I believe I need to draw attention to this old, beautiful game. Arcanum is a game I was lucky enough to randomly stumble on years and years ago, and if I had not, I would have missed out on one of the most original and stimulating games I've ever played.
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I am very poor with descriptions so I will do my best to describe what I think is important, but along the way I will be posting snippets of writing from a forum member named, "ForceflowX" whom I do not personally know, but I like how he approached the game.
First things first, Arcanum is a steam punk-fantasy RPG designed by much of the same people who created Fallout, Troika Games and published by Sierra Entertainment. The game was released in North America and Europe in August 2001. The beautiful part about this game in my eyes is how open it is. The game is entirely open ended and non linear. What you did 40 hours ago, can directly affect what happens to you in the moment your in.
I would do this game a serious injustice if I tried to explain how diverse it can be and how many options there are in this game, so instead of trying to list them all, I will list how it works.
For your character alone you have,
Races
Eight different races, all with different advantages and base stats. Human - Typical humans. No bonuses, No flaws. Elf - Quicker and more beautiful, but weaker and frailer. has an aptitude for magic and a technical deficiency. Dwarf - Sturdier and stronger, but clumsier and less charismatic. Very good with tech, but horrible with magic. Half-Elf - Elf, with lesser versions of the same bonuses and penalties elves have. Gnome - Frail, but strong-willed and good at dealing with people. Halfling - Weak, but agile and with a knack for sneakery. Half-Orc - Strong, tough, good with melee combat, and resistant to poison, but ugly and uncouth. Also, people dislike you. Half-Ogre - Very strong and resistant to damage, but ugly and dumb as bricks. People really dislike you.
Gender: Gender does have a mechanical impact on your character.
Background: Background is absolutely huge. Backgrounds give you bonuses and penalties to your character, and are neat little bits of flavor.
For backgrounds, I will quote ForceflowX, "
I'm too lazy to type all of the descriptions out, but I'll list the names,
Raised By Snake Handlers Apprenticed To A Blacksmith Raised By Elves Raised By Monks Child Of A Hero Inheritance Special Person Professional Knife Tosser Apprenticed To A Shopkeeper Born Under A Sign Extreme Personality Bookworm Bully Elven Blood Hyperactive Army Training Sheltered Childood Troll Offspring Ran Away With The Circus Raised In The Pits Feral Child Sickly Beat With An Ugly Stick Lady's Man(Male Only) Raised By Orcs Charlatan's Protege Educator Escaped Lunatic Idiot Savant Barbarian Nietzsche Poster Child Sold Your Soul Day/Night/Sky/Nature Mage Agoraphobic Hydrophobic Afraid Of The Dark Magick Allergy Arsonist Bandit Technophobia Only Child Frankenstein Monster(Male Only) Mad Doctor Miracle Operation Dark Sight Sent To Charm School(Female Only) Debutante(Female Only) Supermodel(Female Only) Tomboy(Female Only) Bride of Frankenstein(Female Only) Clanless Dwarf(Dwarf Only) Foppish Elf(Elf Only) Dark Elf Follower(Elf Only) Disenfranchised Gnome(Gnome Only) Halfling Orphan(Halfling Only) Factory Escapee(Half-Orc Only) Suppressed Orcish Looks(Half-Orc Only) Tough Hide(Half-Orc or Half-Ogre Only) Freed Bodyguard(Half-Ogre Only) Wild Half-Ogre(Half-Ogre Only) Rare Half-Ogre Birth(Half-Ogre Only)
That is just the very first character screen, the very, very, first.
Upon creating your character, you then have five points to spend in your attributes. There are a ridiculous amount of things to spend your points in, but there are eight different stats. There is,
Stats: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Beauty, Intelligence, Willpower, Perception, and Charisma. All of these will directly influence how people treat you, and how your game plays, and how your character is built.
There are also sixteen skills in four different groups. The groups are Combat, Thieving, Social, and Technological.
