Nox™

Nox - a RPG made by good old Westwood Studios. With ~6 hours played as a warrior I already had enough fun with this game for its price of around 6€. 4/5 stars. Why do you ask? Well here it goes: Storywise the game does not take it as serious as other titles like Diablo. But is that bad? Nope. It fits Nox and its world. So, you're this guy Jack. Who lives in a trailer and watches his Tv-Shows and all of a sudden his tv breaks down and finds himself in the world of Nox. Strange isn't it? But why is it only a "good" game instead of a "fantastic" or "best" one? Well, here is why and let me start with the graphics. They are pretty good for their age and fit a RPG with focus on action and interaction - all enemies look different and the world ranges from deep woods, high mountains into the infernal underworld. This is enhanced with great sounddesign and ambience. But this is not even the big sellingpoint. You got there an immersive world, great sound - but what is missing? Right, the dialogue and storyteller. All (and with that I really mean all) dialogues are nearly perfect and well written and voiced. All in all its a gorgues game in that regard. But where is good there has to be bad things. The controls of the game are pretty clunky. Stand near something? Nope. You got to move atleast one inch more to take an item or use a lever (even of you standing right in it). Another let down are the abilities. For example: you play as a warrior and over the course of the game you get those neat little abilites. Five of them. One may say: dont play warrior. But, to be honest, even a warrior can/could use more than five spells from which two are kinda useless. So what does that mean? Nox is a good RPG with some minor issues. Like magic and spells? Play as wizard. Like swords and brute force? Play as a warrior. Like creatures and bows? Conjourer it is. I can only recommend this fine piece of a game. If you can stand those little annoying things, then youre in for a good time.

Main menu is a bit choppy if the graphics are cranked, once the game is running, no problems or issues of any kind. I own the CD Media version from back in the day, It's beside me right now and can say I haven't run into anything different, It's fully patched and runs WAY better now on a " today's rig " than with my Voodoo 3 2000 did on ME . Does the playability and storyline still hold up though? Going back in time to when It came out and right now, It's in the exact same spot. " not as good as Diablo II " It's a tough shadow to be in. You can see the pictures, there is no farming of any kind and a straight through storyline that you can play through. You can sell loot but stats are not changeable when leveling up. Spells are bought through stores and level up the same way Diablo 1 does. I like the game. It can be beaten over the weekend. My copy was on sale, Now I have a backup digital for a cheap price, It worked for me and I can play it on a Windows 10 computer with out messing around, Well, you know, other than opening the directory that it was installed to, right clicking on GAME.EXE and changing the compatibility options to run under Windows Millennium Edition and running as an Administrator. 99% of the gamers here have had to do that to almost everything they install that was made before Windows Vista.

First of all if you want to run Nox on a Windows 10 machine you have to go into the installation folder, find the game.exe and set the compatibility mode to Win98/ME. For that makes the game work even though I have to start it two times (back to Windows on first game start) after booting up my computer. When the game starts it runs fine though. Regarding the game itself I have to say that even today 23 years after it was first released Nox still looks quite beautiful. Visually back then this was stunning for an ARPG game and it was ahead of games like Diablo 2 which released the same year. In terms of gameplay and map/world design Nox was also better than its competitor. It provided quite a bit of interaction with the environment which also other ARPGs at the time didn't have which was achieved with static maps though which unfortunately reduces replay value. The story premise is pretty good. Unfortunately they didn't use the full potential of "guy from our world being transferred to magical world". Jack just accepts his fate and becomes a silent protagonist who just goes through an adventure. So outside the intro and three different endings depending on the class you pick, the transfer between worlds doesn't play any role. Based on the class selection you also start in different areas and have some different early and mid game sections. The last section of the game is the same for all three. The game is pretty fun though and doesn't take itself to seriously. Equipment is static in terms of what and where you find it and there are some problems towards the end as your equipment breaks and there is no way to repair it without a vendor which no longer appear in the last 15-20% of the game. So Nox is a mostly story driven ARPG game with a bit different controls than other games in the genre and more static progression. Good value but unfortunately it never got a successor from Westwood. Would've been great to see what they could've done with a Nox 2.

The core of the game is excellent but except nice graphics and combat there is really nothing much too offer. The story is weak if you can call it even a story and it is also a linear game so do not expect any side quests. It is only a matter of time before it will turn from fun to chore. For me it was few chapters too long and it was quite tedious at the end. If you experience troubleshooting try to use dgVoodoo2. It surely sorted my issues with screen and mouse flicking.

But the only problem is; it wont work, the game seems to run behind a frozen screen, you can hear it but you cant play it. I read on a few forums and this seems to be quite a widespread issue, reverting to a more compatible version of windows doesn't seem to work. If GoG can issue a patch that fixes this then I will give it a more fair review, for now I will review it as a product rather than a performance.