Looking for good games similar to Arcanum

Hey guys, new to the forum so let me apologize in advance if this thread already exists....recently I dug out my old copy of Arcanum (I never finished it the first go round years back...killed my pc) and am fully sucked back in. Does anyone have any suggestions for some kick arse games similar to Arcanum, in game play and really the vibe/overall feel of Arcanum. I loved all of the Fallout series, Diablo series...don't know if that helps but man, I am jonesing for some good games to play! Any suggestions/help would be greatly appreciated....ohh also I am open to suggestions for PC, PS3 and 360, but am really looking for PC games. Thanks to all for helping somebody years behind!

 

The original Fallout was made by the same key people and is very similar, to the point that some people consider Arcanum "Fallout in a steampunk setting".

There's also Fallout 2, it has basically the same gameplay mechanics as the original but more content, although the content is mostly low quality and the setting is very inconsistent, it's filled with juvenile humor, pop-culture references and tasteless sex jokes to the brim. If Fallout 1 is campy, Fallout 2 is outright goofy. Just goes to show you how different developers can fuck up a sequel.

All other Fallout games aren't even worth mentioning.

P.S. Edited the thread title. Please lay off the caps.

 

If there isn't actually something specific you are omitting, don't say that you are.

 

Arcanum is unique. You most propably won't find anything too similar too it, and I would suggest considering that as a plus.

However, as you presented you favourite game range going from Fallouts to Diablos, I dare to propose something in the general RPG atmosphere. Planescape: Torment is the game I particularly have in mind. The game has one of the best - if not the best - plot ever created for a computer game. It was made by Interplay, so it's all in the family.

I wouldn't be so harsh on F2. it doesn't have the atmosphere of F1, that's for sure, but as for possibilities, it's a bigger better Fallout. A game with the possibilities of F2 and atmosphere of F1 would crush the world with its awesomeness, but the way it is, playing both from time to time is great as well.

I personally enjoyed Fallout Tactics, possibly because I didn't think of it as a sequel to the Fallouts but simply as a different game in the same world. Quite a lot of the players expected it to be a third part of Fallout, hence the great and widespread disappointment leading to even greater bitterness and hate.

 

sorry for the "all caps" and sorry for the "..."

I've played all Fallouts and that was the reason I bought Arcanum years ago (some of the same developers). I own Planescape and tried it on my old laptop but had some major freeze problems. I'll give that another shot, but I am still looking for games, even somewhat similar to Arcanum. I have never tried Neverwinter Nights or Baldur's gate and those are the only other games I've heard mentioned with Arcanum. I'm still open to suggestions if you guys have 'em. Thanks in advance!

 

The original Baldur's Gate is kinda meh, and the PS2 versions don't deserve to carry the title, but Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn and the expansion pack, Throne of Bhall, are totally worth playing at least once. They're absolutely brilliant.

The original Neverwinter Nights was okay, and its two expansions are pretty good, but fan-made modules are where the game really shines. NWN2 has the worst plot and ending I've seen in ages, but it's worth buying for the Mask of the Betrayer expansion. MotB is incredible in every possible way.

For the PS2, Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana is absolutely addictive and one of the few games where the sidequests are so engaging that I've frequently caught myself saying 'FUCK, I forgot the main quest again!' (I know you said PC preferred, but damn it it's a brilliant game.)

 

Thanks! PC is preferred only because I am getting back at it, but I play PS3, PS2, some old PS1 and 360

 

Since nobody else has done it yet, I will:

Fuck off.

 

grakelin, what the hell is your problem?

 

He's saying he likes you, in his own way.
It's his way of saying:

"Welcome."
"Make yourself at home."
"Eat my food."
"Drink my drink."
"Use my furniture."
"Do my wife."

That sort of thing.

 

I almost thought you were quoting the Poetic Edda for a second, there. Odin wasn't one to have just the one wife though.

 

A warning: The Witcher is good, very good - if you can get it to run without frequent crashes.