Skills:
Combat - Bow, Dodge, Melee, and Throwing. Thieving - Prowl, Pickpocket, Backstab, and Spot Trap. ( as a side note, if you do pickpocket + pick locks, you can literally break into any shop at night and steal their wares if your good enough. ) Social - Gambling, Haggle, Heal, and Persuasion. Technological - Repair, Firearms, Pick Locks, and Disarm Traps. Putting points into Technological shifts your aptitude to tech, however.
from ForceFlowX,
Aptitude: Speaking of magical/mechanical aptitude, I should explain that now. In Arcanum, magic and tech are opposed forces. Being proficient in spells will make it harder for tech items to work on you, and vice versa. Now, this is a blessing and a curse, because it applies to everything, from the spell or gun that bandit just threw at you, to the healing spell or salve your teammate is using to keep you alive. You can balance it by taking both spells and tech skills, but most people like to dive into one or the other.
There are sixteen different colleges of magic to work from.
Spells: The colleges are Conveyance, Divination, Air, Earth, Fire, Water, Force, Mental, Meta, Morph, Nature, Necromantic Black, Necromantic White, Phantasm, Summoning, and Temporal. Each containing five spells.
To counteract the spell colleges, since everything is set magic versus technology, technological characters have, disciplines.
Disciplines: The disciplines are Herbology, Chemistry, Electricity, Explosives, Gunsmithy, Mechanical, Smithy, and Theraputics. There are less disciplines than college's of magic, however each discipline has seven things to learn.
And that is just during character creation.. Some other things to note, -The game has a 24 hour day/night cycle, which can be fast forwarded if you sleep. -The game's map is monstrous
My personal favorite part of the game is the music. I forgot to include this in my original post, but this games scoring is so beautiful and elegant. As a composition major, take my word, these are brilliant pieces!
Important Edit - If you are interested in playing it and are down about the bugs, go to http://www.terra-arcanum.com/ there are unofficial community patches that fixed and polished the game up. So, in closing, I have a few things to say ; How many of you fellow TLers have played this game? And how many want to?
I own the game. I bought it shortly after it was released. It was way too buggy, I tried to play it for a bit but I just couldn't handle the bugs so I gave up on it. I've heard they've since made it much better, though.
On October 12 2010 13:51 emc wrote: so is it a massive multiplayer? or is it just a SP?
It's a SP. But apparently at one point in time it supported multiplayer. It's the only single player game i've ever really loved, besides the cult classics.
Used to be the best place to get Arcanum stuff, but IIRC the owner had some sort of drama so projects got discontinued. Still, they have some stuff worth looking at, the biggest being the unofficial patch for bugfixes, and the high quality maps/music + high res mod for making the game a little less ugly.
There's probably a rebalancing mod somewhere out there, but I'm too lazy to test them thoroughly. The character system is a bit daunting at first.
For those just starting out--the best way to enjoy your first playthrough is probably as a character heavily invested in social stats (intelligence, perception, charisma, plus the relevant skills), with enough magic to get by in combat. The game really is not that combat-centric, and if you don't put enough emphasis on the social aspects, you will miss a lot of content on your first playthrough. As far as magic vs. technology, magic is stronger, but technology is more fun (you get penalized for splitting yourself up too much between both)--the first time through some of the early fights might trip you up as a technologist, and you have to gather some materials/schematics to get by.
On October 12 2010 13:13 xLethargicax wrote: sleep. -The game's map is monstrous
To expand on this: there are quick travel options, but they are largely for convenience--every outdoor area is mapped out, and you can slow-travel throughout the entire map (though lots of wilderness is pretty monotonous).
I remember buying this game when it first came out.. god I spent soooo much time on it that it's not even funny. I loved the hell out of this game. Hell when I saw this thread I just had to read it and respond! It's on my top ten that's for damn sure!
Also I can't believe you didn't talk about the music! Listen to this! Check out the opening track for frells sake! + Show Spoiler +
The music for this game kept me so happy and content for such a long time that relistening to it now brings a smile and a tear. Arcanum was and is one of the best games I've ever played! God now I want to find my copy and play it again.
