The Codex's Official Opinion on Arcanum

[Beautiful Clown Painting]

I found it very good (finished it when it came out) but have memories of a really empty world (I remember Tarrant as a huge city with 500 buildings populated with 15 NPCs). But then, I should replay it for I don't remember it too well. The twist towards the end of the game was rather good.

 

[Cenobyte]

I liked it. Sure, the combat is tedious, but I liked the setting, the world design and the sheer amount of customization for the character. While it's by no means my personal favourite, it's definitely among the top 10 or 20.

 

[Eyeball]

One reason it was so damn good was the amount of real-world references within the game - the lizardfolk and elves symbolised the primitive peoples of the world and plains injuns who got bowled over by industrialisation, the orcs in Tarrant symbolised the 19th centry labour and union conflicts against authorities and the gnomes seemed to be a fairly obvious dig at "Jews running the whole world in secret."

Setting is completely unmatched, and if the crappy combat had simply been a complete copy-paste from the simple but extremely entertaining Fallout 2 model, Arcanum would be the indisputably better game of the two. Although PST would still kick its ass.

Still, it's not like combat was even that big a deal - real time mode, set all to attack with big guns or swords or just repeatedly cast Harm = end combat, move on to more interesting encounters in a fantastic world of steampunk.

 

[Kron]

Shitty combat, tedious dungeons, strong writing but weak characters, ridiculous variance in quest quality, gimmicky and inconsistent use of features like the Hall of Records, speak to dead and resurrection spells, obviously rushed from about half-way through until the end.

Overall fascinating as a design template but a failure as a game.

The End.

THIS.

 

[Sceptic]

Flawed gem. Awesome setting, good writing, solid characters, excellent MQ, great quest design, fantastic character system with some really bad balancing in parts, terrible combat. The goods far outweigh the bads. It helps that combat is not the major focus of the game.

Oh yeah, and music + atmosphere are among the best evar.

 

[Volourn]

"By far the worst Troika game."

 

[Shannow]

Err, but Codex's opinion is well known about this game, especially because it's in the Holy Trinity...

In the Holy Trinity we vote on which games we like most. If the game polarizes strongly you'll have lots of people voting for it an "Holy Trinity"-thread but no information on how many disliked it.
It'd be possible that 30% of all voters vote for Arcanum. But that those 30% are also the only ones who actually liked it with the other 70% disliking it. So Arcanum could get into the Holy Trinity because votes for other games are more spread. Thus creating a (unlikely) situation where 70% dislike it but it's still in tHT.
A simple "do you like it?"-thread shows how polarizing the game is. And as of now a thrird of the voters actually dislike it, showing that the result of the vote may turn out to be far less obvious than some here anticipated.

Oh, and I dislike it. An overrated, buggy turd with no redeeming quality.

 

[Havoc]

Good for what it is.

 

[Relay]

Arcanum is, in my opinion, the greatest RPG of all time. If I had to be stranded on an isolated island with only one game on a portable computer, it would be it. I value it even higher than the original Fallout.

By far the worst Troika game.

Troll is obvious. ToEE is the worst Troika "game", hell I wouldn't even call that boring POS a "game" more like a boredom simulator. It's a mystery that the same people did both Arcanum and ToEE.

 

[CrimHead]

You think you're funny, don't you, Elzair.

FUCKEN PRICK.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Shitty combat, tedious dungeons, strong writing but weak characters, ridiculous variance in quest quality, gimmicky and inconsistent use of features like the Hall of Records, speak to dead and resurrection spells, obviously rushed from about half-way through until the end.

Overall fascinating as a design template but a failure as a game.

The End.

Ed pretty much covered it.

But missed one thing.

Balance was bad enough to significantly decrease enjoyment of the game.

A single player game doesn't have to have perfect balance, but when you eliminate the challenge in the combat by picking certain obvious character builds based on common archetypes, that is a big problem.

I picked a Fighter/Mage and the game is a big blur because I blew through it so easily.

