Torment and Arcanum

[Ratty Sr.]

Investing in Electricity will allow you to eventually make a Tesla Gun, which is one of the best weapons in the game.

Huh? Tesla in Arcanum? WTF? Are you telling me that Troika designers thought Tesla was some über-tech term and didn't know he was a real-life person? Or did they know and simply didn't care? Either way, something called "Tesla Gun" in a fantasy roleplaying game makes no damn sense.

 

[clercqer]

I suggest you ask them, not us.

 

[Tannhauser]

*Psst* Ratty, they also had the 'Tesla Rod.'

 

[Ratty Sr.]

*Psst* Ratty, they also had the 'Tesla Rod.'

Hey! My penis is called Tesla Rod! COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT!

 

[Suicide Candidate]

Hey! My penis is called Tesla Rod! COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT!

Jesus.
I had the most horrible mental image of Ratty running around waving his cock and screaming "LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!"

 

[clercqer]

I had the most horrible mental image of Ratty running around waving his cock and screaming "LIGHTNING BOLT! LIGHTNING BOLT!"

While squirting blobs of fizzling man-juice.

 

[alec]

Huh? Tesla in Arcanum? WTF? Are you telling me that Troika designers thought Tesla was some über-tech term and didn't know he was a real-life person? Or did they know and simply didn't care? Either way, something called "Tesla Gun" in a fantasy roleplaying game makes no damn sense.

I have no doubt in my mind that the Troika designers know whom Nikola Tesla was, Ratty. There are also Tesla Coils in Arcanum and, as Kotario pointed out, Tesla Rods. Seeing that you need some expertise in Electricity to use and/or build them, it's quite acceptable to assume that they didn't thought "Tesla" was some sort of über-tech term.

You guys are trying to tell me that a human with firearms isn`t an incredible tough character to build? Seriously that´s a big surprise, after a few years lurking in the Arcanum comunity and all the complaints i saw about that, and following the development of Chrisbedoes patch, that was made in the first place to give tech characters a chance and to increase the dificulty with half ogres with mellee and magic chars since they had such an easy life i`m having a hard time believing it was solely my problem.

I'm sure it's not solely your problem. I'm sure that other n00bs have had similar problems as you.

Nah, seriously: I'm not unfamiliar with the Arcanum community myself. And yes: it's a fact that technologists/gunslingers are harder to build and handle than melee fighters and mages. But really only at the start of the game. Some difficulties -- like the fact that Virgil can't heal technologists with his magic spells once your character is too technological -- are really small problems that have simple solutions (take Jayna Stiles as a healer/follower or give Virgil bandages to heal you with). And as I said: once you know where to find the good guns or once you know how to make them, the weapon progression for gunslingers becomes quite balanced, IMO. Some will state that lotsa schematics seem useless, but that depends on what kind of character you play. In fact, the same thing can be said of the spells: a lot of them seem pretty useless (Call Fog, anyone) and still mages are considered easy characters to play with. Another one that is often heard, is: "But technologists have to carry so much ingredients around with them and they get encumbered very easily and that sucks." I never had that problem. I collect the ingredients I need and stash them in some abandonned warehouse in Tarant or in an Inn. Problem solved.

Playing a technologist/gunslinger is harder than playing a mage/melee fighter until you reach Tarant, and when I play Arcanum, Tarant is usually the second city I visit, right after leaving Shrouded Hills. After Tarant, my technologist/gunslinger can kick anyone's ass. And you can quote me on that. 8)

 

[Karkow]

You just made me want to give Arcanum another try...

With my very own Gunslinger

*bang* *bang*


...



I'm sooo bored.

 

[Quaid]

You just made me want to give Arcanum another try...

With my very own Gunslinger

*bang* *bang*...

Ditto!

I know what you're thinkin'. Did I use six bullets or only five. So, tell me somthin'. You feelin' lucky punk? Well are ya?

*grins evilly*

 

[Question]

Torment is like outpost 2 : divided destiny.The story is so fucking terrific its reason alone to play the game.

The fact the gameplay is pretty damn decent doesnt hurt.

 

[alec]

Re: Fallout essence distilled...soundbites to shut people up

Also, can anyone list CRPGs that they feel are on the same level or at least aspire to achieve the level of awesomeness found in fallout?

