SchizotypalVamp

Actually, the racial conflict may not be "in your face" at first-though you can find books in the library, etc, but there are quests based on it and it comes up much more the later you get into the game. If you play as a disliked race it comes up pretty early, though. Also, the training becomes harder the more levels you go up. There are a handful of experts(maybe 3-4) in the world, and only one master-wherin you need to complete an interesting quest in order to gain the training. Eg, the quest for master of persuasion *spoilers* involves negotiating an agreement between Tarant and Caladon so that Caladon can join the industrial kingdom(and you can be bribed and commit subterfuge).

One more post! I do really love the music. Also, you really weren't stuck trapsing across the continent if you didn't you want to. Mages had teleport, which I made extensive use of. There are boats and ships. You just have to pay-and I like that. It's realistic, instead of spoon-fed. The frustration of travel gives those options a reason to exist. Honestly, I find that a lot of the complaints about arcanum come either not realizing its dynamics or just playing it wrong. The fact that it was so easy to do either is one of the greatest weak points of the game. But it's a much better game than a lot of people realize. Also, I personally liked the waypoint system, and the geographies did change depending on where you were. You even had different plants growing in different areas. Mountains had their own habitat, rivers and jungles had their own habitat...

Also, people are wrong about the inter-character banter. If you took the dark-elf princess, for example, she would interact with Raven and Loghaire, and Raven interacts with Nasrudin. As a persuasion master I got some extremely interesting conversations out of my party. I don't like that there were plenty of npcs of whom this was not true, but if you picked plot-important characters they were definetly involved! Especially Magnus and Virgil. That was again one of my favorite parts of the game.

Forgive me if I am going through points which were already discussed. Once I am through with this post I will read the previous discussion. However, I have played Arcanum many more times than I want to admit, and want to give my unbiased opinion. It's a game I keep coming back to and introducing others to it. So, I loved Arcanum! Why? -I loved the setting. It was unique and very well done. The seriousness which the Victorian-esque setting was maintained, with both grim and playful aspects present, combined with its treatment of all of the races and their interactions, and how the graphics complemented all of this, made me want to share it with people. I liked the realism of the tile settings and the models of the bigger things(The caladon palace, the steam engine, Bellogrim's skeleton). I also loved Mazzerin's mystery. -The sheer amount of options. There were so many dialogue trees with multiple ways to access them and a myriad of ways to complete quests. You could play your character in so many ways that I still don't know all of the options. -The amount of twists in the main plotline(I also loved the play on the name "Nasrudin"-in fact, I liked all of the "referencing" names.) -All of the hidden locations and things which you could only pick up or only buy. Really, the game reeked of creativity through every item, quest, and location, and that is why I love it so much. It really created this world which I could come back to multiple times without it feeling stale. So many tiny things were included-like the newspapers in tarant! It really rounded out the world, all of those little things. And, of course, the mountains of sidequests. The story also did not just mention random forgotten kings or queens randomly. Yes, certain authors or people in the cemetary were mentioned once, but I never thought "Why is this famous king/queen's artifact so underpowered" or "This is the best that the ancients could manage?" In fact, when we explored ancient places they were usually quite impressive. How all of the elements of the story and plot came together was very organic-it felt almost like real history. What were its flaws? -The combat! Real-time was horrible. Turn-based was good, execpt that your followers are so, so stupid. -How stuck you can get. We see this with Chris's videos. Once you work out how to optimize things the game is pretty smooth sailing, but if it you make a wrong turn in character development or don't quite understand how things work, it gets very frustrating very fast. -How many bugs there were. A subset of that was that, say, if you killed someone and ressurected them you would still botch a quest. Even if you did certain things it didn't affect characters it seemed like it should have(though there were many times I was surprised at what was affected.) -Sometimes the game was almost too much like a puzzle game. Not to say that sidequests shouldn't have hard puzzles. -The restrictions of the the tile set. I hope that you find all of this useful.