Op you get a medal. thank you for reminding me of this game.
Used to be the best place to get Arcanum stuff, but IIRC the owner had some sort of drama so projects got discontinued. Still, they have some stuff worth looking at, the biggest being the unofficial patch for bugfixes, and the high quality maps/music + high res mod for making the game a little less ugly.
There's probably a rebalancing mod somewhere out there, but I'm too lazy to test them thoroughly. The character system is a bit daunting at first.
For those just starting out--the best way to enjoy your first playthrough is probably as a character heavily invested in social stats (intelligence, perception, charisma, plus the relevant skills), with enough magic to get by in combat. The game really is not that combat-centric, and if you don't put enough emphasis on the social aspects, you will miss a lot of content on your first playthrough. As far as magic vs. technology, magic is stronger, but technology is more fun (you get penalized for splitting yourself up too much between both)--the first time through some of the early fights might trip you up as a technologist, and you have to gather some materials/schematics to get by.
On October 12 2010 13:13 xLethargicax wrote: sleep. -The game's map is monstrous
To expand on this: there are quick travel options, but they are largely for convenience--every outdoor area is mapped out, and you can slow-travel throughout the entire map (though lots of wilderness is pretty monotonous).
Ever try crossing the stonewall mountain manually?
On October 12 2010 14:03 Parnage wrote: I remember buying this game when it first came out.. god I spent soooo much time on it that it's not even funny. I loved the hell out of this game. Hell when I saw this thread I just had to read it and respond! It's on my top ten that's for damn sure!
Also I can't believe you didn't talk about the music! Listen to this! Check out the opening track for frells sake! + Show Spoiler +
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWjbWuXZA5w
The music for this game kept me so happy and content for such a long time that relistening to it now brings a smile and a tear. Arcanum was and is one of the best games I've ever played! God now I want to find my copy and play it again.
Op you get a medal. thank you for reminding me of this game.
Thank you! the embarrassing part is, I got inspired to make this thread after listening to the music. I am a music composition major at IU, and thats why I love it so much. I just forgot to include, thanks for reminding!
Magic and tech generally don't get along, but there is one big exception to this rule and that is the college of temporal magic. Your magical aptitude has absolutely no effect on temporal spells, or at least not the two imba ones.
Because I was bored, I tried walking through the wilderness from the zeppelin crash site to the first town, and managed to make in around 20 minutes of clicking.
I tried doing the same from the first town to Tarant but gave up after an hour=(.
I recommend everyone to patch to 1.0.7.4, I haven't had any problems playing Arcanum after installing that patch, and also the unofficial patch with the resolution fixer. Awesome game, I think I'll go magic this time, went with a gun build last time. It was pretty great. Seriously, everyone who likes fallouts & baldur's gates, this is a must. GL HF!
Arcanum is definitely a great game, although slightly unbalanced. I rate it up there with Baldur's Gate 1/2, Fallout 1/2 and Planescape:Torment for best RPG games.
Just a hint for anyone playing this, Terra-Arcanum. A lot of unofficial patches, fixes, extra content, all kinds of great stuff.
great game, great ides, but too many unpolished/unfinished stuff. story which wasnt too good to start with, gets much better a few hours in, but takes a turn for the worse in the endgame. the game also suffers from an often rpg ailment, rushed and horrible endgame and bad combat. at least there isnt too much of the combat before the last part. the part where most of the world opens up was brilliant though.
On October 12 2010 22:57 Fraidnot wrote: Pro tip for everyone thinking about playing this game: Make sure Virgil holds onto all your important quest items and best gear.
Being an avid RPG fan, I started playing this game couple of yeras ago, but was quite disappointed. The steampunk setting seems like a good idea, but the story, visuals, controls and overall game 'feel' didn't get me. Not to mention it was quite buggy (looks like this has been solved already). There was no way this game was comparable to the jewels like BG2, Torment or Icewind Dale.
