lukaszek]

"dwarf" looks like a short human

had a look at some gaymz proposed by steam yesterday. Few of them featured dwarves on cover pic that looked like human with beard. I assume its ai thing?

 

[processdaemon]

I played it and echo the comments of the other posters regarding the camera, the combat and the clunkiness of some of writing. I liked the flavour for the traits in character generation but overall the demo felt undercooked, more like something I'd expect a year or two before release made to show that the game is progressing than a demo for a game that's due to release in the next few months if they keep to their announced 2024 release date. I wouldn't totally write it off because we only saw some very easy early game combat and a mediocre side quest but I doubt many people are going to play this demo and buy the game because of it.

 

[Beowulf]

I just played the demo and concur with my predecessors here - the camera is abysmal, the UI in dialogs is unresponsive and it runs poorly on a very decent rig, while the visuals don't really justify that performance cost. Unless the demo is some really old version the game desperately needs to bake in the oven for another year or two.

 

[Tyranicon]

Bad writing (especially modernized writing) will kill an RPG more thoroughly than just about anything else.

I'm obviously biased, but RPG devs need to hire writers from places besides Twitter and the local coffee shop.

 

[AndrewCC]

It's kinda weird how unresponsive the UI is. I literally had to click twice for dialogue to register my mouseclicks EVERY TIME, like the dialogue window was losing focus after every line, and 1st click was just bringing it to foreground, or something, really weird.
I wasn't that bothered by the low performance, because the game is turn based, but clearly not justified by the graphics.

 

[toro]

The camera is shit but the performance was good on my pc.

I think the game has potential.

 

[Abu Antar]

I haven't played it, but I read that they released an update for the demo.

 

[cyborgboy95]

New Arc Line Demo Update is Live!
Greetings to both Technologists and Magicians!

We are tremendously excited by the interest you've shown in the New Arc Line Demo, which is currently available during Steam Next Fest, until October 21.

We are closely watching both our Discord server[discord.gg] and Steam discussions for all your feedback, and thanks to you, we've been able to implement an update to the demo version - so please keep all the comments and constructive criticism coming, it is truly invaluable for the further development of the game!

The update fixes the issue with lagging dialogues many of you have reported, and we've managed to improve the overall optimization; thus the game should run smoother for you now, although that will of course vary based on your individual PCs. Rest assured, we will keep working on improving the optimization before we launch the game.

We hope to see you in the demo soon!

 

[Mr. Magniloquent]

It appears 40% of New Arc's populations are silverback gorillas.

 

[deuxhero]

The demo says "Female" in character creation, so that's incline at least.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I didn't play the demo before the update, but I was pleasantly surprised by it. I like the art style, the combat and character options, etc. look like they'll be done reasonably well. It's just a matter of whether the content is interesting, but it seemed okay enough for me to quit playing the demo since I may take a punt on this one when it releases.

 

[SixDead]

The demo says "Female" in character creation, so that's incline at least.

Not just "female", but she is attractive and also have juicy ass! Another thing I liked - drug dealer in game was black.

 

[Jacov]

So I recall another «Arcanum-like» being in the works. It had Disco Elysium style dialogue window, minotaurs and no combat (?).

Was it the same game or was that just a nightmare? It if it is the same game, damn they made some progress alright! If it was a different one...

 

[Fargus]

So I recall another «Arcanum-like» being in the works. It had Disco Elysium style dialogue window, minotaurs and no combat (?).

Was it the same game or was that just a nightmare? It if it is the same game, damn they made some progress alright! If it was a different one...

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