Rating: 
Summary: Playable, but lacking so very much
Review: Arcanum was a good time burner, but It wasn't a game that I got into very much. Graphically I felt like this was on par for maybe 3 or 4 years ago, but for 2000 standards it was lacking, except for a few of the spells wich looked pretty hype. Gameplay was what I felt too similar to Diablo II, a lot of point click hack and slash. The plot was decent, but I didn't like the whole "you are the one" type story line, it's been played out waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much. The interface could be tricky at times, but it wasn't too difficult to figure out. I like the character development, it was very good as far as that goes, but thought they could have used a few character classes as well. All in all, if you want to waste some time before Neverwinter Nights comes out and you have played every other Top of the Chart RPG then pick up Arcanum, I wouldn't say it's a waste of money.
Rating: 
Summary: Acanum - good staff
Review: this is a graet game! by it now.
Rating: 
Summary: Buy it
Review: You really should buy this game! For beinners it may seem pretty hard, but once you get the hang of it it's really fun. You can eventually learn all tech disciplines but not the magical area. Tons of MINI-QUESTS! Very fun though. I think it is just as fun as Fallout Tactics. If you have a computer with a speed of less than 1ghz than you should slightly check and see about it because of the bad load times on my laptop, but all and all it is a very fun game
Rating:
Summary: So much potential, so many flaws...
Review: I hope that Sierra makes some sort of sequel for this game, and addresses the issues from Arcanum, because they have a potential legendary game on their hands. But this game fails to live up to its potential. Arcanum is fun, but it's disappointing in some areas too.The highlight of this game is its innovative skill point system for character development and enhancement. It is kind of overwhelming at first, but once you get the hang of it, you will really like it. Your character can spend skill points in a ton of different attributes and abilities. They basically center around basic world skills like haggling and lockpicking, technology skills (which allow you to build weapons and potions from junk), and magic (i.e. casting spells). The technology skills are especially interesting. You buy a gallon of fuel, find a rag in the garbage can, and if you have the expertise, you combine it into a Molotov cocktail. Or, you find a couple of roots and make them into a healing potion. With the technology skills, you are basically finding or buying low value items, and making them into high value items. The items that you can build increase in usefulness as you allot skill points to them. So, at the beginning of the game, you can only refine ore, but later on you might be able to build a fancy set of plate mail. I was very happy with the nonlinear plot line, and the huge world with its numerous sidequests. This game rivals Baldurs Gate in those fashions. I also enjoyed the music. It is perfect at setting the 19th Century role-playing scene. But, I found a few things to be very disappointing about this game: 1. The cosmetic aspects of the game, like graphics, animation, and sound effects, are very mediocre. This game underacheives badly for one that is so young. Normally, I don't care all that much, but it this case, it really detracts from the game. The detail level of the characters and scenery is minimal. Every building in almost every city look largely the same. Cinematic cutscenes are nonexistent. Somewhat dated games like Baldurs Gate and Planescape:Torment still have much better cosmetics. If you didn't know better, then you would think that Arcanum was released five years ago. 2. ... This is especially annoying for this game, because utilization of junk like metal springs and tobacco leaves plays such an integral part, so you have to carry tons of stuff with you. Even simple tasks like switching weapons with one of your followers are tedious if your inventory is getting full. 3. You can't control the actions of your followers, nor can you control how they develop. This was the biggest disappointment to me. Half of the game's strategy goes out the window here. You can't build up one guy to be a thief type character, and build up another guy to be a battle tank. Even if you could, your followers just rush head on into melee at the beginning of every battle, so clever tactics go out the window too. This means that ranged weapons, like bows and guns, are hardly useful. Pretty much ever battle ends up as a melee hack-and-slash fest. After a while, the battles in this game get very repetitive. I hope that Sierra makes another Arcanum, with some of these issues addressed. It is a creative game. It just has a few things to work on.
