Thanks, I'd appreciate that.

What the heck happened to my post above!!!! I didn't type it like that! :()

Do you have a high Magicka affinity? If so, sit further from the computer next time.

That made me laugh! Do you know how many USB keyboards I have blown since playing RPG's!! LOL!

Sorry that it took me this long to respond again with my opinion of the game. Based on my opinion of playing it for about a week now and the opinion of myself being one of someone who has never played the game before I bought here and only barely remember it being in stores back in 2001, I can sum up my entire review of this game in 3 words: Its Goddamn Genius. All of the things that I loved about Fallout and Fallout 2 and Diablo and Diablo II are here in force. I write a bit better review in a few days, but if you haven't bought this game already, then do so, right now. And by "right now", I literally mean RIGHT NOW. Nothing is more important at this moment than that.

If you enjoyed Planescape, I think you'll love Arcanum once you really get into it. The main plot isn't as deep, but there are numerous intriguing sidequests, lots of hidden goodies to discover and just a staggering amount of content.

Hey, not necessarily, for example if you've come across an incredible album that needed to be bought: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnD2maKnVBA
I'll better make this short: in the meantime I merely played the demo and didn't even really get into that. There is something about those old Black Isle/Troika 2D RPGs without the Infinity-engine that gives the main responsibility to get into the game to the player, rather than offering a path and increasingly raising the difficulty and complexity. In effect they feel a little like work to me.
Maybe I gave the wrong impression, that I played through the Fallouts and afterwards found much to criticize. This is not so, I only played them a few hours, found that nothing worked, that I hadn't gotten anywhere and that I'd rather do something else.
Eventually I might get into those, maybe I probably had wrong expectations and was looking for the wrong kind of game.

I think I know what you mean.When you play Arcanum for the first time, you are going to encounter a game engine you don't know, that implements an RPG Setting nobody has ever heard of with a complex ruleset (The Tech/Magic thing is kinda unique to it) that can be somewhat confusing. Especially if you haven't read the manual. Like i did.
Now add that there is little to no guidance offered by the game and that there isn't much of a red thread that leads you through the story and you can probably imagine how frustrating this game can be.
When I started a character the first time I got killed within 10 minutes. By the guy who comes up after you have passed by the altar. He attacked us, stunned Virgil and knocked me out. With his bare fists. And then he kicked the hell out of my char and send me back to the main menu. And worse of all, I hadn't saved, so that I had to start over again.
Seriously, I didn't touch the game for 2 days straight, but when I did, I quickly figured out, how the game was working (mainly by reading the manual :) ) and I actually started to have fun.

Is it possible to compare this game to something BESIDES Fallout or Planescape? I haven't played either of those but was interested in picking this one up as an early birthday present to myself. I get the impression from the screens that this plays somewhat similar to your standard ARPG, but what are the pros/cons of the setup for Arcanum?
Also I've heard you can mod this game- how easy is that?

I wouldn't compare it to Planescape directly, Planescape better fits with Baldurs Gate and Icewind Dale Series. Comparing it to Fallout is natural for someone who has played both, because the game mechanics like movements of characters, turn-based fighting and the relative freedom of going and killing wherever and whatever are somewhat the same.
Modding Arcanum isn't that difficult. You can change a lot yourself, depending on how much expertise you have on file editing and such. For example getting new character pictures into the game only requires you to place the additional pictures in a subfolder somewhere.
You can also change a lot of things in the scripts, npcs for example, all you need to do is decode/decompress/de-whatever the data files of the game. I think they are named *.dat or somewhat like this.
And last but not least Arcanum features a World Editor, with which you should be able to create own modules.
I haven't done one of the things above and I can't check them right now, because I am at work, but I know there are tutorials out there, explaining everything you can do.
Try searching via google, or take a look at the modding area on terra-arcanum.com

If by ARPG you mean "action-RPG" (Mass Effect, even Knights of the Old Republic), revise your thinking immediately. Arcanum is a wonderful RPG, but as you will find in many online reviews and threads here, combat is its weakest aspect. For me at least, combat in this game is something I have to do to get back to exploring and finishing quests. :)
Combat's not as frustrating as Septerra Core, but attempting the real-time combat option, as opposed to staying in turn-based, is a two-second recipe for getting weapons broken, armor broken, and some nasty scars that penalize stats (oops, you've crippled one arm and can't use two-handed weapons, trudge back to the right town with a healer skilled enough to undo that) before you even know what's happening. You might not even notice for a while that that wimpy rat chewed through your leather armor, until you hit Mr. Big Nasty where you really need it!
You have very little control over your followers. You have no say on how they level up and almost none on how they fight. On the other hand, there's a pretty wide variety of followers to pick from.
Enemy AI can be turned to your advantage.

I mean, I'm down with turn-based combat. But do the other parts of it like movement and inventory handle similar to a game like Diablo? That's the impression I get.

It is a very unique game, you may want to watch some game play before you buy it. It has some similarities to DD, SG, Diablo and mostly Fallout but it is not like them enough to compare really. It requires much more involvement form the player, IMHO, and careful consideration concerning decisions you make and how you fight. Your questions and answers will affect what happens in the game more than in most RPGs. I have a problem with one quest since I asked the wrong questions, now the guy hates me and I have to solve it another way. It will take some time to finish. A must buy for me.
I actually restarted a couple of times as I learned how the game played and realized I had made some bad decisions. Real time combat is not the best way to go me thinks.
Edit: I would not expect to go along hacking and slashing as in most RPGs . . .=)

Basically, if you like the steam-punk Fantasy setting, and want to play a challenging RPG, Arcanum is your game, However: If you want a simplistic dungeon Crawler, or an easy, straightforward RPG, this is NOT your game.