Arcanum

[AutomaticMeat]

Nonsense. Arcanum is a greta game and people exaggerate flaws.

I'm going to have to do the unthinkable and agree with Volourn. Arcanum is a fantastic game. Admittedly the combat is a pile of balls, but with a decent charisma score you can get party members who destroy everything for you.

[Volourn]

"I'm going to have to do the unthinkable and agree with Volourn."

 

Don't lie. You claim to agree with me but then in two sentences you pretty much spit in my face and disagree with what you just wrote.

 

 

"Admittedly the combat is a pile of balls"

 

No.

[Labadal]

"I loved the setting for Arcanum. But to my mind its only two steps removed from Lionheart"

 

Nah. Arcanum has flaws but is awesome. Lionheart just plain sucked.

I thought Lionheart was great until you left the city. I don't think there has ever been a game that has gone down hill as fast as Lionheart did once you left the city. It was like two different companies had made each section of the game.

 

By the way, did all the voice actors in Lionheart have lisps or do you actually pronounce Barcelona as Bar-THA-lona*. I always thought you pronounced it Bar-saw-lona**.

 

Off topic, but anyway.

 

*this is how it is actually pronounced by Spaniards.

**how it is pronounced in English.

 

________

On topic

 

I love the game, but it was buggy and unbalanced at release. gotta thank the fans for their work.

Edited April 13, 2011 by Labadal

[Slowtrain]

Troika was in crunch-mode from morning to evening. They just lacked the time for any deeper polishing. This was the case with all of their games.

 

yeah... this don't make sense. troika's lack o' organizational acumen did indeed lead to many o' their development woes and their endemic tardiness in meeting deadlines, but arcanum's peculiar release were resulting in a relative unique story o' developer and publisher incompetence. anybody recall the translation debacle surrounding arcanum? arcanum were "finished" and set for a release date... but that date got pushed back months 'cause it were not translated into some inconsequential continental language... german or italian or somesuch. is understandable why sierra would not release the english version and delay the carpathian release, but the fact is that due to some ridiculous translation hold-up the publisher should'a foreseen, arcanum were having its release delayed not weeks or days, but months. arcanum lack o' polish were particularly startling given the fact that troika had far more time to bug-hunt pre-release than they had any right to expect.

 

the problem with revisionist history is that some o' us were following the development as it happened.

 

HA! Good Fun!

 

 

IIRC, it was "finished" in June and released the following September. And it was still one of the most ludicrously buggy games ever made. As a consumer, it was highly aggravting to know that the game just sat in its buggy state for three months and then released without any attempt to make it playable. ANd the 1.7.4 patch wasn't released for another 2 months after that. Pretty bad.

[Slowtrain]

"Admittedly the combat is a pile of balls"

 

No.

 

 

That's true. It was much worse than a pile of balls.

 

But, as we've discussed, rpgs don't need good combat to still be worth playing, so the horrible combat was pretty irrelevant to my mind.

 

 

I'm amazed Arcanum is getting such a love thread. Usually people are crapping all over it.

[Tigranes]

Arcanum combat was somehow fun, though. It was really broken, but especially with certain builds and without abusing RT/TB switch too much, it was fun. You could blaze past filler combat in seconds in fast RT like you can't do with many TB games, but still have glorious TB combat when it mattered; guns made you care about repair and ammo even more than FO's post-apocalyptic settings; companions weren't too smart but often helpful and made you care about them; some cool magic; etc.

 

It looks beautiful though, there's a lot of fun things, and character building is great fun, and finally some quests are very imaginative. I think it also helps that Tarant is actually navigatable in higher resolutions these days.

[mkreku]

Screw balance, balance is overrated.

While I don't specifically care for Arcanum, this however is something I believe in.

 

I absolutely hate the obsession with balance every game designer seems to have these days. Why must every class be exactly as powerful as the next in every game? MMORPG's are especially guilty of this problem. What happens is that every class feels like the next when balance is more important than fun.

 

Only someone obsessed with min-maxing every character should be bothered with balance, everyone else should just roleplay the character they want.

