With this game I have finally played all the key 90s RPG classics. I attempted to play a few years ago but because the GOG version of the game ran so poorly in Windows 10, I gave up. This time around I found the Unofficial Arcanum Patch and that made most of the performance issues go away. That is, until the last stretch of the game in which characters began randomly to disappear from my party and saves became corrupted. I managed to complete the game by turning off the high-res patch and saving every few minutes, but, man, was that ever annoying.

The main selling point of Arcanum is its steam punk setting. It’s the technology of the Nineteenth Century mixed with magic and the stereotypical fantasy races. In the end it just feels like another D&D style fantasy game where you have to defeat the evil wizard, etc. I was a magic, sorry magick user so the technology stuff had little impact on my play style. Aside from the opening sequence, in which a blimp is destroyed by planes, and the occasional reference to trains this might as well have been Middle Earth. For a truly steam-punk RPG play the excellent Ultima: Martian Dreams.

The main quest line is okay. It does eventually degenerate into the aforementioned cliché of defeating the evil wizard but there are plenty of little side quests in every region to keep things interesting. Much like Fallout at the end of the game you get a recap of all the good deeds you accomplished, so it pays to offer your help wherever you travel. There are lots characters and lots of possible dialogue interactions, and, because I focused on charisma, I was able to talk my way out of many-a-problem. It could get a bit wordy at times but that can be expected of games of this vintage.

Arcanum uses the same engine as Fallout 1 & 2 but has a janky combat system that’s sort of turn-based and sort of real-time. It works most of the time, but once your characters are leveled high enough it just becomes, “point at the thing and it will die.” Despite its flaws I found the combat to be fun or, at the very least, satisfying.

The main problems with this old-school interface were inventory management (especially dealing with your party members), navigating the zoomed-out map, and moving around on screen with limited visibility. I think Arcanum is still worth playing if you can tolerate its technical flaws and its failure to live up to its setting’s potential.

I was quite a bit hesitant to get this game because I had heard that a big part of if was building and maintaining settlements. Along with crafting, this type of management system is one of my least favorite types of game play. The first few missions are all about teaching you to create and build settlements but there soon comes a point when you can ignore that part of the game in get to the really fun part: exploration and combat. Why would I want to maintain a farm when out can explode dudes.

The V.A.T.S. system is no replacement for the turn-based combat of the original Fallout games, but it has its own appeal that melds well with otherwise standard FPS mechanics. I never got tired of the slow-motion replays of the body parts flying everywhere.

The main story is the game’s weakest element. You awake from a cryogenic sleep to discover your infant son has been kidnapped. This plotline ends about halfway through the game and it shifts to working between the various factions of the wasteland. None of them seem particularly evil and yet you are tasked with destroying them by the various other groups. At that point I stopped caring.

The real fun of the game is exploring the massive open world. There’s a little story connected with every location. Sometimes its told explicitly, other times it’s gleaned from the items and messages that have been left behind. Very soon I was ignoring the main quest and just running off in random directions looking for adventure. Before I knew it I has sunk well-over a hundred hours into the game. I even started to enjoy the settlement building as I collected trophies and magazines from around the Commonwealth.

I finally completed the main quest after which the game wisely allows you to keep playing. I still think the original two Fallout games where the best in terms of narrative, but, of the three 3-D games in the series, this one was the most fun to play, and was the best looking (even though it’s still very gray and brown).