Unique is a word that gets thrown around a lot. But in this case, it is just not enough. Arcanum is one of the greatest games ever created. A marvel of design that gives you the freedom to do things that you never could in most other games, such as opening a window. But all that freedom does come with a price.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFxuAYftnys

At the beginning of the game, I thought I was in for a mediocre rpg, maybe some kind of worse Diablo. By the end of the game, I could not believe how good it was. Over 10 playthroughs later, I still can't believe it. What a masterpiece.

Edit: Wrong thread, but I can agree that Arcanum is one of the greats!

I finally got around to watching this. Thanks for sharing it.

Sadly, no one even tries to make games like this anymore. It's understandable when you think about just how many lines of dialogue there are for the huge number of NPCs you can interact with - and it all has to fit the setting and have variances for different kinds of player characters and situations.

Plus all the great side quests and locations and mysteries to unravel...

Iron Tower Studio were specifically aiming for a game like Fallout and Arcanum when they made Age of Decadence. I haven't played it yet though so I can't comment myself. I do recall that they made some... aggressive statements during development, deriding other types of role-playing games and those who play them, which put me off a bit. But I've also heard the finished game is pretty good, although it may not give much room for playing a truly nice character (they were going for a dog-eat-dog setting full of con men and the like).

Anyway, may be worth checking out if you're looking for other games similar to Arcanum.

By the way, I also recall Iron Tower Studios discussing just how hard the game was to make, which may well be a reason why so few have tried such games.

Well, I have. It's closer to Fallout 1/2 than to Arcanum, and your ability to explore the world is rather limited - there is no continuous world map, only certain locations (cities, camps, ruins, etc.) are available and you have to know about them to see them on the map. What's more, world map is divided into three regions (which is not obvious when you play for the first time, although you get a prompt if you want to leave the area) and when you leave from one to another all quests are evaluated, wether you finished them or not, wether you participated in them or not! So, there's much less freedom than in Fallout games, not to mention Arcanum. It doesn't. Temporary alliances, business or collective madness, but no friends. You can play as a "diplomatic" character, but be prepared to use those Skill points you should have put into Backstabbing. :> Some quests are solvable in many ways, some only by brute force. And your choice of one of backgrounds for your character at the start of the game is going to influence the first part of the game very much. Joining or betraying available factions is going to open or close large parts of the game, so there are several replays needed, as different characters (backgrounds), to reveal the whole story.

I've played it as well. Finished it 6-7 times, in fact. Best cRPG I've played in ages.

But it's not really like Arcanum. As Kerberon said, it's more like Fallout 1 with inspirations from a variety of classic cRPGs like Darklands.

Thanks to UnversalWolf and Kerebron for the clarifications. I've always considered Fallout and Arcanum to be similar to one another, so I guess that's why I associated Arcanum with Age of Decadence.

I may have been reading some things into your original post, but I feel that the things you mentioned -- tons of dialogue that changes based on your character and your actions, with lots of side quests and locations and mysteries -- characterize both Fallout and Arcanum. They even have very similar world map design, so Kerebron's point about the different world map in Age of Decadence would set it apart from both games. I'm curious why you consider Age of Decadence similar to Fallout but not Arcanum. Is it in specific mechanics, like how the skills work? Or the setting and world design? Something else?

Also, apologies if I'm hijacking this thread a bit. I'm still sort of talking about Arcanum...

The tone and setting of AoD are more in the vein of Fallout. Also, the character generation, mechanics, and combat of AoD are much more like Fallout than Arcanum.

For example, when you create a character in AoD, you assign points to attributes like Strength, Intelligence, and Persuasion. Like Fallout they are rated on a scale of 1-10 and once they're set they never change except through certain extraordinary means.

World exploration in AoD is very different from either Fallout or Arcanum. It's actually more like the way to move from map location to map location in Baldur's Gate.

Some encounters are done in a sort of choose-your-own-adventure style, a lot like Darklands.

In some ways AoD is a lot like Temple of Elemental Evil, now that I think about it. In ToEE you start by picking an alignment and the story has a different beginning dependent on which choice you make. AoD is like that.

EDIT: I wrote a short no-spoiler beginners guide in the AoD forum in the event you decide to give it a try.

https://www.gog.com/forum/age_of_decadence_series/a_noobs_quick_guide_for_new_players_no_spoilers

I'd like to take this opportunity to recommend this video explaining the development of Arcanum, and the history of Troika Games in general. A very interesting watch: [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr0ssbaBar8&t]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mr0ssbaBar8&t[/url].

All the three games they released were plagued with difficulties and they show astounding vision which, in the end, seemed to be the downfall of the company along with their magnum opus being published at pretty much the worst possible time.