There is only one RPG that is superior to Fallout in each and every way and that RPG is Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

Re: Fallout essence distilled...soundbites to shut people up

Also, can anyone list CRPGs that they feel are on the same level or at least aspire to achieve the level of awesomeness found in fallout?

There is only one RPG that is superior to Fallout in each and every way and that RPG is Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.

Riiiiiight...

 

[RPGenius]

Re: Fallout essence distilled...soundbites to shut people up

Also, can anyone list CRPGs that they feel are on the same level or at least aspire to achieve the level of awesomeness found in fallout?

There is only one RPG that is superior to Fallout in each and every way and that RPG is Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.

I've been looking for that for a damn long time, it's worth playing then? *Continues looking*

 

[Sander]

Re: Fallout essence distilled...soundbites to shut people up

There is only one RPG that is superior to Fallout in each and every way and that RPG is Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.

I've been looking for that for a damn long time, it's worth playing then? *Continues looking*

Yes, if you patch it. It's quite bug-ridden. Other than that, a good RPG.

 

[SuAside]

Re: Fallout essence distilled...soundbites to shut people up

There is only one RPG that is superior to Fallout in each and every way and that RPG is Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura.

even in combat alec? doubt that buddy.

also, the arcanum interface is probably inferior to fallout. i'd also say the general atmosphere in Arcanum is a bit inferior as well, however that might just be my love for post-apoc.

but for the rest: Arcanum is one of the better RPG's i've ever played. (it takes some time to adjust to it though, but if you take your time to get used to it, you'll love it: great story, diverse world, insane sidequests, HUGE freedom, pretty big impact on the world around you & so on)

 

[Unkillable Cat]

To clarify my other post...

Arcanum is one of those "great idea, but the devs fucked it up" games. Let's ignore the fact that it was delayed for over a year after marketing began hyping the game and see what the game has.

# It has a huge world, probably the biggest I've ever seen. You can actually walk from one town to the next, without using the world map. But that takes forever to do, but it's nice to know you can.

# It has an atmospheric setting, and a pretty good main plot. And for once, both are done right. You rarely get the feeling that the devs are "pushing it" in terms of storytelling.

# You have enough sidequests to solve, hidden locations to find, items to play with and monsters to slay to keep you going for a while, so it'll take a while to beat this game.

# It has elephant guns. A plus in my book.

# It has the crappiest combat system I've seen in a RPG. Just like the one in Fallout Tactics, it tries to cater to both Real-time people and Turn-based people, and fails at both. Turn-based is the better option, but it's still no Fallout.

# It isn't just unbalanced, in terms of which "class" is best, it has no balance.. A technologist is at a severe disadvantage compared to an old-school melee fighter, and a mage is better than both of them. Archers are laughably bad, mainly due to poor choice of equipment. Some of this is due to bugs, some of this is due to the crappy combat system, but most of it is due to plain stupid decisions made by the developers. These are the people that made Fallout, you know, where every "class" imaginable is a viable one.

# On the subject of mages...the game has 64 spells, 8 schools and lots of magical variety...and yet you only need two of those spells to dominate the game? Two low-level spells at that? If you have Heal and Harm, and stick to them, you're set. You don't need any other "magicks".

# Putting a level cap on the game is another dumb decision. I completed the game with it, and I could gain at least another 10 levels after I had reached Level 50. I still can't think of a single reason why this game needed a level cap.

# The NPC's are all boring, flat and have uninteresting stories, with the sole exception of Virgil, who happens to be the NPC you start the game with.

# While most quests were quite fun, and some memorable (the big X-Files type conspiracy quest was a good one) there was one quest that just made me wonder what the devs were thinking (if at all) and that's the "Blessing Of The Gods" quest.

There are a dozen gods in the world, and each has a shrine for you to find and pray at. Praying at these shrines gives you a boost to your stats. But if you pray at them in the right order, those boosts stack and eventually become permanent...or something close to that, anyways. The thing is, the only clue you get to the praying order is a painting on a wall, and a vague one at that. You have to figure out yourself what the symbols on the painting stand for, and I couldn't find anything in the game that helped me with that.

To make things even worse, the final part of this quest involves finding the shrine of the main god...which is located so close to the end, that the blessing it bestows upon you is practically useless at that point. And the blessing? +200 HP and Mana. Oh, and it also takes away all those stat boosts you had accumulated during the quest. Considering that this quest involves travelling all over the world several times, this whole quest is just not worth it...which is an odd thing for a quest to do in a role-playing game.

