Computer RPGs

Plus carry around literal tons of garbage required to craft stuff so you're always overencumbered and your inventory is full, plus spending half your playtime in menus as you're looting, buying and sorting every component you find.

My first playthrough was with the tech route; why wouldn't I pick such option considering the setting (fantasy world undergoing industrialization)?

I eventually found a super cheesy approach that made tech fights relatively easy.

You could make tons of molotovs for cheap (parts would respawn in the garbage bins). I think I figured out some way to dump a huge number of them without using AP or minimal AP.

While I love Arcanum, the world was one of kind (especially for the time), combat was not satisfying at all.

I'm not sure how it aged, but i distinctly recall it having "real time combat", that i don't think even the developers tried before shipping. With that turned off, it is barely usable, but even then i recall at the beginning what kind of items you find randomly in the first few hours very much determine how easy the early game will be.

with all that said, it is still worth playing for the story and the npcs though. it was a story crafted with love.

I started it two times and quit soon after battling with awful interface and ridiculous starting difficulty. On the third try, though, I persisted and the game revealed otself to be amazing. It is the first RPG that I immediately restarted after its end to try a completely new character build (I'm usually "been there, done that" for replayability), and it rewarded me with completely new facets of its story. A true gem among cRPGs, try to persist through its starting hours.