 

[Cassidy]

The Codex would do much better without the people who voted "no" here and "yes" in either or both DA and ME polls.

Send them back to Bioware social forums where they belong.

 

[Kron]

The Codex would do much better without the people who voted "no" here and "yes" in either or both DA and ME polls.

I see.
Both failing to aknowledge the arguments made against Arcanum, and not being able to prove why it supposedly is one of the best RPGs ever.

 

[Tails]

Indeed, let's pretend that such discussion didn't take place in the past.

 

[Kron]

This is what discussions are about, especially in the internet.

Even if you won't convince people of your point of view, everyone is just dying to speak his/her mind, again and again.

 

[flabbyjack]

In a word, it's divine.

 

[Overweight Manatee]

I like Arcanum as a CRPG. I don't like it as a game. Played it once, will probably never play again.

 

[Whisperer]

played it twice, never finished it,I power-leveled, my bad. Came very close the second time tho.
It is my favourite Troika game because it didn't have HUGE turn-offs like the other two. As for atmosphere and setting, I probably like it more than Fallout. It had huge cities for once.
It also benefits from turn-based combat, not because it requires tactics, but because playing it with real-time was just impossible for me thanks to enemy speed and numbers(at least at level 1.)
It was also a game when delaying the main quest for too long could prove to be your reason to uninstall gaem due to losing any interest in the easy fights - fighter-mage -(just like Morrowind).

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

Arcanum is like the most flawed game ever but is one of my favorite games in spite of that.

 

[circ]

Bad graphic design. Surprising considering the company also made ToEE.
Bad animations. Your puppy dog could probably do a better job with lego and a cheap cam.
Clunky interface.
Cliche and slow moving story.
Bad voice acting? Virgil annoys the shit out of me anyway.
Weird, illogical combat. Bad animations don't help either.

Good stuff? I like the music. But I can just play the soundtrack for that.

 

[Kron]

I personally found the music in Arcanum to be boring and uninspiring.
It does not speak to me of a world undergoing an industrial revolution, nor of a world in which some races are being slowly overshadowed by the embrace of tecnology. In essence, I get the feeling it does not set the mood which the game pursues.

It just transmits nothing to me.

And as to music in itself, I find it bland and devoid of emotion.

 

[Reject_666_6]

You're asking for some very specific things in something that's basically open to any interpretation. I could, on the other hand, point out the ways in which the music does succeed in capturing the specific motive of the scene or environment for which it's written.

One small example is the soundtrack music for Tulla, the centre for the magical arts in Arcanum's world. It's a city that's been steadily withering away as fewer and fewer people are interested in magic now that the quick and easy path of technology is open to them. You may know from playing the game that the conflict between magic and technology isn't a stalemate, it's a losing battle for the magical side. The universities of Tulla are doomed to a slow lingering death, and the slow wailing lament that the soundtrack provides is ideal for setting this mood.

Also I have to mention that a lot of the pieces are in a late-Romantic style, where you'd see a lot of modality and unexpected modulation, which can create the feeling of atonality. Most western music is tonal, not modal or atonal, which is why you might find them disorienting as there's no tonal centre to anchor you into the piece. The Tulla piece I linked to above is almost strictly in harmonic minor, which can provide both a solemn and an alien mood.

 

[1eyedking]

Save for the soundtrack, Arcanum is a an average to bad game. People here don't want to admit it was a fantastic idea but the end result is just a glorified alpha piece of software with one of the worst combat systems ever created.

Besides gameplay, art direction is hit and miss, although the overall feeling holds sturdily, in my opinion. It's the only thing that made me endure the game for as long as I did.

 

[CrimHead]

 

[PorkaMorka]

Troll is obvious. ToEE is the worst Troika "game", hell I wouldn't even call that boring POS a "game" more like a boredom simulator. It's a mystery that the same people did both Arcanum and ToEE.

Not really.

TOEE, Arcanum and VTMB all have significant commonalities, namely you've got about 50-60% of an awesome game stapled to about 40-50% of a really terrible game.

Call it "Troika Quality Assurance".