Rating:
Summary: Mixed feelings on Arcanum
Review: Arcanum takes you to a world where magic and technology rival each other. You enter this world as a noticably shaken former passenger of a zeplin that has just crashed. You are left to explorer this world to the extent you see fit. It's a good sized world with a rather large number of places to explore, some that you are directed to as a part of a bigger mission and some that you will merely happen across while traveling. The graphics are decent althoght a bit repetative in the character models at times and in the spells used. The sound effects are cool, and the interaction with NPCs is some of the best I've seen including a little humor thrown in with good timing. Some of the missions grow long and tedious at times, as you are often only a delivery boy. However on the technical side this game has some issues. First and foremost, this is a very unbalanced game. Early on you discover ways to cheat the system. Now if your an honest gamer you will avoid these cheats(I didn't). Second you can not Alt+Tab out of it, and if you do have another program come to the front, it is rare that you don't lose your cursor and have to try to find a way to save so you can restart. Also the game interface is not really designed for quick combat, especially if your a mage. I have also found that this game is very taxing on your computer no matter how good it is. I was running it on a Pentium 1Mhz with 128MB of RAM and if I tried to play music in tha background as I often do, the game was slowed drastically. Finally the last and most frustrating ofr me personally, is that at times you are unable to get the dialogue options to finish missions. Now dialog options are effected by Charisma and Intellegence, but after a few runs that isn't all. There are times when you are never offered to appropriate words to finish certain missions. There are also times where you may have collected an item before meeting the person that sends you to get it, that will make it very challenging for you to have a conversation with that person. In my opinion, overall this game is conceptualy very good. The word designed is as believable as can be expected, they include many allusions to help keep it in perspective, and the humor is worth the effort.Unfortunatly this game as agreat many technical problems, some of which I feel are debilatating for the game, especially the balance within the player character. If you do buy this game the very first thing you need to do is download the most up to date patch. You will most lily enjoy the game, but learn the quikest route for you to save in case you ever have another program come to the front, and email me if you wanna know a couple easy steps a t Character Generation to beat the game easily
Rating:
Summary: Gooey role-playing steampunk goodness.
Review: There is one reason this game sticks out in my mind. I've been a die-hard gamer for fifteen years. In the last two years, this was one of ten games out of the sixty or so I've purchased that I've been able to install and run without a patch and enjoy in what I consider a satisfactory fashion. Satisfactory fashion is defined by, no "fatal" bugs and no impedment of the game itself either by bad design or technical trouble. Arcanum is a seamless transition into the world of Victorian Steampunk that is located in a fantasy-based world. The tone is H.G. Wells crossed with high fantasy. It works surprisingly well. The logic of the world works. It is unfortunately extremley complex, even more so than similar games (of the Fallout mein) are. There are several stats and skills, and to play through unimpeded by the system takes starting over once or twice for the average person. My advice is that before you start the game, scan a few webpages relating to it and design your character *before* you're level fifteen and realize that one point in three dozen skills more or less isn't necessarily so much fun. This is in truth the one down side to Arcanum; the manual is thorough, but it is written primarily in character. This is somewhat cool...but since it's also a *technical* manual teaching about the very out of character fact of stats, skills, etc...such in-character things can be a bit grating. There is also no index for specific subjects, which for a game complex as Arcanum can be tedious. I'd love to see a very thorough table of contents and index both in future games. The graphics are better than Fallout. The sound is wonderful. Battles can be a bit repetitive. There were not nearly as many magical enemies as I'd have liked, considering the entire theme of the story is based on the outcome of an ancient myth/prophecy. Of course, the world is also slowly killing magic off (or at least that's the implication), so I guess it makes a sort of sense. Still, it was somewhat disappointing. All-in-all, Arcanum is a fascinating game, and a captivating one. The story is excellent, the characters intriguing, and it's just plain fun. It's one of those games where days pass and you haven't realized it's already six days from when you started. The only drawback to the treasure-trove of its complexity, is if you pick the wrong character, you end up being utterly frustrated. Research before you play definetly, and avoid some of that potent annoyance. I sure wish I did! However, I'm grateful I gave it another try. It is all things considered, worth the money. The frustrations I experienced were minimal compared to other snafu from other RPG's -- the most recent Ultima disaster and the Fallout2 <squirm> problems to name a few.
Rating: 
Summary: Buggy in the Extreme
Review: This game seems to me as if it'd be a good game, however, it's buggy in the extreme in multiplayer.
The solo play adventure is pretty good about stability, but the multiplayer is NOT up to Sierra's usual standards of excelence.
