I've been thinking of buying this game for awhile and this sale might just persuade me. However, what has dissuaded me in the past is hearing about UI, combat and bugs. Are these serious issues or not? Even if they are, is the game so good as to make these issues seem minor?

i guess people in this forum will be biased but it never hurts to ask ;)

Bugs...hmm. They're not really a problem anymore as far as I can see. Make sure you use Drog's Unofficial Arcanum Patch, and you'll be fine.

UI is something I've never had a problem with. In fact, I think the UI for Arcanum is quite good.

Combat is poor, and there's really no way around that. In its defense though, the combat isn't poor in a way that makes it annoying; it's poor in a way that makes it really, really easy.

Otherwise Arcanum is a superb and unique game. The setting is completely engrossing, the characters and locations are good, and the story is pretty good too. It's the kind of game you'll play to death and then want to play over again once every few years.

My recommendation is, obviously, to buy.

One technical caveat: if you're running Win8, look at the threads on the slowdown problem some of us have been having. There doesn't seem to be a known solution that works for everyone.

Don't let tinyE's recommendation put you off. ;) It's a great game which rewards role-playing. Buy it.

Hey, you know what they say: even a stopped clock is right twice a day. :p

Thanks for the warning. My main computer is Win8 but I have an old laptop with XP that I've used to play games from around 2001 before. So I should be able to get it working on one of the two machines.

Right I've just gone and bought it. If isn't the game the century then I'll... rage uselessly at the interwebz. ;)

Welcome to the family! Or you could just rage here. We'll do our level best to help sort you out. Promise.

See you in a month when you come up for air. I run Arcanum on my XP drive, and I had odd slowdowns and other glitches until I turned off all my video card options. Now it runs perfectly, so I'd give that a try.

I see you already bought it, but I'll say that you definitely didn't make a mistake. Especially if you like games like Fallout and Baldur's Gate (let's face it, you wouldn't be here if you didn't).

I bought a copy as well couple of moments ago. Had my old CD version but decided it was time to pick this one.

care to share how you're doing now that a couple of months have passed?

could be of interest to other uncertain gogger (made up word)

Would those be in-game months?

Well it's only been 5 days so far and I don't have the time to play games as much as I used to. From first impressions I would definitely say it was worth the sale price at the very least.

It did take a little while to work out how the interface worked but once I did the UI isn't too bad (but still annoying in places). Until I worked out fast travel I had a problem with wolves.

As for the actual game, it's quite fun so far. One highlight has been the way dialogue works. it felt great to outwit an outlaw. The game world is really great and intriguing although the main story hasn't really grabbed me so far. The combat is poor which is a shame considering how much of it there is and it seems to be one of the major sources of experience (the other being completing quests).

Reading this post back to myself it seems more negative than I intended. Despite its flaw Arcanum is (so far) a great game. It's not the best cRPG ever made but it is better than most.


Btw, it works fine for me on Win 8 with the patches if I delete ddraw.dll and play in window mode (it might work fullscreen but I haven't been bothered to test it yet).

try setting the combat mode to turn based, then it feels a bit like Fallout. real time combat is simply too fast IMO. there are alot of kinks in the game, but I found it to be worth the effort.