However, reading the comments in this thread about bug fixes and additional fan content, I may give it another shot. There aren't many good RPGs being released lately anyway.
Yeah, I played it for a while, but somehow I could not get far into it. Way to much stuff to think of when creating a character, which is in a way awesome, but like a child in a candy store I can't decide what to get, since everything looks awesome. Also I hated to discover, that I am too used to all these modern games and was a little bit overwhelmed.
On October 12 2010 23:41 Catyoul wrote: Oh and I played a bit of multiplayer at the time, but it was buggy as hell.
Might have been on the original patch. Troika games was forced to rush the release and in turn, there were A LOT of bugs. If you go to http://www.terra-arcanum.com/ you can download the unofficial community patches which fixed it up a lot.
I love that game so much. Spent so many hours on it. Going either temporal magic or electricity was so awesome. And i think the storyline was really good too, very unique game. Definitely one of my best game ever.
Arcanum was amazing, played it inside and out. Loved the fact that Troika would allow me to complete the game by playing a completely non-combat shopkeeper.
The only downsides were the hero AI (VIRGIL FFS FUCKING STAY HERE DONT GO CROSS THAT LAVA PIT TO FISTFIGHT AN ELEMENTAL 10 LVLS HIGHER THAN YOU) and to an extent the fact that the only 100% stealth character one could play was a sniper in turn-based mode (which didn't even make much sense since you were forced into headshotting people with an ELEPHANT GUN, but mobs were apparently deaf so all is good.
The musics are amazing, the steampunk elements get bigger and bigger as you progress with the game, and although you are "the chosen one" and all that funky business you can feel that the world lives perfectly even without you saving everyone and everything.
Its really great for the quests choices, freedom and exploration, interesting world.
Too bad its pretty badly balanced, and NPCs should be smarter/directly controllable, and some dungeons be less repetitively designed.
It's still 1 of best rpg's I think - there just seems to be no rpgs made that really nailed all aspects well
Playing a thief is the most fun I think, planning how to break into shops and peoples houses unnoticed is just damn fun. At least when you don't have all relevant skills maxed, need more thought then :D
Oh and "chosen one" my ass, just leave Virgil in the crash site :D
On October 13 2010 09:40 Haemonculus wrote: Hmmm.... I might have to check this game out!
You should--it's super cheap off gog.com, and it's a ton of fun.
Imo by far the easiest way to play the game is to start off going mass strength/dexterity melee/dodge. It basically makes combat a complete joke such that your companions just kind of watch as you rip through everything (well, except Dog. Dog does such sick damage...)
On October 13 2010 09:40 Haemonculus wrote: Hmmm.... I might have to check this game out!
You should--it's super cheap off gog.com, and it's a ton of fun.
Imo by far the easiest way to play the game is to start off going mass strength/dexterity melee/dodge. It basically makes combat a complete joke such that your companions just kind of watch as you rip through everything (well, except Dog. Dog does such sick damage...)
Don't go combat-oriented the first time. It makes the content so dry because of how much stuff you can miss for not having the prerequisite social stats.
On October 13 2010 09:40 Haemonculus wrote: Hmmm.... I might have to check this game out!
You should--it's super cheap off gog.com, and it's a ton of fun.
Imo by far the easiest way to play the game is to start off going mass strength/dexterity melee/dodge. It basically makes combat a complete joke such that your companions just kind of watch as you rip through everything (well, except Dog. Dog does such sick damage...)
Don't go combat-oriented the first time. It makes the content so dry because of how much stuff you can miss for not having the prerequisite social stats.
Hmm a decent point I suppose. You don't really need to master persuade though. Just go for a paramour opening and get a couple points in persuade and you'll get nearly everything and can go max melee/dodge.
For what it's worth, my first playthrough I went total max on charisma/beauty first and just let my followers basically do everything... I had max conveyance and harm/heal, but didn't really do anything in battles except run around avoiding dying.
