History YMMV / ArcanumOfSteamworksAndMagickObscura

* EvilIsCool: [[{{Necromancer}} Geoffrey Tarellond-Ashe]], [[DemBones Torian Kel]] and [[WaifProphet Z'an Al'urin]] are some of the most popular followers among fans, despite being considered evil in the game (and thus not being available for recruiting in most of proper playthroughs). It helps that, compared to many other followers, they have very distinctive personalities, intriguing backstories and great voice acting.

* EvilIsCool: [[TheNecromancer Geoffrey Tarellond-Ashe]], [[DemBones Torian Kel]] and [[WaifProphet Z'an Al'urin]] are some of the most popular followers in the game, despite being considered evil in the game (and thus not being available for recruiting in most of proper playthroughs). It helps that, compared to many other followers, they have very distinctive personalities, intriguing backstories and great voice acting.

* ComplacentGamingSyndrome: Fate Points are given for completing certain quests and can be used for things like guaranteed crits, good reactions, or instant full-heals. About the only thing a savvy player will use them for is taking the high-end gear from NPCs without them noticing.

* SugarWiki/MostWonderfulSound: The menacing sound that plays every time you equip the Aerial Decapitator, directly taken from the weapon's [[Film/MasterOfTheFlyingGuillotine cinematic source inspiration]], which, in its turn, took the sound exempt from the ''[[https://youtu.be/MP-RRubj9fU?t=40 Super 16]]'' song by [[Music/Neu]].

** Finally, at the bottom of the barrel but still no less annoying, are the blue zombies. Not only are they at least twice as tough as any other zombie, they cause fire damage when they strike. Sensing a pattern here?

* DifficultySpike: The Black Mountain Mines can catch unprepared players off guard, introducing a lot of very tough enemies. Enjoy the rock sprites, seething masses, and ore golems which do damage to any melee weapons you try to hit them with. Also, there's tons of traps all over the place that will damage you if you're not careful and a huge maze-like dungeon that will certainly get you lost if you don't know where you're going.
* EnjoyTheStorySkipTheGame: It's often considered as having an excellent story, dialogue choices and level-up options but with mediocre combat gameplay. The combat can get in the way of the story, as there are a plenty of unskippable fights, some of which can be quite hard, [[EarlyGameHell especially at the beginning when the player character can die in a few unlucky hits]].

** Torian Kel is remarkable for being one of few potential followers who can join the Living One with low intelligence and also being a rare character in the game who talks to the dumb protagonist as if he was talking to the one with normal intelligence, without commeting on or mocking their weird way of speech. While it can be easily dismissed as developer's oversight, there is a possible in-universe explanation for this. Being an undead warrior [[FishOutOfTemporalWater who was resurrected a millenium after his death]], Torian observed how civilization, way of life and habits of Arcanum drastically changed during his absence and it is likely that he had noticed how [[LanguageDrift language evolved in thousand years]]. It is entirely possible that he doesn't consider the dumb player's speech as a deviation from the norm, but simply takes it as granted that it's how people talk in the modern day, and thus doesn't see it necessary to correct the Living One's manner of speaking.

* GoddamnBats: Orc bandits and the Molochean Hand can be a threat early in the game, but they're quickly reduced to an annoyance that pops up any time you're wandering the eastern half of the map. Their loot isn't even worth that much if you sell it. The only legitimately good loot from them, are the rare giant sized plate mails, worn by Ogre Destroyers in high-level orc groups, but they're so rare that you can play through the game several times without even meeting them.

* TheScrappy: Before patches, [[HaveIMentionedIAmADwarfToday Magnus]] was considered more of a liability than an useful companion, because a bug allowed him to remain in the party without fulfilling his condition (killing the Schyler family instead of bargaining with them), but as a result made him prone to random mood swings and leaving the Living One half-way through the game for no explicable reasons. Even then, after patches made him crystally clear about his reasons for leaving right where you recruit him, some players still can't stand his [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold arrogant and self-important behavior]].

