Comment on What's a cancelled game you really miss?

• Coelacanth@feddit.nu ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

  I played Arcanum for the first time this year. There are a lot of cool things in it, but it really doesn’t hold up all that well.

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  • Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world ⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

    What was your experience like? Interesting to hear from someone who tried it now as opposed to when it was released. I will add that it’s not merely a matter of nostalgia, but you also have a better grasp of the core gameplay and the general storyline beats if you’ve played it several times since release.

    Did you get the HD patch?

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    • Coelacanth@feddit.nu ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

      I played the Multiverse Edition which had a bunch of patches and fixes integrated. Including HD I believe.

      I think the world building is pretty good, at least parts of it. There is some disappointingly boilerplate Tolkienesque fantasy in there, but the conflict between magic and technology is well realised and interesting and feels grounded in the world. The steampunk aesthetic is cool and I like the Victorian racism angle they’re doing with half orcs and ogres. I liked the newspapers and there are some interesting quests, like the half ogre conspiracy. I thought the peace negotiation was going to end up being absolutely amazing but in the end it is just an anticlimactic stat check.

      The combat is absolutely atrocious in every possible way, from balance to animations and whether you play turn based or real time doesn’t really matter, both are horrible. It’s quite possibly the worst AI I’ve ever seen and every fight is just every creature mashing into eachother until one dies. I don’t think anyone or anything has special abilities or different AI behaviour. You can’t use Mage followers because they don’t use their magic, opting instead to charge into melee with their fists or staves.

      The tech skills are the most interesting and unique aspect of the game, but involves a horrendous amount of parts collecting, crafting, inventory management and over-encumberance for very little rewards.

      The companions feel extremely bare bones by modern standards and it’s extremely disappointing that none of them even get ending slides. I liked Virgil but not even he got any sort of closure at the end.

      The main story was okay, it had some twists and funny moments like with Nasrudin. The whole “life was a mistake” angle by the BBEG felt a little tired to me, but maybe if playing Arcanum was the first time I came across that concept it would have blown me away.

      The actual writing itself is not bad in terms of the prose and dialogue etc and the game has some funny moments.

      The vast freedom you get with character building is probably the best part. I like how varied you can make your characters, although I don’t know that all builds are viable. Props for following the example of Fallout 1 and 2 and including specific “dumb dialogue”, even though I didn’t go for that personally. Having to balance tech and magic with your character build is a fun concept.

      Overall I understand why it has its cult following and I’m glad to have played it, but it’s hard to recommend it to people unless they have an extremely high retro game/clunk tolerance.

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      • Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

        Thanks for the write up.

        I mostly agree. The combat is indeed terrible with both real-time and turn based. Turn based just feels off and pure real time is not viable. I play with real-time with pause.

        I had the misfortune of playing as a technologist on my first playthrough in the early 2000s. It was really rough. Over time you can figure out startegies/approach to make it easier, but I would argue many of them almost break the game.

        I agree you need a measure of tolerance for retro gameplay/jankyness and honestly combat was subpar even for its time (Fallout 1/2 combat had many issues by modern standards, but it was definitely much more refined than in Arcanum).

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