I played this game like 8 years ago and it was quite confusing and I think that the interface / combat were really poor in comparison to baldurs gate or neverwinter nights. It was an okay game, but quite lackluster in the grand scheme of things. I still have the gigantic manual though, it's like 300 pages wtf o-O
On October 13 2010 10:06 defenestrate wrote: Played it way back. Great game, though technology was gimped as hell compared to magic.
It's funny how turned around the gameplay was from how the world was described. Magic was supposedly the slower way to power, but happened to have really powerful spells available almost right off the bat. Technology was described to be somewhat instant gratification, but really the weapons sucked, besides the really high-end craftable stuff (ok you could pick-pocket some good guns pretty early too, if you picked the right targets). And can you imagine that kingdom down south (dont remember the name) really losing to Tarant because they didn't use guns like Tarant, based on how the fights really work out? If Tarant had pyrotechnic axes it'd be believable maybe but cmon, guns... Well if they had a dozen machined guns, should be pretty powerful too.
I love tech guys still, to fight the imba, though it's still very powerful if you know what you're doing (like, make mass molotov coctails/grenades)
Man i really loved this game, i remember that last time i was playing i was trying to get the blessings from all of the old gods. I think Ill reinstall and give it a try again. Also i really don't know why people keep on ragging on tech it made the game crazy easy for me and once i got the mech spiders no one on my team had to do anything, it was just that easy.
On October 14 2010 01:05 Arkedo wrote: Man i really loved this game, i remember that last time i was playing i was trying to get the blessings from all of the old gods. I think Ill reinstall and give it a try again. Also i really don't know why people keep on ragging on tech it made the game crazy easy for me and once i got the mech spiders no one on my team had to do anything, it was just that easy.
Because you actually have to GET the "mech spiders", where magic involves choosing Harm at level 1, and never worrying about combat again.
This game was absolutely great. The music it played was fit it so well too, pretty much one of my favorite RPGs ever. What made it even better was unlimited magick hacks.. Pretty much made you into a God. Never did get all the buffs from all the Gods themselves though..
On October 14 2010 01:05 Arkedo wrote: Man i really loved this game, i remember that last time i was playing i was trying to get the blessings from all of the old gods. I think Ill reinstall and give it a try again. Also i really don't know why people keep on ragging on tech it made the game crazy easy for me and once i got the mech spiders no one on my team had to do anything, it was just that easy.
Unfortunately, mech spiders, like all other companions, steal your exp.
On October 14 2010 01:05 Arkedo wrote: Man i really loved this game, i remember that last time i was playing i was trying to get the blessings from all of the old gods. I think Ill reinstall and give it a try again. Also i really don't know why people keep on ragging on tech it made the game crazy easy for me and once i got the mech spiders no one on my team had to do anything, it was just that easy.
Because you actually have to GET the "mech spiders", where magic involves choosing Harm at level 1, and never worrying about combat again.
Truthfully harm isn't that powerful at the very start, with low magic aptitude and low fatigue. Still gets you along ok, though. But if you really want to breeze through all the game just pump on melee power. Then either get tech affinity & tech items (pyro axe, charged rings, etc., can use followers and books to make them) or magic affinity to get magic items with full effect and the magic too ofc. But yeah this minmaxing isn't that useful, when the game is easy anyway (outside badly built tech PCs).
1 thing I think is always very useful btw, is charm & stun spells. They are very good even for tech guys since they didn't lose effectivity based on affinity.
Tech and a Pyrotechnic Bow were pretty powerful, specially once you get up in skills/mastery.
Charged Swords/Pyro Axes and some of the guns were quite potent, and you could kill anything with instant action grenades. A bunch of stun grenades make combat a breeze.
Difficulty curve was everywhere in that game, the first real plot place to go too, the dwarf mine, has lots of rather tough enemies (at least for the level), including plenty of weapon killing golems.
I'm a huge fan of Baldurs Gate 1/2 and the original two Fallouts, and a friend recommended Arcanum to me, saying if I liked the former, I'll certainly enjoy the latter.
