Arcanum - Land of wonder and mystery, filled with excitement and adventure for the daring adventurer, while horror and death awaits the unwary. It is the 19th century, and the formerly undisputed arcane ways of magic have now been invaded by the new arts of technology. Mechanical monstrosities such as the train, zeppelin as well as guns have spread like wild fire around the land. One by one the weak have now grown strong, as using these tools of destruction require little skill. As a traveler of these lands, it is up to you to decide stranger - Will magic or technology, good or evil prevail? Be wary however, to choose wisely, for death lurks behind every corner in this dangerous world. Read on so that you might be better prepared to face the challengers and dangers ahead.
Riding on board the technological marvel known as the IFS Zephyr, you feel a strange calm sense of tranquility. Little do you know however, that this is simply the calm before the storm. As you approach your destination however, the peace and tranquility aboard the ship is shattered by the sound of gun fire. Looking out the window, you see two strange, mechanical flying attack craft zooming towards you, firing away. Stranger still, you notice that the crafts are being piloted by ogres, well known for their inaptitude with anything mechanical. Somehow, the ogres managed to cause grave damage to the IFS Zephyr, killing themselves in the process. With the zeppelin crashing in a fiery ball of fire near the desolate mining town of Shrouded Hills, you suddenly return to consciousness only to find yourself the sole survivor of the crash, save a dying gnome in the wreckage crying out for help. Instructing you to return his signet ring to a boy who will know what to do, he dies with the warning of an evil so unimaginable that there are no words to describe on his lips. Flipping open the dying man's passport, you find out that he is known as Preston Radcliffe. Searching the wreckage of the once majestic zeppelin for anything salvageable, a strange man who identifies himself as Virgil approaches you, believing you to be the reincarnation of an elven deity in the Panarii religion, prophesized to arrive on the wings of fire, and known as the Living One. After battling through the denizens of the wild with your new found companion, you arrive at the shrine prophesizing your return. You also meet an elven stranger, who immediately attacks you after being told you are the sole survivor of the crash. Later, you find yourself in the village of Shrouded Hill. Here, you learn that the ring you received was crafted by the well respected firm of P. Schuyler & Sons in the city of Tarant. However, the only bridge leading out of the village is being blockaded by a band of brigands. And so begins your mysterious adventures in the land of Arcanum...
In this epic role-playing adventure, you must first create your own character, or pick one out of the many pre-configured personalities available, complete with background history and statistics. A long list of history backgrounds are also available for your selection, such as Sold your soul, Hero's Child, Raised by Monks, Scared of the Dark and so on. These backgrounds will serve to affect your statistics, for example, take a look at a lady's man : Women swoon whenever they are near you. Being unusually good looking, you gain a large bonus to beauty (+6). Unfortunately, all that primping and powdering has you lacking in the more manly virtues... You lose points for Constitution (-2), Strength (-2) and Dexterity (-2).
Don't be struck by the seemingly complex character editor though, for it truly is not once you look over it carefully. You'll soon find yourself purchasing extra attributes to enhance your character from his or her many expects using Character Points. Out of all the various kinds of useful information you can find here, perhaps the most important of all would be your statistics. These are divided into two main categories : Physical and Cerebral. Your physical statistics include strength, dexterity, constitution and beauty, while your cerebral stats include your willpower, perception, intelligence and charisma. These statistics serve to decide how you react in live situations. For example, dexterity decides how fast your character can react to a situation, and charisma decides how many followers you can have.
Another other useful functions of the character editor is truly unique to the genre. It allows you to learn three categories : Skills, Spell Colleges and Technological Discipline. Skills consists of social, combat, thieving and technological skills. Combat skills include dodge, bow, melee and throwing. Thieving skills include prowling, spotting traps, pick pocket and backstab. Social skills include gambling, haggle, heal, persuasion. Technological skills include picking locks, disarming traps, repair and firearms. Now for the arcane arts of magic, known here as Spell Colleges. Spells are divided into 16 categories : Conveyance, Divination, Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Force, Mental, Meta, Morph, Nature, Necromantic Black, Necromantic White, Phantasm, Summoning and Temporal. Each college has five different spells each. As for the new arts of technology, they are divided as follows : Herbology, Electric, Gun Smithy, Smithy, Chemistry, Explosives, Mechanical and Therapeutics. Your level of expertise in each field of technology decides what technological wonders you can create. This comes in the form of degrees, which can be purchased or negated. Higher level spells can be learnt if a person has a high willpower rating, while technology requires a higher intelligence rating.
Other useful windows are the Auto-level schemes, which distributes your character points accordingly ; Magick Tech Meter, which shows your alignment towards magic or technology ; and finally your alignment towards the forces of good or evil.
Beyond the ability to create your own unique character, Arcanum also features a massive and sprawling story and game world. The main quest is overwhelming in its own right, but the game also offers thousands of side-quests. Some of these side quests include settling a dispute between two seers, freeing the spirit of an old woman, as well as collecting taxes for the king of Cumbria, to name a few. Side quests can help you earn a reputation in towns and cities, helping you to either foster closer ties with its inhabitants, or to earn a notorious name for yourself. While some side quests will later relate to the main story, most of them are just a way for you to gain experience and items. In addition, many of the side quests forces you to make a moral decision, which alters your alignment towards good or evil.
Combat in Arcanum is a very simple and standard affair - Click on an enemy and your character will attack. The followers that accompany you throughout your journey will automatically attack any nearby enemies, and they'll also heal you. Combat comes in two flavors - real-time and turn-based, toggled at anytime by hitting the space bar. Combat is about what you'd expect - enemies attack you in a frenzy and you fight them off. Be alert as enemies can inflict injuries ranging from scars to limps. These can seriously affect your statistics. The game also suffers from serious slowdowns from time to time, and occasionally it will freeze for a few seconds. This is especially annoying since my gaming rig is a Thunderbird 1.2 GHz with a 64MB GeForce2 Pro; slowdowns should be the least of my worries.