[HoonDing]

The people saying they enjoyed Arcanum combat have now lost the right to ever criticize Morrowind and Witcher combat ever again.

[Lexx]

In any case, I think the game should react on the chosen playerclass in some way. Like, you are a mage now, you are super powerful because you are a mage, nobody can really harm you, yadda-yadda. And in return now, the gameworld should react on you in the same way, like... I don't know... nobody really likes to talk to you, traders are giving out their wares to a much higher price and whatnot. This way you are keeping some balance and still give the player a different feeling while playing.

[Humanoid]

How good or bad combat mechanics are is far less relevant than how fast you can blow past it to get to the real game goodness underneath. Obviously some games have nothing underneath and can be safely discarded, but from my admittedly foggy recollection of Arcanum, combat went by in the blink of an eye so I enjoyed it no matter how unbalanced and unengaging the mechanics technically were.

 

Not that I finished the game - I rarely do any game - but felt I got my money's worth.

[Niten_Ryu]

Arcanum is one of those games that have aged really badly. I used to really love this game, even with it flaws and bugs but I just couldn't finish my last run few years ago (or was it last year, can't remember). Now it all comes down to setting and beautiful character portraits... and those things alone can't carry a game.

 

I do feel a bit shamed for defending this game all those years ago but it was a different era back then. Maybe CRPG development could have taken another direction and instead removing features and streamlining, they would have improved and tweaked the existing rule, game and combat mechanics. Oh well, we never know if that would have worked... but then again all (financial) signs point to no. Ultimately haters back in the day were correct. Troika was one big mess of a company and all those creative people who worked there didn't have anyone who could manage the projects correctly.

[Ice9]

I haven't played Arcanum in something like six years. It was creative and a lot of fun. It also had a terrible interface and graphics that looked like a crappier version of Fallout. That said, I really enjoyed it and I still lament Troika's demise.

[Amentep]

In any case, I think the game should react on the chosen playerclass in some way. Like, you are a mage now, you are super powerful because you are a mage, nobody can really harm you, yadda-yadda. And in return now, the gameworld should react on you in the same way, like... I don't know... nobody really likes to talk to you, traders are giving out their wares to a much higher price and whatnot. This way you are keeping some balance and still give the player a different feeling while playing.

 

I kept expecting when you got to the extreme of techno or magic that you'd be attacked by supporters of that side (since they interfered with each other).

 

I will say that while I think Arcanum was hugely flawed (and stand by my assertion about Lionheart) that it was fun to play through once.

[Minchi]

Yeah...I also hate when you traveling with the use of the map and getting swamped with really hard monsters that you can't kill. It was like literately mine blowing until you had to set it up to move short paces so the random encounters doesn't kill ya off when you first bumped into them.

 

You know...

 

Minus that it and the bugs when the first patch came out it was really horrendous like having your money counter change from a huge amount to a small coins and your like WTF happen there. Besides those bugs they were pretty much fun to play right now. I hope that someone decides to make a remake of this game and fix up all the crappy bugs or issues that hindered the first game though.

[Volourn]

"The people saying they enjoyed Arcanum combat have now lost the right to ever criticize Morrowind and Witcher combat ever again. "

 

Np.

 

Arcanum's combat had flaws but was ultimiately fun. MW and W combat was just plain crap with absolutely no good qualities.

[Slowtrain]

The tragic thing about Arcanum is that with a little bit more time and attention and money from Troika and Sierra, it could have been an all time classic of rpg awesomeness, but after having gone 90% of the way they couldn't be bothered to go the last 10% and instead just dumped their unfinished product out the door.

[Enoch]

The tragic thing about Arcanum is that with a little bit more time and attention and money from Troika and Sierra, it could have been an all time classic of rpg awesomeness, but after having gone 90% of the way they couldn't be bothered to go the last 10% and instead just dumped their unfinished product out the door.

And this is why we can't have nice things.