So I installed it. And was utterly disappointed.
The concept of magic and tech is cool, and the story is pretty interesting. But the mechanics of the game just felt clumsy compared to FO2 or BG2, and the landscapes/areas couldn't compare either. The first big city I visited (don't remember the name) was just a huge number of identical looking buildings in a uniform brown color.
I didn't play it after that because the general feeling of the game didn't appeal to me. Don't know how to describe it better than that.
This is my fav rpg ever. I`ve blazed through it with a variety of tech based character. The best combo without cheating (using magic) is this imo: Loads of points in charisma and intelligence and focus on getting a SHITLOAD of companions + Make a SHITTON of killer automaton robots! Then you get the healing arachnid robot as well and you have a roflstomptastic band of merciless killer thugs who kills anything while you are just smoking a cigar or grooming your beard or whatever. (This works best if you play a gnome or something for getting the right aesthethic semse of a tiny guy with a horde of brutal henchmen) Quite a lot of fun, but probably not for new players since you need to know when and where to pick up companions, and be rather strict when it comes to distributing points into the right tech trees to really get gosu. Lots of stuff seem really useful but really is not. Maxing the automaton thing is good, but I dont think maxing guns or going even close was any point, since you can find the elephant gun anyway. But maxing the armor making skill is good, since that will get you the best tech armor. Also that Ogre guy in the first town is a must for every playthrough. He`s good.
Also the economy is totally broken. Easiest way to make money is to buy a pair of glasses and and some pocket watch parts and use the auto goggle crafting thing. The resulting product is worth way more than the components used.
I found it funny how some guides talked about this game being tactical though. Even throughout the final battle I could just sit back and watch my team rape. Not much tactics involved there.
Another simple thing to do is just go Half-Ogre and focus only on fighting and melee and dodge.
I have a similar experience to Shockk (despite it being months ago). I bought this years ago and I just couldn't get into it at all. Character creation was confusing, leaving me unsatisfied with every choice, and when I'm presented with an open world, with a quest objective to some specific point, I'll tend to explore instead. This just got me hopelessly lost and quickly facing enemies I had no business confronting.
It's definitely a game for a real hardcore RPG enthusiast. I thought I was one after playing through games like BG1, BG2 and Planescape: Torment numerous times, but there's a level of RPG nut much further beyond that, which I believe Arcanum was intended to satisfy.
List of my favourite games of all time : 1. Arcanum 2. SC ..... whatever
Seriously, Ben Houge's soundtrack (which I believe is available for free) is brilliant, the whole atmosphere of the game is undescribable and there's a lot of philosophy involved, also a lot of hidden humour (check the museum in Tarant if you've played fallout; the richest man in the world is Gilbert Bates(ring a real-life bell?), who became rich by selling something other people invented, and so on and so forth ...) I almost cried when I discovered that there was going to be a sequel, but it got cancelled. I've heard of an open-source project for Arcanum 2 but I don't know if it is true. There was also rumors that the new "secret project" by Blizzard is going to be EXACTLY Arcanum 2 as the guy who started Troika Games works for them now, but the chances are too low unfortunately.
Oh my god I fucking miss this game. I never completed it because it was too glitchy and now I can't play it because all I have are macs
But this game really set the standard for me when it comes to RPG's. I tried playing Fable 2 with my roommate a couple years ago when it came out and I just kept comparing it to Arcanum, and Fable never even came close.
EDIT: you can find all of the OST by Ben Houge on youtube, back before they closed down the Dirpy Studio Beta I downloaded them all. Definitely my favorite soundtrack for any video game ever.
I remember playing this game years ago, it was freaking awesome. The combat was pretty unbalanced, mainly cause getting the tech items and schematics was so hard compared to magic. I was never able to finish it cause it was just too buggy/glitchy, a real shame. If you're a fan of fallout you've gotta check out this game, the writing, characters and locales are brilliant, the only steampunk fantasy game that has done the genre any real justice.