** If you somehow provoke to fight [[spoiler:K'an Hua]] during the evil walkthrough, you may notice that while he isn't the most challenging opponent overall, he knows [[OneHitKill the Disintegration spell]] and uses it well.

** T'sen Ang if you choose to free the half-ogre slaves. Everybody will turn hostile and they can be quite difficult.

* TheWoobie: Randver Thunder Stone loses his father to exile long before he's ready to inherit the throne, and [[spoiler: he gets ''no'' endings that aren't at least somewhat [[BittersweetEnding bittersweet]]: either his father returns to the throne and he isn't even mentioned in the ending, his father [[DyingMomentOfAwesome dies heroically]] and allows him to become a good ruler, or his failures as a king lead to a civil war that either causes him to lose the throne to a stronger candidate, or drives the dwarven race to near-extinction]].

** Followers may negatively react to whom you choose to attack, based on their alignment and that of the target, as well as its prior hostility. While it's not a bad idea in principle, this mechanic unfortunately doesn't account for certain situations in which attacking someone or something is at worst morally neutral, and at best outright positive.

*** Choosing to attack an ''already hostile creature'' before they had a chance to see you.

** [=NPCs=] automatically come to pick up any items that lay on the ground. While it can be useful in case you want [=NPCs=] to equip some hexed items, it gets very annoying with followers when they stash their inventory with garbage and you have to manually remove it to decrease their load.

* ScrappyMechanic: [=NPCs=] pick up almost any item that lays on ground near them. While this behavior can be abused by a savvy player (such as having [=NPCs=] to wear poisoned amulets, or having Lukan's half-ogres to pick railroad spikes as weapons so they couldn't deal proper damage with their fists), it gets annoying very quickly when followers start to pick up any trash that slows down their movement (to the point they can casually pick up 5000 stone boulders that take up almost the entire inventory space) and, because of weird AI priorities, often makes them to automatically equip inferior weapons and armor than those you assigned to them.

** While it isn't necessary to kill [[BonusBoss Stringy Pete]] in order to advance the plot (though it's a possible option if you screw up the peaceful ones), if you dare to challenge him, prepare to fight with perhaps the toughest enemy in the game, as Stringy Pete is not only one of the best NPC melee fighters and has the strongest magickal equipment in the game, but he also summons five pirate skeletons to his aid, who are as strong as Pete is.

** The Siamese Twins Skulls quest chain is one of the most horrific sidequests ever written for a CRPG. The plot follows the party trying to figure out the meaning of an anthropological curiosity found in the Tarant's warehouses. After searching for some items, deducing some evidence and talking to a number of well-informed individuals, they reach a mysterious laboratory off the coast of the main continent and stumble across the AwfulTruth: [[spoiler: members of the Gnomish Council have been kidnapping women en-masse to use as breeding slaves for their own personal bodyguard caste of half-ogres. Not only have numerous women been essentially ''bred to death'' by these experiments (as half-ogres usually only reproduce with other half-ogres, meaning a human female/half-ogre male coupling will kill the mother at birth), the royal family was also disposed of this way. A chilling diary entry reveals the queen gave birth to several half-ogres before she died.]] The worst part of it all? ''You can't do a damn thing about it.'' In a chilling instance of TheBadGuyWins, there's nothing you can do to punish any of the people responsible for this, [[RetiredMonster since it happened decades ago.]] Everyone who could be avenged is long dead, [[spoiler: breeding camps of half-ogres have been set up to continually produce more bodyguards]], and all of your contacts [[spoiler: are [[KillAndReplace killed or replaced]] by agents of the council after presenting evidence of these crimes]]. The questline ends with [[spoiler: all the evidence back at the laboratory going missing]], meaning there is no hope of ever getting justice for what was done. All of this comes right the hell out of nowhere, and has gone on to be one of the more infamous parts of the game. The only way to get a slight amount of vengeance is by setting up a series of events for the ending wherein [[spoiler: the Gnomes are ousted from power in the Unified Kingdom and their financial ambitions crumble as a result]], but even then the game doesn't acknowledge it.