A flawed masterpiece. Love the link to Sseth.

I asked a while back and the answer seemed to be no, but outside of the main game, are there any modules that are worth it?

My main problem with this game is that I keep wanting to re-create my character to try all the different combinations of abilities and play styles.

Agreed it is a bit flawed but it is such a great world to venture in and the combination of magic and tech is rather well done (it can feel that tech is favoured in some instances however it kinda fits with the history of the world,

The manual is worth a read as well as it was "written" by a character in the game so you can see the bias he has for and against certain races and lifestyles in the Arcanum universe and even question him about the manual in game (the manual even has a bread recipe)

Some people call it flawed but i call it perfect ! shame that i already have it but thanks.

I must say i could do without seeing Koticks face even as an avatar but i guess it is fitting for halloween since i will have difficulties sleeping tonight after it, horrific.

Indeed, Troika's "other" flawed gem. I'd say not at the level of Bloodlines, but still. There are still bugs that are quite an issue (maybe small if you have a save, but recall a cursed weapon that gave -2 to some attribute which didn't clear after removing it, and equip again, get a further -2 and so on, and I had saved with it, and previous save in a different slot was so far back I didn't care to return to it for quite a while). There's a really tedious area early on, Black Mountain Clan Mines. But mainly there are three really bad design choices that I recall being really frustrated by: Companion level is set, so if you want to have them at your level, and be able to reach max by the end, you need to know exactly at which level to find each; get there any later and they'll always be underleveled. Experience is granted by the main character striking enemies, not the party killing them, so need a main character that can physically strike, preferably quickly. And companions can't learn to craft. And of course the real time combat is just unmanageable, but not counting that since you can just stick to turn based, though RT is there if you just want to let your party get through fodder that can't possibly cause problems quickly.
Past that though, yes, indeed, great concept and world and interesting characters and story. Still regret abandoning it, but I just couldn't figure out something and eventually just gave up back in the day, and the need to be so careful about companion level and not hit a troubling bug made me not try to start again. (On the other hand, restarted it lots of times back in the day, learning how to do things right step by step. On the one hand, another major reason for frustration. On the other, sure shows how much I enjoyed it in spite of that.)

More of these throwback Thursday posts, please. I like to remember a time before PC gaming was irreparably damaged by the Scheme client DRM and various other online connection requirements over the years, incidentally, including instances where Galaxy is required here, but I digress. Arcanum is the definition of hidden gem. Those who know of it, know its quality and what makes it so special.

I played it part of the way through once and my main memory of the game is glitching it to get to the Elf village the incorrect way, going around a way that takes maybe an hour or two of extremely repetitive screens (I have multiple sleep disorders and some days being mostly asleep can occasionally get sucked into such repetitive stuff that no one even half awake would ever do). I found the Elf village and was standing in the village with my mission still being to find the Elf village :/. I also found out that the only way back I could find was the way I came, which I had no desire to do again. I could have loaded an earlier save but I wasn't that excited about it anyway and it seemed like a decent enough ending for me so I stopped there.

I am not objective with this game, not at all. I find it absolutely perfect. I wonder if anyone else also felt that way with a work of fiction, but everything in this game clicks so much with my tastes, it is as though it was made specifically for me.
This is also why I cannot recommend it.

I finished it two months ago and I cannot get it out of my head. It has one of the best stories I ever experienced, no matter the media, and everything in it is so well told and written that nothing seems unbelievable. The world is incredibly coherent and very well developed, and all of its elements are subtly interconnected and intertwined, so much so that even some unimportant pieces of equipment have their own stories, related to other aspects of the world. As for the characters, the player's followers are very memorable, and I even ended up caring for some insignificant NPCs I encountered in small side quests.

However, the most impressive aspect of the game, for me, is its soundtrack. While a little short, it was written in the style of the chamber music of the 19th century by the talented Ben Houge, and played by four string musicians, and one percussionist and the composer himself on some of the tracks. Even if it is an extradiegetic soundtrack, it is so coherent with the world in which the game takes place that the characters could listen to it.

If anyone is curious about this soundtrack, it is downloadable for free and legally here :
http://www.terra-arcanum.com/downloads/arcanum/Arcanum_OST_Lossless.exe

When a game tries to be big, original, player demanding, detailed, deep, open and even with a powerful story it can be problematic or buggy or too much for a lot o people making the game not selling enough based in their expectatives.

Anyway it is one of the historically bestseller games in GOG, It became a cult classic and it is replayed and enjoyed yearly by a lot of people.

I don't really know if the game is perfect or glitchy detail by detail. Bt I love its expansive, original, detailed and rich gameplay even today.

One day I'd want to know why every troika game had its problems at launch. End dates pressures? slow workers? perfectionist? too high visions? too much for them?

Definitely a flawed gem. The combat system is absolute garbage and the dungeons are some of the worst ever in any crpg imo (mercifully many of them are optional or can be skipped with the right stats). And I don't even want to imagine how tedious the mid to late game must be without access to the teleportation spell.
However, many of the quests are interesting, and there are touches of stunning brilliance in the writing and world-building. So I'd agree, anyone interested in crpgs should at least play it once.

I just bought this last week when it went on sale after hearing so much about it. Wanted to leave the first town via bridge, but some jerks were resistant to gunshot, and my character is not built for charisma or having money, so I went the opposite direction to see if I can level up enough to overcome gunshot/harm resistant brigands.

Man that linked YouTube video is edgy..

Yeah, Sseth is great. He's an edgyboi, but I've found a few pretty solid but tragically obscure games via him.

A great game. Though probably not for everyone.

Ok another video game that has multiplayer on gog.com that I am confused if I should purchase it or not.

Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura has multiplayer, but I always remembered it has GameSpy so I never purchased it when GameSpy shutdown back in 2013 or whatever.

Does its multiplayer work now? On the gog.com store page it says Co-op.

So I can still play its multiplayer through A Server Browser List or what?