Good game. Worth the investment in time to play through at least once. I played through twice. Both times as a chick (always love to play with the ladies ) The first time as a gifted good aligned magic user and the 2nd go through as a gunslinging bitch from hell looking to cause trouble wherever she went. Definitely the tech route is much harder and magic pretty much rules.. and dog.
I find it interesting how so many Single player games are making a resurgence. I think game companies need to pay close attention to this and realize that multiplayer isn't going to sell games on their own. A lot of ppl (myself included) just want to play alone without dealing with whining babies and ppl.. Games like this are a nice escape and I'd recommend it.
On a semi related note: Many of you have probably never stumbled on a BW mod that I created based on many of these past rpg's (I haven't advertised it much at all). The mod actually borrows a few things from Arcanum as well. Someday I swear I am going to finish it.. so close! PEAI Always looking for some testers!
I bought this off GoG a while ago. I could never get into it. It felt like Baldur's Gate with more confusing graphics and the user friendliness scaled back to zero. I spent like 2 hours wandering around the starting area trying to figure out how to get the map to hop me to a location, and even then I couldn't figure out how to reliably use my skills or even what I was doing in combat. The UI was just a giant clusterfuck. I guess you had to play it when it had an active community to help you out then go back to it for nostalgia, it's the same way with one of my favorite games of all time: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
Do you have the original SMAC tech poster by chance? I so wish I hadn't lost that. And when are they going to start running a GOTM for SMAC at civfanatics? I'd participate. Long time due I think. MOO3, now that game had a ridiculous learning curve. Makes Arcanum look like trying to learn how to play checkers or Space Invaders.
I can't remember how confusing Arcanum's UI was, but I do remember that it wasn't all that deep in terms of options and different spell/tech trees you could pick. It was a pretty linear game if I recall, but that's fine too. Replayability isn't all that important in a story. Might need to fire this up again someday.
Seems like there's always a topic about an old game these days. Fun to reminisce. I think sprite graphics were decent enough during this era that these old games will remain playable for a very long time. Games like Civ2 or Xcom with even older graphic technology still are very playable, but there seems to be a limit as to what ppl are willing to "accept" these days in terms of graphics. Many of TL.net feel BWar's graphics for instance are just "wretched, horrible and unplayable. No way could I ever go back to that!" I actually really like some of the older sprite based universes more than some of today's "better" 3d worlds. .. kind of off topic sorry.
On March 10 2011 14:48 Bajadulce wrote: Do you have the original SMAC tech poster by chance? I so wish I hadn't lost that. And when are they going to start running a GOTM for SMAC at civfanatics? I'd participate. Long time due I think. MOO3, now that game had a ridiculous learning curve. Makes Arcanum look like trying to learn how to play checkers or Space Invaders.
I can't remember how confusing Arcanum's UI was, but I do remember that it wasn't all that deep in terms of options and different spell/tech trees you could pick. It was a pretty linear game if I recall, but that's fine too. Replayability isn't all that important in a story. Might need to fire this up again someday.
Seems like there's always a topic about an old game these days. Fun to reminisce. I think sprite graphics were decent enough during this era that these old games will remain playable for a very long time. Games like Civ2 or Xcom with even older graphic technology still are very playable, but there seems to be a limit as to what ppl are willing to "accept" these days in terms of graphics. Many of TL.net feel BWar's graphics for instance are just "wretched, horrible and unplayable. No way could I ever go back to that!" I actually really like some of the older sprite based universes more than some of today's "better" 3d worlds. .. kind of off topic sorry.
No, I actually bought it used at Half Price Books (I got it and WC2 for like $10 total), then bought a new copy to give to my friend for his birthday. Unfortunately, I actually sent in e-mails to Firaxis, but they said they've completely cut off support for the game online, so the only way is to play multiplayer now via LAN network.
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) The first time as a gifted good aligned magic user and the 2nd go through as a gunslinging bitch from hell looking to cause trouble wherever she went. Definitely the tech route is much harder and magic pretty much rules.. and dog.
