Arcanum - King of RPGs (Arcanum Sierra Best Sellers (PC))

Member Name: haz_squirrel

Product:	Arcanum Sierra Best Sellers (PC)
Date:	27/04/09 (115 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Endless gameplay

Disadvantages: None

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, as it is usually known, is a steam-punk RPG that was made in 2001 by Trokia Games and Published by Sierra. At the time of its release it didn't have that much popularity due to the release of Diablo at the time. However I believe this game to be much better. 'Steam-Punk RPG' is its genre, it means that game is set in an industrial revolution with elements of magic and fantasy, RPG stands for role-playing game. The company that made this game have sadly gone bust.

The game starts with an opening movie, you are on a zeppelin flying over mountains when suddenly you are attacked by some small planes. The zeppelin goes down in a horrific crash killing everyone except you. In a Gnomes last moments he tells you to look for 'the boy' and to give him a ring. This then leads on to an epic non-linear quest into the world of Arcanum.

The game is one of the most open-ended I have ever played, and because of this it has a playtime of months, maybe years (most certainly in my case). When you come to choose your character you can be either male or female, you can choose your race, pick your up bringing and buy some initial items, all of which effect your characters stats in some way.

The races are as follows: Human, Dwarf, Elf, Half Elf, Gnome, Halfling, Half Orc and Half Ogre.

The aim is to complete quests, you decide on which ones you do and don't do, if you want you can do all of them, but you have to remember that doing crimes and killing people makes your reputation go down or could even curse you. Along the way you will encounter enemies, these can be dealt with by fighting them, talking to them or running. You have to make sure that you have the right equipment and skills.

The graphics to the game are of a very good quality for its age, even now I think 'WOW! that looks good!' obviously they are not crysis graphics, but they are very detailed and you can tell that they have had a lot of time spent on them. Even though the game was released in 2001, and the company has gone bust, there are still patches being made by fans. These include features and quests that are in the game code, but not in the game. There is also a patch to get the game to run on high resolution screens which can be downloaded from a fan site, it's easy enough to find by googling it.

This patch was released in 2009 and there are still a few faults with it, nothing that causes any disruption to the gameplay, in some places it doesn't look tidy. This is currently being fixed up. There are also a few bugs in the game, these can be removed by patches found on the same site as the High Resolution patch.

The music on the game is top, completely faultless to my ears. It is perfect for the game and creates and amazing atmosphere. It is very well done.

The game can run on older PCs easily and it runs on Vista 32-bit, but I found that it required a bit of 'tweaking' to get it to run smooth. I'm not sure if it will run on 64-bit, I know that other games around the same age don't.

The gameplay can be quite hard at times, but there are endless walkthroughs on the internet to help and there is even an offical game guide that can be purchased. The game intially is quite hard to get your head round, but once you do get the hang of things, you will be amazed.

The game itself is quite hard to get hold of, there are a few copies floating around ebay and various other sites. I do highley reccommend this game, a timless classic that has been played for years, and I'm sure that it will be played for years to come.

This can also be found on my website www.redsquirrelwebs.com

Summary: One of the best RPGs ever made!