Nox Archaist

Nox Archaist is a good game. Not just good given the technology. Not just good for nostalgic gamers. It is just a good game. NA is an open-world party-based RPG where you can go anywhere at any time, if you can survive. This is true for the very start. Near the first town, you can walk into high-level areas, some of which will be a challenge even for a full-leveled and equipped endgame party. Despite this lack of barriers, you're always given plenty of warning signs of danger, so it never feels cheap. The leveling system is clever. It uses both traditional leveling from experience, plus a proficiency system where your skills improve by doing them. Want to get better with a bow? Just equip one and attack with it and your ranged skill improves. The main benefit of leveling is that your statistics improve, and you choose how to distribute new stat points. Stat points matter because nearly all equipment requires a minimum number of appropriate stat points in order to equip. The dynamic balance of proficiency/levels/equipment allows you to build your characters however you like, while offering tempting rewards for specializing. The combat system has some tactical depth, while generally avoiding being burdensome. You can also choose a quick combat option which I really appreciated when encountering lower level foes. The best feature of the game is exploration. This is a much larger game than it seems. Not only does it feature many castles, towns, dungeons, and islands to explore, it also features a mind-bogglingly large underworld full of wonders and dangers. I estimate that even after exploring the entire (and considerably large) surface area, you've only seen about 1/3 of the places you can explore. The story is fairly pedestrian. There is an evil cult, doing evil, and you're trying to find and stop it. But settlements are full of sidequests and people to talk to. Your journey is the real star here. You won't regret exploring Nox Archaist

Nox pushes the envelope of 8-bit computing and eliminates many of the frustrations of old time gaming (e.g. inventory management, starvation, poison) with a very smooth menuing system. The developers really took modern day sensibilities into account with their design decisions and it shows. While it's clearly influenced by Ultima, Bard's Tale, etc. it's not a clone, and in fact the plot. combat and game mechanics are superior, and the artwork is original. I am a great fan of old RPGs as well as 4X games such as CIv & Crusader Kings. If you like any of these types of games, there's a high chance you'll enjoy Nox.

…but it is hidden away in a user experience that is simply not for me. I find the font pretty hard to read, which got on my nerves pretty fast. Due to the way the Apple II renders graphics, a lot of color artefacts are generated, which make the font and terrible, and the rest of the graphics suffers from that, too. I tried playing fullscreen on 13'' and on 24'', but it did look good on either one, I also tried windowed, and while the game looked somewhat better, it ruined the immersion for me.What's more, even on a fast machine the game is slow to respond to commands. After 4 or 5 hours, I decided this game is limply not for me. I have played similar games in the 80ies on the hardware available at the time, and enjoyed them tremendously, but that was all we had at the time. But since then 35 years have passed, and I'm happy we are no longer limited to a couple of pixels on a TV. I don't care much that this pushes the envelope of 8-bit computing, because I see little point in that. YMMV.

Nox Archaist is what would have happened if Richard Garriott and Origin Systems had continued making Ultima games after Ultima V on the Apple 2, and not switched to the PC for Ultima VI. This game was written in 6502 Assembly and runs on the original Apple //e (with 128kB of RAM). It also of course runs under emulation on your current machine, which is probably the way you'll run it now. The game comes bundled with a cross-platform emulator is it's the usual double-click and play. However, if you're on Windows 10+, you may want to download "Nox Archaist Companion" (search on Google), a free app that I wrote that runs Nox Archaist in a more efficient manner and has a number of extra features. This preamble done, how's the game, you may ask. The short answer is: it's a great RPG, get it. The longer answer is: This is a tile-based RPG that will run you for over 80 hours. It's got some quality of life features over the 80s-90s games but it doesn't have auto-mapping. So you're going to have to do it yourself (which is part of the fun!), or use a 3rd party app such as Grid Cartographer (commercial) where you can load user-created maps for Nox. There are dozens upon dozens of quests, puzzles and battles galore. Your party can have you and up to 5 other characters, chosen from a dozen possible companions around the world. You can swap them at any time by sending them to the inn and retrieving others. In fact, this game is pretty unique in what it allows you to do. You can play with a full party. You can play solo (it's hard but doable!). You can have any character be anything. Assassin? Check. Paladin? Check. Summoner? Check. The trick is the simplicity of the system: you have 3 base attributes. Strength, agility and intelligence. By spending level up points on them you'll allow your player to use different weapons, armor and spells. And their skills will improve accordingly. So although it's a classless system, anything goes. Get it. You won't be disappointed.

I'm coming at this game as an old-school *PC* RPG player - a lot of old-school Ultima, Might & Magic, and Gold Box games. So, I was excited about Nox Archaist. It is definitely an RPG in the Ultima tradition, with keyword conversations and one-PC created, and a party you build up as you explore top-down overworlds, towns, and dungeons. It does bring a lot of neat features to the table - a good beginning, an updated interface (including a quest journal!), and opens up quickly. I don't feel like there's a lot that needs to be updated, though the feel is definitely nostalgic, and you have to get used to the keyboard shortcuts. That said, the game itself was built on an Apple II, which is a system I never had. I think part of the enjoyment is the nostalgia that the system itself brings, but I just don't have that nostalgia even if the style of game is familiar. I find some parts of the interface pretty clunky, like the response time to keypresses and the green/purple offsets. I don't blame younger players for not liking older titles for similar reasons (graphics, input methods), so I feel obligated to note them, even if I do really like the game underneath these issues. It seems silly to have complaints and still give a 5/5, but I think with some caveats there's a great game here for the right player.