First off, the main multiplayer chat interface itself is buggy, often returning games that have nothing but 0's for stats, like ping, players, up time, et cetera.
The chat menu's lobby list tends to pop up over other nessessary things at times.
It crashed a few times while trying to make a new character.
And consistantly crashes whenever I try to log onto a multiplayer game, sometimes after just giving me a split-second game view, sometimes not even letting me get that far.
Rating: 
Summary: Full of Annoying Bugs
Review: This game had so much promise. The other reviewers are right--the developers spent a lot of time on the details and history of the game. Your character can be endlessly customized and you get the sense that there is a lot of depth to the world. There are tons of quests and a lot of quirky details in the game. However, the bugs make the game a very annoying experience. I have a Pentium 3 1 gigahertz computer, a 16 meg video card (good enough for most games out there), and 384 megs of ram--way more powerful than the minimum specs. I also downloaded the latest patch. Despite all that, I spend most of my time crawling through the terrain. For whatever reason--even when nothing is happening in the game--my character starts moving in slow motion. I don't know why--cause the graphics seem to predate IceWindDale. The game isn't accessing the hard drive and there shouldn't be any hard number-crunching going on, but periodically the game slows to a crawl. Half the time things are fine--then bam!--my character can hardly move. The cities are nightmares of slowdown. Even moving down the street can be a chore. The game would be so much fun if I didn't have to constantly pause for a couple of minutes while my character tries to walk past a building or vainly attempts a conversation with a key npc. I will return to the game when they patch it properly. However, I wouldn't recommend playing it now--and I certainly wouldn't recommend paying more than ($) for the way it is now.
Rating:
Summary: It was great until...
Review: When my husband and I started this game, we raved over it. It had some unique and intelligent points. Instead of the typical AD&D type character schemes, Arcanum is a world where magick (their spelling!) and technology coexist and are constantly in contention. You can choose the science route, or the magick route, but trying to do both is very tricky and usually counterproductive. Strong technology (steam engines, machines, etc.) can make magick go haywire or fizzle, and strong magick can make technological machines stop working or even blow up. So we were very intrigued over the new possibilities in this game. He took the technology route, and I took the magick. The number of options available for character development is almost bewildering at first, but once you get the hang of it, it becomes a very fun part of the game. Experience points rack up at a reasonable pace, even at later stages of the game, so you're always looking forward to the next level so you can gain more skills. Each time you level up, you get one character point to increase one of your character skills. At level 10, 20, 30, etc. you get 2 points. Character points can be used to increase fighting skills, thieving skills, bartering, equipment repair, increased casting ability in selected schools of magic, abilities to build more advanced machines in selected technology schools, etc. The possibilities are endless. The experience point scheme is not based on AD&D rules, and the levels go up more quickly, so you're constantly looking forward to the opportunity to better your character. So we're toodling along, enjoying the game when to our shock my husband discovered there was an experience cap at Level 50. The level cap really ruined the game experience for us. We'd played our characters for a great number of hours, and since we didn't know there was a level cap, we'd been rounding our characters out instead of focusing on particular fields of interest. It's not like we were going out of our way to increase the experience points. It just happened as an integral part of playing the game. Remember me mentioning the endless charcter skill possibilities? Well, the discovery of a level cap jerked that to a halt. Now we have characters that don't have all the skills we wanted, and we would have spent our character points much differently had we known there was a limited number available. So what's the final verdict? I still love the game itself. The plot and the game play have bee a lot of fun. I am extremely disappointed with Sierra for programming an unannounced level cap, though. My character isn't to Level 50 yet, so I have time to optimize my character before hitting the cap. Once I get there, I know it will be a big let down. My husband isn't so lucky and has quit playing altogether out of frustration. I can't say I blame him. I still recommend the game because it is a lot of fun, but I hope knowing there is a level cap at 50 will help people choose their character skills more wisely.
Rating:
Summary: Not your typical RPG...
Review: But it needs some serious work before I can call it a welcome change. The idea is great, of being able to shape your characters to be anything you want, in a richly detailed world. The execution suffers immensely, though. The game is more frustrating than fun, and some of the early fights are near impossible.
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