Arcanum is the first game to come from Troika Games, which was started by former Fallout team members Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, and Jason Anderson. Like the Fallout series, this game is RPG style, and very story oriented. However, quite a few enhancements were achieved in the Arcanum offering when compared to the Fallout series in my opinion. It has an awesome premise and a nonlinear, open-ended role-playing system not seen in many of today's RPG offerings.

The unusual setting of "Arcanum" is a combination of a typical medieval fantasy with a "Fallout"-like futuristic world. Ogres and dwarves co-exist with firearms and rockets. Original? You bet! Whether you choose the path of technology or Magick, you are in for quite a role playing treat with this game, and a very in-depth storyline. Arcanum has a truly fantastic gameplay as well. You can choose between a real-time or a turn-based combat, you have an incredibly rich dialogue (with many choices), fight, talk to people, buy things and build a party, everything in a perfect balance. The game does have a few drawbacks, but you can read on down this review to see it's minor flaws.

Gameplay:

As all great RPG's begin, you must create a character. Either you can choose a premade character and jump right into play, or you can create one from scratch and make your own destiny. In the grand tradition of Fallout, there are more character statistics than you could ever imagine. Arcanum has more base statistics that affect more aspects of your game than most I have played (and can be modified using your points from leveling up), it features a technology tree which requires points placed in each skill, nearly as many schools of magic as Dungeons and Dragons with five spells in each, and several sets of skills including social (gambling, persuasion), thieving skills (pick pocket, and prowl), among others. It begins to be quite clear after a short amount of time that no character could ever master every available skill tree. You can adjust the intellegence, strength, dexterity, perception, constitution, willpower, beauty, and charisma of your character. One of the neater choices you will make is a "personal history" for your character. These histories include a lifestyle or childhood education that alters your avatar from a general "Bookworm" to the absurd "Beat with an ugly stick". These histories alter some of your attributes, and in my mind, enhance your role playing expirrence. You also choose your race and each race comes with thier own stats: Humans, Half-Elves, Dwarves, Half-Ogres, etc. Gender plays a large role in your creation process as well as it has a direct impact on your personal statistics, as well as determining some of the quests you will get (some quests are male or female specific).

As you begin your journey through the land of Arcanum, you are aboard a crashed zeppelin when you are told by an old gnome about an impending evil, and that you must return a ring to its owner. Then you meet Virgil, your first party member, who informs you that you are a deity reborn (let me add that Virgil is quite annoying). Your first adventure begins as you scour the remains of the crash for survivors. The game opens with you finding out a bit more from Virgil, getting mauled by a few roaming animals, scouring items amongst the dead (and on the ground), and finally getting attacked by a hitman of sorts. From there, you begin your treks to towns and caverns, and you begin to see how truly large the game is. Quests are kept track of in a log book, some are for evil characters, some for good, though many of them are not able to be solved in short order. To travel from town to town, there is a rail system, and some boatmen who are willing to ferry you around. Besides that, you can walk from town to town in search of your quests. The world map is very useful, and you will find yourself accessing it often. I found the entire interface to have a very small learning curve and quite easy to use without reading through the (very large) game manual.

The land of Arcanum is not laid out like a bunch of individual maps. You can actually walk across the entire game, rather than use waypoints on the map screen to accelerate time. Arcanum is a VERY large world with many NPC characters to interact with. After visiting the various shop keepers and realizing you're flat broke, you'll likely be moving on to your quests. Arcanum gives you the unique choice to pick either turn-based or real time battle. Indeed, you can, and should, fight in real time like most other games (Diablo anyone?) in both single and multiplayer mode. Finally, the game ships with the map and script editors used by Troika, so this will likely be one of the first RPG's to have extensive community support, and new multiplayer (and single player) scenarios popping up everywhere. Dare you try and conquer the land of Arcanum? Travel your path adventurer, and choose wisely.

Graphics/Sound:

Unfortunately, the graphics in Arcanum are not as superbly done as the storyline and character development. There certainly is no comparison to the Bioware Infinity engine Dungeons and Dragons role-playing games we've seen lately. Arcanum was built on a heavily adapted Fallout engine. While that provided a very solid foundation for a game of it's type, and it allowed the extreme support of character statistics, it also meant that we're stuck with an engine that still looks and feels like a game from 1998. The resolution has been increased to 800x600, and the engine now supports a 16 bit color depth, but it still looks a tad flat. Fortunately, anyone who has ever played Fallout, and any other true RPG fans out there, knows that graphics are less important than gameplay/storyline.

The sound is fairly good, and definitely what you'd expect from a front-runner RPG. There are an unfortunately low number of voice-overs, though, similar to Fallout, where only important characters and NPCs will have a voice. The music was very well done and fits into the game "timeline" nicely as well as immersing you into the story.

Multiplayer/Devices:

The multiplayer support is excellent for an RPG. You can play an attack-mode, a cooperative attack mode, or a role-play world mode. Your character can be saved and built up over time, similar to a game like Diablo, though there is unfortunately, no game-save feature in multiplayer, so you start back at the beginning of your chosen campaign each time you begin. The inclusion of campaign editing tools also makes a great multiplayer addition since many third-party teams will be developing multiplayer campaigns to keep the game going indefinitely. Arcanum has, by far, the best Cooperative RPG multiplayer support around. Unfortunately, I didn't get to extensively test the multiplayer aspects since many people are not online playing yet. I am guessing most people are waiting until they finish the enormous single player campaign. There isn't much need for that however, other than building familiarity with the basics. The multiplayer action has its own campaign with a closer proximity of locations than the overwhelmingly large single player version.

Game Commander 2 and SideWinder Game Voice both performed equally well, letting me assign some of the more mundane controls. I also tried using the Sidewinder Strategic Commander, and the Nostromo SpeedPad while playing. The SC and SpeedPad are literally made for this type of action and both performed exceptionally well for scrolling through the maps and controller character movement.

The Wrap-up:

Arcanum has a very immersive storyline, exciting play, and challenging quests. The role playing aspects are numerous due to the character development features which will lead to hours and hours of replay value. I will say that the game reminds me a lot of Planescape: Torment in design as well as look. There were times I felt like I was playing a game from 1998, but what else would one expect with this genre? I think it was best for Trokia to focus on menu enhancements and storyline rather than intense graphics leaps, as the game is very fun to play.

Anyone who liked playing Fallout, Planescape: Torment, or other RPG's of the kind, will really enjoy this game. The intruiging aspects of technology and magick in one enviornment are what prompted me to buy it.