Is Arcanum worth it?

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Is it good? 'Cause im thinking of buying it, and i wanted to know if it is worth it,

 

I dont know if its any good by im also thinking about buying it. I asked the same question in the bored... topic and noone answered. But i havent seen Extremist and i guess he is off playing it so it cant be that bad

 

I will download the Demo and try it out!

 

I bought it, and I think it's worth my money. There are some complains about the combat on some boards, and not everything is that well balanced. Guns are weaker magic for example, but I guess it's hard to balance those without making them more powerfull. You can choose turn based as well as real time combat, but both are not as good as you would like. Ranged combat is hard to do, because there is no auto pause option and critters are on the other side of the screen in a second. In turn based the action points costs are devided poorly. You can run two screens in one turn, but only strike twice for exmaple.

The story in arcanum is unique and good, and can measure up to the quality of the baldur's gate games. The game is big enough to value your money, if you do all the quests and explore all dialogue, I guess you can get up to 120 hours of gameplay, not even taking the replayability with all those different kinds of variants into account.

There were some reviews linked somewhere on this board, so you can form your own opinion about it. Got some for ya here:
www.terra-arcanum.com
http://sierrastudios.com/games/arcanum/

If you like the RPG's on these boards, arcanum will not disappoint you as a roleplayer. Battle is just not so good as you would like it to be.

 

Arcanum is already classic.
Buy it without questions.

Bugs? I haven't seen any yet. Although I've just started it... I played it at least 20 hours - but no bugs??? I guess someone lies or I was just lucky.

Only one thing sux with it. Manual. It is too big, but it doesn't contain all details.
I suggest you download some FAQs from www.terra-arcanum.com

 

Guns are weaker than magic?? I object!!
Im playing a techie now, level 36 firearms master. Guns are king! Combined with high dexterity you can hit and run all day with a looking glass rifle. Although i would say magic is damn cool too. Magic users have little need for items and bullets, but the trade off is that you can't aim with magic (headshots galore baby! my average accuracy is 200%), and enemies can have magic resistance + resistance due to technology.

I played without the patch till level 30. Then the game crashed every few steps I took. So I installed the patch. Now my looking glass rifle deals 10-30 damage instead of 40-40 (sobs).

 

Definetly worth it. I completely love it, it may not be my fav game, but it is up there in my top ten, and the story is comparable to PT (or those of you who don't know in my opinion pt has the best storyline ever in any game).

 

And the best part about it is that you can have a DOG as an NPC!

edit> And about the combat - yes it's not as good as Infintry Engine games, but there isn't much combat. It's pretty much like PS:T...
Right now I'm a charismatic leader/persuayer(sp?) and I havn't fought one big battle yet. I solve all the quests by talking .

[This message has been edited by Vicsun (edited October 04, 2001).]

 

Thanks all. You've almost got me convinced. But i am wondering if i should buy PoR instead any feedback here?

 

I just bought PoR, and frankly it is so damn buggy, more than arcanum definetly, that it is neraly unplayable. And the patch just as with arcanum does little...

 

Well I just installed it yesterday, and I had a few problems getting it up and running. It didn't take too long, but the first time I played it was very herky jerky and the sound skipped alot. Might have been because I didn't reboot after installing directx 8 though. So far the only character I've met looks like he's well detailed and interesting, so I hope it holds up. The story is interesting. I hate the combat, with a passion no less. I can't figure out how to pause the game even, and last night I spent more time trying to learn how to navigate all the menues than playing. If the manual was a bit more detailed in getting you acquainted with how to play, it would have been better. For how wordy it is, the manual has remarkably little to say. However, I did really like the description of the demihuman races from the Arcanum point of view. That was about it and it looks like it will take me a while to get used to the gameplay. I don't like how much stuff there is to pick up. I don't know what's junk and what will be useful. Character creation is interesting with tons of ways to customize a character. The graphics look ok so far at best, but they definately don't take away from the game. And my favorite gripe about Arcanum: no fog of war. I hate not being able to scroll the map more than a few feet from my character. I'd rather have most of the screen blacked out before it is explored than the way it is now. But all in all, the game has a lot of potential. If I can figure out the game play and it runs a bit better the next time I play it, I will likely be very happy with the game. After all, there is only so much IE game set in Faerun that I can handle