So I tried to play Arcanum years ago and I stopped after getting to Tarant just because the town is so big and I got overwhelmed with the number of quests I could undertake. (I was born after the golden age of RPG's so my experience playing RPG's were more linear affairs like Final Fantasy VII and Chrono Trigger)

I stopped playing and just now re-installed Arcanum about a month ago. I like the premise of the game. Steampunk meets magic = awesome. But after playing it again for over a month (and getting a lot farther than I had last time) I'm sick of it. The balance issues have completely turned me off to the game.

I really really wanted to play as a technology/gun user. I made a dwarf character thinking their race's aptitude for technology would be handy. Mistaaaaaake! *sung in an operatic fashion* Technology users have to carry an inordinate number of doo-dads just to make their "spells" work. I put a lot of points into the gun technology skill tree and I fabricated some good guns, better than I should have had at that point in the game, but still I did piddly damage.

So I took some advice that I read on the Internet that magic users or melee fighters are way easier. I made a new character, a human mage. I breezed through the game. Magic is ridiculously overpowered. And all you need to do to replenish your stamina (read mana) is just run around or rest for a while. Whereas when I played my dwarf guy, I would have to backtrack to town to buy more bullets or buy supplies to make my own bullets.

I got to level 45 out of the possible 50 with my mage before I got sick of the game (and I'm not even close to being done with the story). The story is interesting, don't get me wrong, and the world is so well developed but I'm bored! Basically whenever I get into combat, I cast the same spells and kill just about everything in 2 or 3 hits. Plus, I have a spell that for 80 stamina instantly disintegrates the target -- granted it leaves no corpse behind to loot, but for the insta-kill, I'll take it.

I know this game is positively ancient by today's standards, but it just had so much potential to become the RPG that introduced me to a more old school style of game, but the problems in its execution have held it back.

Sigh.