# Another part about this game that irked me...all this time spent on creating a believable world, an atmospheric world, and yet they miss a detail so big you could fly an airship through it. The game starts with your character aboard an airship, the first of its kind, on its maiden voyage. It crashes, you meet Virgil and head out into the world, etc...

Except...the city from which the airship set out from, Caladon, is strangely absent from your world map. Not only does Virgil come from Caladon, and could therefore easily put it on your map, but so did you, because the airship set off from there! Also, when you finally get to Caladon, it's like you've never been there before! If you were never in Caladon, how the fuck did you get aboard the airship?

# And of course, the game has tons of bugs. Even with the latest patch, the game has too many bugs, and despite some of the game's problems having been fixed by user-made mods, the game is still nowhere as good as it promises to be.

In fact, come to think about it, this last bit applies to both Morrowind and Oblivion, word for word.

I played Arcanum, I completed it, and I will never play it again. It was painful enough the first time, I see no reason to play it again.

 

[Josh]

Its painful to say, but i agree with Alec. Fallout comes close, but arcanu, is just that BIT better. As for tech problems, i have yet to encounter a sinle one.

 

[Silencer]

Split and merged.

 

[Per]

Splittage and... WTF?

# On the subject of mages...the game has 64 spells, 8 schools and lots of magical variety...and yet you only need two of those spells to dominate the game? Two low-level spells at that? If you have Heal and Harm, and stick to them, you're set. You don't need any other "magicks".

I got Melee 5, Dodge 5 and used the low-level spells Strength of Earth, Agility of Fire and Hasten. Gives you around 3 million AP to whack away with your non-damaging Arcane Great Sword. Basically nothing in the game ever gets to take a turn.

To make things even worse, the final part of this quest involves finding the shrine of the main god...which is located so close to the end, that the blessing it bestows upon you is practically useless at that point. And the blessing? +200 HP and Mana. Oh, and it also takes away all those stat boosts you had accumulated during the quest.

I peeked in a guide and kept the accumulated bonuses.

I played Arcanum, I completed it, and I will never play it again. It was painful enough the first time, I see no reason to play it again.

I played it through twice in a row and would play it again, if it would run on my computer. Still, here's some more stuff for the list.

# If you have Teleport, moving about the world is a breeze. If you don't, say, because you're a technologist, you're screwed.

# There are several schematics, some of which actually work, which cannot be found or bought in the game. Some others can only be found by repeatedly resting for merchandise to reset in shops. Of course, very few schematics really matter.

# Skills, techs and spells are really, really unbalanced in terms of usefulness. I thought it needed to be said again.

# This game has more FedEx quests than Baldur's Gate. Which is funny because it was advertised as breaking away from FedEx-type quests.

# It's got a lame end "twist" along the lines of: "You know that bad boss we tried to set up the WHOLE GAME? Well, he's not really! We're pulling another bad boss out of a hat and you are #tEh f00l3d!"

# The inventory system is pretty much ripped from Diablo along with some other interface details.

# Oh, and the Diablo-style mazes with depressingly linear cave corridors.

# For gun technologists, once you get the Elephant Gun, something you make yourself, there's no need to ever make, find or purchase anything else, until maybe the very last stages of the game. If you're a technologist but not a gun technologist, you're screwed.

# Of course, before getting the Elephant Gun, gun technologists are also somewhat screwed. It's that big a leap in power, which is bad.

# Sometimes in taverns agents of the Molochian Hand might attack you. If this happens all NPCs in the vicinity will freeze permanently in a "Don't hurt me!" stance, preventing any dialogue. This is bad.

 

[Sander]

To make things even worse, the final part of this quest involves finding the shrine of the main god...which is located so close to the end, that the blessing it bestows upon you is practically useless at that point. And the blessing? +200 HP and Mana. Oh, and it also takes away all those stat boosts you had accumulated during the quest. Considering that this quest involves travelling all over the world several times, this whole quest is just not worth it...which is an odd thing for a quest to do in a role-playing game.

Well, it depends on the character your playing whether it's worth it or not, there are also a lot of skill bonuses and a dex bonus, by the way. As a mage, this is most definitely worth it, since it effectively doubles your capabilities as a spellcaster and it gives you some ability to properly wield a sword as well.