 

When RPG fans consider such a complete cluster**** of a rules system as only "the last 10%" of game development, it's little wonder why developers don't sink much effort in making systems that are logical, flexible, and reasonably balanced*, and that add to the fun of a game rather than distract from it. We just keep eating heaping bowls of **** and begging for more.

 

 

* By "reasonably balanced," I'm not talking about MMO-level micro-balance. I'm talking about avoiding situations where the player feels like a chump for having put points in an ability that turns out to be flagrantly under-useful. Which was true for roughly 70% of the abilities in Arcanum.

[Jaesun]

Just in case someone was considering playing this again, there is the huge bug fix Unofficial patch, HQ Town Maps, HQ Music patch and the Hi Res patch as well at http://www.terra-arcanum.com/downloads/

[Majek]

All i remember from Arcanum is that my "Sniper rifle" was enough to kill everything and i never used magic, i was suddenly at max level 3/4 through, gunslinger with his trigger fingers gone teaching me about shooting, making revolvers from trash, elven princess lover, recruiting dwarfs from a pit or something and the first gnome was actually a shaved dwarf, some conspiracy about the ex queen being the first that successfully gave birth to a half-ogre, some ancient elf telling me how his son is the ultimate evil or something, but i turns out that's not true and he joined me in "hell" to battle the real boss.

 

... any of this true?

[kirottu]

At least the end is true if memory serves.

 

Edit: Oh, I remember being really disappointed with those ancient elves that were supposed to be super men of magic. Maxing only one spell school each... pfft noobs.

Edited April 14, 2011 by kirottu

[Slowtrain]

The tragic thing about Arcanum is that with a little bit more time and attention and money from Troika and Sierra, it could have been an all time classic of rpg awesomeness, but after having gone 90% of the way they couldn't be bothered to go the last 10% and instead just dumped their unfinished product out the door.

And this is why we can't have nice things.

 

When RPG fans consider such a complete cluster**** of a rules system as only "the last 10%" of game development, it's little wonder why developers don't sink much effort in making systems that are logical, flexible, and reasonably balanced*, and that add to the fun of a game rather than distract from it. We just keep eating heaping bowls of **** and begging for more.

 

 

* By "reasonably balanced," I'm not talking about MMO-level micro-balance. I'm talking about avoiding situations where the player feels like a chump for having put points in an ability that turns out to be flagrantly under-useful. Which was true for roughly 70% of the abilities in Arcanum.

 

 

I agree with your overall take on the ARcanum system. Basically, melee/dodge + harm was a "press this to win" button and everything else was how to spend points building a gimp.

 

but, I do think that just a bit more time and work in playtesting and balance (+ bugs) would have provided a marked improvement in gameplay.

[Walsingham]

I bought it on GoG and it works a dream. Except I think i'm now too old and easily confused to play it.

 

I agree with Enoch that the problem in any system is when some points just disappear into the Vortex. And Arcanum definitely seems t obe greedily eyeing my few skillpoints with stats that can be boosted way past the point of any use ( so far as I can tell) and skills like the mechanical ones which might allow you to build one object every three hours of gameplay.

 

Skills and stats should have SOME benefit, wherever they end up. Enriching either storyline or play ease, or maximum power or SOMETHING.

 

But I totally agree they shouldn't make all classes equal because they make all classes equally poncey.

[Minchi]

Yeah o.o...

 

But at least the programmers are getting feed back on this old school game though X3...

[Slowtrain]

But I totally agree they shouldn't make all classes equal because they make all classes equally poncey.

 

 

All classes shouldn't be equal in the name of balance, but no one class or collection of skills should be so much better that all others are pointless to raise unless you are simply into making a gimped character. No gamer wants to feel like they are wasting points by investing their level up gains into useless skills, stats, attributes.

[Minchi]

That is so correct...I mean they should one the skills a little bit better than that but again its a old school game that well programmers didn't wanna finished up the game and dropped it publishing company to get it out on the market. It was totally sad when they didn't bother add more patches for it. Until the fan who loved the game decided to add in the unofficial patches and made the game even more fun to play.

 

Too bad that they when totally out of business though...