Also, playing the game as a magician or technologist can affect your playing style heavily. Several technological items like revolvers and healing salves can be created by combining several items, like combining filaments and lamps to create a electric light via electric, combining iron ore and steel to create pure iron via smithy, as well as roots with leaves to create healing antidotes via herbology. Magick is the usual fanfare - Just learn em' and cast em'. In addition, a Non-Player Character's reaction towards you will be heavily affected. For example, if you play the technologist, folks dealing with magic will have a negative reaction towards you, as well as refusing to sell you any of their goods. The same applies to using magic too heavily. Some might even not join your cause! You can however, choose to walk the middle path by keeping a balance on your magical and technological skills. Hell, being male or female even affects the side quests you can take! For example, as a female, you get to 'service' customers for a brothel. You'll also be forced to take other measures to enter the Wellington Gentlemen's Club in Tarant by either killing Mr. Wellington and his bodyguard, or by 'servicing' him and then paying 200 gold pieces.
The level of interactivity within the game is amazing. Use dynamite to blow up those safes who just refuse to open. Take off your clothes to make someone beg you to have the decency to put them back on. Drink wine to temporarily raise your strength to insane heights! Combined with your considerable arsenal of skills and weapons, nothing can stand in your way! Okay, maybe a few technological horrors or well armed brigands here and there, but still...
The game also contains a limited 'cheating' ability, known as fate points. Fate points can be acquired through several certain acts and quests that the player must perform. They can be used to do certain actions that will guarantee 100% success, such as lock picking, pick pocketing, inflicting critical hits and so on. One hilarious situation saw me snatching of the suit a guy was wearing to leave him standing in nothing but his briefs. However, do try to save your fate points for emergency situations, as they are very rare and hard to come by in the game.
Arcanum's graphical user interface is very well designed, including tabs for mixing new technological wonders as well as using learned spells and skills. The bar above the information box also allows you to place tabs for your favorite spells and potions. Finally, the bar above the screen displays icons for your character statistics, journal, maps and inventory in that order. These tabs although useful, requires some practice for one to become familiar with.
The log book employed within Arcanum is a life saver. It has several categories, such as your reputation, quests, blessings and curses, information and other useful sections. You won't have to make many additional notes yourself as newly uncovered information and gossip are automatically recorded down in the book. To access them, thumb open your log book and flip through the various pages to find out what you need. Nice and simple not to mention effective in maintaining your grasp on everything that's going on in this huge world.
Kudos for the use of waypoints in the world map, otherwise you might be wandering about forever in this vast, vast world, trying to determine how best to reach your next destination. And the wilderness is no area to simply wander about aimlessly, as many of its denizens are not very friendly, and might tear your head off at a moments notice. To use a waypoint, simply double click on your destination in the world map and push the go button to start your travels. The journey will stop if any unfriendly denizens of the wild block your way. Once you've dispatched whatever enemies the encounter had to offer, simply reselect the waypoint and press the go button to continue on your journey again.
I also heartily recommend that you save your game at every turn as using some items could prove to be rather injurious. For example, during an early quest, should you deem to accept such, a wizard requests you to blow away the town's local steam engine in the Shrouded Hills. After taking care of the guard at the engine, I tried using the dynamite on the steam engine. Unfortunately, this lead me to locating several thousand pieces of my character scattered all over the floor. Thankfully, I had the good fortune of being able to reload the game to try all over again.
For those of you who enjoy adventuring and slashing through baddies with friends, Arcanum offers a multiplayer mode where you can play with or against friends. Though multiplayer is fun, it's ultimately a little disappointing. The multiplayer maps are much smaller than those in the single-player game, the game suffers from lag, and since you can't import your character from the single-player game you have to start off with a low-level character.
Arcanum employs an isometric view which provide gamers with a complete view of vision in their current locations. Taking back my remark in BlueSmoke's preview of Arcanum released earlier this year, I would have to say that Arcanum delivers the goods with a well-designed and vibrant world after viewing the amazing details on well designed and highly detailed buildings and other stationary objects in several towns and cities. Although the people in the game look nice, their animation is a little limited and herky-jerky in appearance. The game's graphics are very effective. And believe me, when it's dark you can barely see a thing. You might want to combine a lamp and a filament in order to light your way through the darkness. Or, you could always choose to sleep until morning.
Sounds in Arcanum are good but not fantastic. Voices are also used only in major conversations. To converse with others, simply click on the desired character, and a hailing statement appears. You then select one out of several responses for your character’s reply or query. The NPC then responds with varied replies. In some cases this sort of conversation may go on for some time as you learn more and more facts concerning some scenario or mission you must complete. At other times, the response might simply be a simple farewell, as the NPC is not an important contact at this juncture of the game. The music however, is a different matter entirely. If you absolutely enjoy sad and haunting music, then Arcanum is meant for you. In short, the music of Arcanum is fantastic, if not a little repetitive after a while.
Arcanum looks to be a fantastic game that will keep even the dedicated hard-core RPG fan enthralled for hours and hours. The idea of bringing in guns and technology into the fantasy world of magicks and dragons is refreshingly original. The graphics are nice and make for a highly detailed and beautiful world to be engaged in. Well, so there are a few annoying crashes here and there, but even those can't derail this exceptional gaming experience. Arcanum definitely comes with our highest recommendations and is guaranteed to be worth your time and money.
