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.
I'm assuming you are here because you're already aware of this amazing gem of a game, and are trying to find this old classic to re-play the epicness. If you haven't, you missed out, and you must get it. It is beyond comparison to any modern RTS, or any RTS at all that I can think of. Moving on - working on Windows 7 64bit home premium. Zero crashes so far after about 6 hours of playing. Only giving 4 stars however because the sound is not working correctly. You cannot hear 90% of event based sounds (ie. imps digging / rocks falling / creatures screaming at each other while fighting / swords clashing etc.), and the other 10% you get stuck with a loop of a fireball exploding until you save and re-load (though sometimes it stops when you just save and before reloading). If you are looking for a full experience of DK2, you might want to either try and find a fix for this, or run an old system with WinXP (worked fine on that for me). If you are fine playing with the sound glitch (or without sound altogether), and don't mind missing out on the full ambience, this works great on Win7 (and XP). On a side note - I would happily pay for a sound fix if GoG manages to come up with one ;)
