I’ve been playing the fairly new computer RPG, Arcanum, and I must admit I’ve been enjoying it, for the most part, but am getting increasingly frustrated with it.
The world is neat, and the technology/magic angle has been integrated fairly well. It’s got a great look-and-feel, and the system seems to make sense for the most part.
However, the NPCs are dumber than newborn puppies. Combat happens too often for this system to be as dumb as it is. I can’t IMAGINE playing it in real-time. The NPCs will happily charge an enemy ten times stronger then them, when they have no hit points left. Sometimes they will stand in place. My healer will gleefully keep curing poison on me instead of trying to kill the thing poisoning me each turn. When the combat is over, he has no power left to heal me or cure the poison because he used it all up during combat. I have no control over this.
I can’t pick their skills, either, so I’ve got all these ranged weapons I can’t train them to use.
I guess I’m too used to the Baldur’s Gate-type agmes, where I had a lot more control over the NPCs and could actually turn them into useful companions, rather than just pack animals that sometimes help out in combat.
In addition, the rulebook, while charmingly olde-fashioned, could have benefitted from being less charming and more instructive. Information is scattered around it in an often confusing fashion, and a lot of space is devoted to stuff that just doesn’t matter. If the history of orcs and gnomes is so important to you, put it in the game - that space in the book could have gone to far better use.
It’s still a pretty fun game, but the fun could definitely be increased if the combat was less frustrating.