While the lore and innovation is rich, the gameplay is tedious and awkward.

User Rating: 7 | Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura PC
By supershaft777 | Review Date:
As a retro gamer looking for an old RPG to play, this entertained me for a while. It has lots of fresh, innovative ideas as far as story/setting/NPC interaction, but the mechanics, combat, economy, and especially itemization fail to make this game playable for a long time. I couldn't be inspired to make much progress.
Its unfortunate because the combat is, in a way, very balanced and challenging. There are way too many useless/trade skill items lying around that clutter your inventory. The sense of 'character progression' isn't there and that's essential for making a good RPG. They try. The designers have very audacious, cutting-edge ambition with this game. But it ended up being over-elaborate and didn't translate well to create exciting, convenient, FUN gameplay.
It turned out way too clunky.
They introduce a lot of brilliant, innovative skill development and attribute progress that I'd love to see in today's games. But in Arcanum there's a lot of fluff and cosmetic, lore-related aspects that fail to translate into smooth cohesive gameplay. Instead its tedious, buggy, awkward to play and unnecessarily complicated.
Pity, because the lore was so intriguing and drew me in at first. I wish they remade this is as a more intelligent MMO or something.
Just couldn't stick with it.

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