Nox™

You know that feeling? The one where you realize after a couple of hours that you are playing a truly great game? That's the feeling I had playing Nox. Its one of the games I remember from this era. It has story, mood, gameplay, graphics, etc. - the full package. It holds up remarkably well. Get it, play it, love it.

I played this back when Westwood was still around, and with some changing and fiddling of settings, the GoG version works just as well as it did back in the day. For this, I'd give it 4 out of 5 only because it's not "install and play" capable. While this is my first review, the reason for it is because I recently became aware of a project called "OpenNox". It's a community created update that changes very little to the overall game, but makes it "Install, copy over, and play" capable. It also restores server capabilities, and there's even a few people online in open servers. Blew me away, and was thrilled to see it. This game, along with Doom, started my gaming hobby. All of this aside, assuming that you're curious about the game as a whole before buying. It's an over all great aRPG. The story has a bit of the good old Westwood humor, but is still serious enough to still be a story. There over all are three stories at the start, but all three stories converge at a point for the same ending. Depending on what class you pick, you go through that classes story and that classes starting "city". And depending on which you pick, there are different allies and enemies. Warriors and Wizards hate each other, and Conjurers are mostly chilling on the sidelines. Online play can be done one of two ways. Either in PvP arena's that can be anything from death matches, capture the flag, king of the hill, or even last man standing. Or, you can do a "Quest", which is a series of generated PvE levels that to my knowledge, go up indefinitely. While there is respawning, it has its own "hard core" mechanic with there being a limited amount of lives. You can buy more lives at shops, but they're a pricy 50,000 gold. This was always my favorite way to play, as it was easy and fun making friends and going on "Adventures" with them. So if you have $10 sitting around and are looking for something to play. This is a great one that can still be played online with a quick update, today.

I had a hankering for a nostalgic rpg and tried to get Ultima vii running, got tired of the hassle and loaded nox instead. ran perfect right from the start and the rest was easy goodness fun. first time play thru, no nostalgic glasses. played as conjurer Pros: excellent voice acting, joanna cassidy voiced hecubbah and did a fantastic job of manically laughing at you the whole way. beautiful lush landscapes, all hand drawn, great animations and spell effects. Many different spells to try out, easy inventory, secrets to find, can play as three classes each with their own diff spells. great music, many different levels with different environments. you can charm monsters, summon monsters or just bash their heads in. different armor sets do different things. looting and the list goes on. Cons: looting got a bit tiresome as you just collect the same armor types to replace ones broken by use. which brings me to durability issues, stores are few and far betw long dungeons, armor is constantly being used up, costs to repair are very high. to afford keeping a high resistance set i had to resort to ferrying loot back to store to sell repeatedly as you cant carry it all. you have 2 slots for weapon switching, i used one for melee other for range, but to conserve durability or arrows you had to manually switch out to a 3 cheap bashing weapon which got old. playing as a magic wielder was tiresome too as your mana pool is drained by just 2-3 spells so you end up running back to mana recharge spots over and over in order to combat. as for glitches, quick save often fails so you have to go into the menu and save manually or else repeat game time since last save. all of this makes me rethink playing it again as another class all those cons above are not as bad as they seem, overall the game is very fun, pleasant.

Ran out of space - but short comparison to D2, since same era / genre / D2 is well known yet both games very different. Story: A lot lighter and 'casual' than Diablo's franchise ever was. Whereas Diablo focused on dark, cataclysmic and apocalyptic events in a heavily lore-set world, Nox put you in a world filled with petty conflicts between small towns and villages, often raided by bandits and orcs. All in a fairly comical "matter of fact" manner. The overall 'quest' that you are tasked with, is a touch more serious with bigger stakes of course, and it is still a living world, where NPCs don't knowingly fear the world ending at any moment. Graphics / sound: Pretty decent actually. The vibe and ambiance, is once again less serious a lot of the time, but it fits well into the world. Gameplay: Diablo2 focused a lot on character progression, and character customisation through tech trees, skills and items, however, after that it was a matter of finding the two or so combat abilities you were happy with, maxing them out, and then simply spamming the same ability at incoming hordes of enemies. Nox, on the other hand, doesn't give you anywhere near as much items or elaborate tech trees, but you did get access to a spell book, you could upgrade specific spells through finding them around the world, and the focus of the gameplay is structured more for situational options and choice with regards to what abilities you use and how you would use them, while fighting fewer but harder (and arguably more unique) enemies. This also worked well with the classes, which as mentioned, play very differently, feel unique and different, and have a very different campaign experience to each other despite ultimately finding out they are aiming for the same "goal" as the story evolves. Multiplayer: PvP only with modes like deathmatch & capture the flag. No co-op / story / campaign. Controls: Sensible & customisable, more control surfaces than D2.

A very fun ARPG with about a 90-10 Action to RPG ratio. Gameplay is simple, but enjoyable, focusing on hack n' Slash Action gameplay with plenty of exploration and gear to sort through. It is Linear however, so don't expect something open like Elder Scrolls or Divine Divinity. Chapter based Linear adventure with some side-quests along the way. Little in terms of character cutomization, you choose skin and hair color, name, facial hair, and the color of his starting clothes (which are immediately changed for something better). Background is pre-defined too, as you are a normal guy from Earth teleported to Nox by the villainess's magic spell, so don't expect to make you own character. You get to choose between three classes, each with their own playstyles and abilities, as well as unique story plots. Graphics are quite good for the times, and were never boring for me to look at, and are clearly definable, so you're unlikely to get lost or miss things. Sound and music is the generic fantasy affair, nothing special, but it adds to the slightly satirical high-fantasy themes and atmosphere. Story, well, it's there, not really a main focus for most of the gameplay, and mostly just serves as a source of purpose for your actions. Now here's the thing, while the core gameplay is quite good, and could be great with some refinements and additions, and playing it made me realize I would enjoyed older titles like Elder Scrolls 1&2, and the original Fallouts if they played like this. But, I got this game on deep sale, at only about 90 cents, so despite my four stars, I would actually recommend this game at a cheaper price that it's full 6$. Maybe 2-3$. Also, I hear EA realeased the game for free on Origin, so if you're willing to use that service, you can get it there. Also, to note, and this is important, I neede a patch to run this game properly called Noxsolutions. It couldn't work otherwise, and I found many people had a similar problem, so if you can't get your copy to work, download that.