84| Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura

Released: August 21st, 2001

Avaliable on: PC

If Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura was person I wouldn't know whether I should punch them or have sex with them. On one hand it is a buggy, broken, nonsensical, terribly paced, unbalanced, terribly designed, and above all else frustrating game. On the other it contains arguably the most deepest and most complex role playing ever to grace the industry.  "Fluid" and "open-ended" don't even begin to describe the amount of possibilities the game offers. Not only can the player choose to be good, bad, or neutral during main story plotlines, but they can managed to talk their way out of anything no matter how relevant or irrelevant the situation. In fact the entire game can be completed just by talking, the player doesn't even need to click on the attack button. Depending on the character's traits such as looks, intelligence, race, gender, and what not different options, quests, and playstyles will be open to the player. You can manage to get yourself out of a sticky situation by being a smooth talker, or by being a mentally handicapped being and having people feel sympathy for you and thus do your bidding. There also other options as well such as being able to pick pocket them, finish an alternative quest to earn their respect, or performing a good old fashion beat down on those giving you a hard time. The choices are numerous and the player has these opportunities at nearly every crossroad no matter how small.

Now that I got the good out of the way, I'll get on to the bad. Everything else about this game is bad. Everything. For starters the theme of the game is suppose to be something akin to the Industrial Revolution but with humans living alongside of orcs, elves, gnomes, mages and what have you. This is awesome for the most part as the music and character designs are great, the problem is with inconsistency. While there are many times in the game the player feels like they are walking through a Victorian City, other times the scenery looks just like any other Medieval themed RPG. It's as if the developers were making a traditionally Medieval themed game from the get-go and changed course half-way through and were too lazy to redo the backgrounds, characters, and other assets.

The combat is atrocious. The game offers the option to use real time or turn based combat. The real time combat does not function at all what so ever. When an enemy gets clothes enough the NPCs and enemies will all just flock around and perform all of their attacks randomly and the "battle" is over within seconds. There is also no strategy at all to this. After an enemy encounter you will either be left standing or die, simple as that. In turn based it's much more manageable, but is very basic and has  little strategy to none at all. The balanceis also broken. If you play as a warrior class you will find yourself consistently out matched. However, if you play as a mage you basically cannot lose to enemies as your attacks are laughably overpowered. It's as if you entered a cheat code for God mode.

The dungeon "design" is the worst I have played in any game. I put "design" in quotes because there is practically no design  at all. Dungeons are seemingly endless corridors with practically endless amount of enemies. They are more of a patience test than anything and are horrendous if you don't play as a mage.The game is also a bit cryptic as well. I love games that don't hold your hand, but there were a few too many times that I had to use a walkthrough in order to figure things out. But the cherry on top of all of this is how buggy the game is. I came across at least two progression breaking bugs that I had to work around, and that is after I installed the fan patch that really cleaned up the game. All of these caused me many hours of great frustration.

So after those paragraphs of problems, why does this game make the list? Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura is essentially a video game version of the classic cliche of an underdog hero who underperforms in every aspect. However, it turns out that in a twist this is solely due to the fact that the hero has focused all of their training on one specific super-ability that when used is insurmountable. With Arcanum that super-ability is role playing, and that is where it excels above all.