I used to be able to run it with an ATI Radeon9700 or something card. But that card has a problem with its fans and will overheat if used for a long time. So later I moved to a NVidia card, EN9800GTX+. Using earlier drivers (pre version 169) Witcher can run with lowered settings, but with all later drivers Witcher will constantly cause the video driver to stop responding. Vista can recover from that, yes; but Witcher itself will crash after a few video driver restart.

There're a lot of people with similar problems, and not just NVidia cards - they can happen on ATI and XFX cards too.

Running in compatibility mode, windowed will delay the crash for me (from a few minutes starting a new game to about 15 minutes), but never prevent it.

I'm still trying to find a way to play the game, but I'm more and more leaning closer to "why bother". And I have actually purchased the game twice - first the vanilla, then the Enhanced edition. The Enhanced Edition came with the horrible Tages disc protection system, so I end up downloading the Enhanced patch again (total size is 3Gb) and use the vanilla. The latest 1.5 patch removes the dependency on Tages, but I'd rather never have it installed on my system.

 

Ahh.... I miss this place something fierce... The grand old times we had, bashing the crap outta newbs.

 

Well, to be brutally honest you might want to stop buying games then.

Developers have had (limited) success against piracy using Tages DRM and others, so it sure as hell isn't going to start getting less popular.

My advice? Put up with it, these things are designed by professionals and as such and privacy concerns you might have will most likely be addressed by someone else before you get to the thing.

I've run the Witcher EE on 3 or so systems now, it seems pretty stable.

 

You'd want to re-read my post very carefully.

I avoid TAGES because none of my other games use it, and with 1.5 patch Witcher doesn't need it too.

TAGES doesn't work perfectly on many systems - including my SONY DVD RW. When I got my Withcer EE, I installed it from there and it always take a few tries for TAGES to recognize my disc. If you search the Witcher official forums you can see a lot of people having the same issue.

So I see absolutely no problem avoiding TAGES, which is not needed anyways.

The disc-check only SecureROM works mostly fine for both software developers and users, and companies looking for disc-checking software should consider that instead of TAGES.

I don't hate disc checks; before recently Blizzard removes the disc check on D2, I happily go to my shelf to fetch my D2LoD disc every time I want to play.

The only form of DRM I am against is those "calling home". If the company is no longer around then your purchase will be cheated out of you - it's a rental, not purchase. This form of DRM also need to see which computer you're installing on; hence a hash of device ids are used. This means if your computer crashed (e.g. HDD is dead, which is not an uncommon problem), one of your activation go *poof*. You will have to email or pay for the phone call (which may be overseas and in the middle of the night) to see if they would be mercy and give you back a game you have purchased.

That kind of DRM is what I have a problem with. User loses big time; purchase became rental. Pirates lose none, because in their copies such DRMs are already removed.

And I am a software developer myself, specialized on data security. I don't pirate anything and you assumed way too much.

And if you would share the information of the three systems it would be very helpful. I'd like to know what OS, video cards and video driver versions you're using in those systems.

 

Just spotted a few copies of The Witcher on ebay, hope to score one today. Man, I miss the old mall independant game shops, could always find great older games cheap.

Is anyone familiar with Soulbringer?

 

Asus X55SV laptop, that's a Core 2 T8300 w/ nvidia 9500M GS and 4GB of RAM running Windows 7 64 (Most recent). w. 191.07, using the modified inf from http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/.
Old Desktop, E6300 with a 7600GT and 2GB of ram, was running Vista 32, driver version: 179.91.
Older Desktop, AMD64 3000+ with a bog standard AGP Nvidia 6800, was stable as far as I can recall.

The last one has been put in the bin at this stage so I can't give you the driver version for it.

What did I assume, though? Apart from you hating all DRM software equally (and not just Tages). I never said anything about you pirating your software.

Pirated versions do often just remove the DRM, but I guarantee you that removing it is not-so-easy compared to the old cd checks, especially when various measures such as filechecks and/or remote server access activations are performed. I can't say I agree with some of it, but thinking it's better not to install something like Tages now is rather naive. It's not going to get any less popular.

Being a software developer has little to do with it, anyway. I've been programming for 6 odd years now and I still don't have a clue.

Anyway, it's your system. I was calling you out for hating DRM's in general (which is how I read it).