First Impressions:

I am a bad man.

Well… maybe not. My girlfriend a few years ago told me that I wasn’t bad, just “delightfully wicked”. It’s a phrase that I’ve since adopted whenever I have to describe myself in job interviews. You see, I’m actually one of those nice guys who happens to have a sarcastic candy coating and a big vocabulary. Thus, when someone gets on my bad side I use my acerbic wit to verbally eviscerate them. The problem, though, is that verbal evisceration gets dull after a while. I often find myself wanting to take my wickedness one step further and am rather frustrated that I cannot. Enter Arcanum in all of its glory

You see, Arcanum is one of those amazing RPGs which someone can play through a hundred different times in a hundred different ways. It was in development for over 3 years, and Sierra was so confident that gamers would love Arcanum that they were running comic book and magazine advertisements over a year before its release.

Without usual chaotic/lawful personality types used in Dungeons & Dragons styled games, players can make their characters as good or evil as they want and can play through the game completely in keeping with that. Naturally, I created a necromancer who’d sold his soul to the devil and blew through the world like a cyclone.

I was evil incarnate.

I was unstoppable.

And it was glorious.

But I digress. On to the review.

Graphics:

Ah, yes, the graphics. Well, let’s officially begin the review with the game’s worst aspect. Arcanum’s graphics were mediocre when it came out in 2001. Unlike a good bottle of scotch, their quality has not improved with age. The pre-rendered movies are actually pretty decent, especially since they’re a few years old, but the gameplay imagery itself leaves a lot to be desired. The fact that Troika is composed of a lot of people who worked on Fallout and Fallout 2 is apparent from the design, it looks like the same graphics engine for both games was used for this one as well. While it looks infinitely better than the graphics in the first Baldur’s Gate, Arcanum’s look is nothing special to write home about. Consider this a blessing in disguise: Arcanum will run on just about any system, including most recent laptops.

Sound/Music:

One of the first things players will notice when they start up the game is the sound quality. Granted, the sound effects are rather minimal. Movement generates no sound, it’s mainly created by combat and spell usage. However, what sound effects do sound pretty nice.

Voice acting and music is where the game really distinguishes itself. Arcanum has one of the most gorgeous soundtracks I have ever heard, being almost entirely composed of real stringed instruments. Not only that, but Sierra made it available to download for free from the game’s official website, listed below.

The voices of the main characters that join your party, as well as the narration included in various parts of the game, are astounding. Rino Ramado is especially noteworthy as Virgil, your sidekick through the entire adventure. Ramado convincingly portrays Virgil as brave, kind, uncertain of himself, and more than a little lost in life. While strong writing is provided for all the characters that players converse with, Ramado’s performance makes Virgil all the more human.

Gameplay:

A lot of Arcanum’s missions involve players exploring the enormous continent (named, conveniently enough, Arcanum) and performing tasks for various characters. While there are a fair number of dungeons to crawl through and clean out, they don’t dominate the game. Instead, the various quests are designed to teach players everything there is to know about Arcanum: its history, its conflicts, its religions… everything. The game slyly uses this technique to immerse players in its reality. For the most part, it’s pretty successful.

The setting, a Tolkienesque world that has suddenly undergone an invasion of technology so advanced that it borders on magic itself, provides one of the most intriguing gameplay devices to appear in a game. Swords and sorcery are not the only way to go complete the story. Instead, players also have the option of studying over 8 disciplines of science, as well as doing battle with firearms and science-enhanced weaponry. Finally, roughly half the missions can be accomplished without any violence whatsoever. Wit and intellect, for once, actually matter. The nonlinear nature of the game allows for players to do most of the missions in a variety of ways, many of which contain only as much combat as the player desires.

Combat is the game’s other downfall. There is the option to have it occur in either real time or as a turn-based event. Make sure you select the turn-based version. Real time combat is almost completely uncontrollable, and it quickly devolves into a giant mess. Turn based combat, in turn, is a lot more manageable, but you can’t control your other party members’ attacks and it occasionally freezes up.

Enjoyment:

For many gamers (OK… maybe just for me), it’s fun to play the darker characters and act in ways that are entirely different from themselves in real life. Should one choose to play Arcanum as a villain, they will finally find out what happens when the Good Guys can’t do jack. Games are a lot of fun when they let you play the villain, but they take on a whole new perspective when you are all but unstoppable.

This is not to say that playing the game as a hero is any less fun. I’m just obsessed with mega-villainy because it’s the road less taken when it comes to epic storylines. The game is much more enjoyable as a magic user or a melee fighter because it’s a bit easier to play through that way. Should you choose to play the game as a technologist, you will have to scrounge quite a bit more for supplies, weapons, and items to help create new inventions. Also, it’s rather frustrating to ignore as many mystical items as there are in the game because you can’t use them

Multiplayer:

Multiplayer in Arcanum is rather reminiscent of Nihilistic Software’s Vampire: The Masquerade game that came out at the same time. Both games had very ambitious multiplayer setups, allowing for a skilled Game Master to create stories filled with characters and quests as detailed as they wanted to make them. Unfortunately, it’s a lot more work to set up a campaign on a computer game when you have to map everything out and write all the dialogue in advance, so this is a function that is easily forgotten. Besides, if you try to join a multiplayer game, no one else is online… especially 3 years after the game’s release. Focus on the single-player campaign; if you are intent on seeing almost everything, you’ll be occupied for over 40 hours of gameplay.

Overall Impression:

Arcanum is far from a perfect game, but it’s still a rare gem. Anyone who is a serious RPG fan will probably love this game, if for no other reason than to see an elf toting around a flame thrower. If you’re a casual gamer looking for some fun, Arcanum might be worth your time, provided you can manage to get past the game’s combat and visual issues.

Marketing Efforts Towards Women:

As games go, this is fairly female friendly without directly marketing itself towards a female audience. There are some very strong women characters who join your party throughout the story, and players have the option of being either male or female when they create their protagonist. Unlike a lot of fantasy-settings, Arcanum doesn’t focus on detailed character models and costumes that accent their physical appearance. Instead, it is much more concerned with a deep story and strong character development.

Web sites of interest:

http://arcanum.sierra.com/