The writing and the atmosphere are great. So many details and choices to be made... Unfortunately, the difficulty spikes early ingame and gets worse all the time forcing you to drink an insane number of potions just to progress one inch on the screen. I never quit RPGs I start but I made an exception for this one: I had to admit defeat. Yet... I enjoyed the time I had with it.
I own the game on steam and played it extensively but I somehow gave up on it as it didn't offer as much as I had expected. It's worth mentioning that the game can be launched on a real Apple 2 machine and one should keep in mind that it was created with the limitations of that machine (which I owned in the 80's and have fond memories of). There lie one of the strenghts of Nox Archaist: it's aesthetically impressive for such a dated computer, a real blast from the past, it instantly fuels up nostalgia. But at the same time, the interface is SOOOO irritating (changing equipment is a chore and involves delving into menus and sub menus). Progression is nice at first, the story unfolds with fresh twists and a nice sense of freedom and mystery but then fighting quickly becomes stale and one soon realizes that the amount of things you can do ingame is somehow quite limited: -Not so many subquests -XP value of slain enemies dwindles with each series of kills; it's some sort of level scaling, I dislike that kind of mechanic. -Enemies spawn in unending waves, with little benefit for the player; all it does is slowing the progression and making you lose track of your quest. -NPCs have routines but are sometimes hard to find. It's not always clear where to go or who to talk to for certain quests. -Dungeons, castles and caves are a pain to navigate most of the time; a map and automap feature inside buildings could have been a great help since many are interconnected mazes. -Casting spells, changing equipment, leaving team mates at the inn and picking someone else is tedious. -If you don't use NOX COMPANION (download it already, it's free, if you intend to play the game), everything is slow as hell. NOX COMPANION allows you a few nice modifications. In a nutshell, the game draws a lot of inspiration from old Ultimas but apart from the incipit, I didn't feel as engaged as when I discovered Ultima IV and Ultima V for the first time as a child.
Back then I had an Apple 2 and i dreamt about Ultima V and Space Rogue, both Origin titles of the time. I got Ultima V for my 11th birthday and wasn't disappointed but I never got the chance to play Space Rogue. Years later, emulation and GoG made it possible for me to complete the game and I must say that in spite of a great story and contexte (the boxed game literally came with a book and a star chart if I'm correct), it left me disappointed: -it is quite linear -you need to buy item 'x' or 'y' to move forward most of the time -not too many interactions and NPCs (think about the way ultima's characters sucked you in, you won't have that here) -Newtonian physics and fights could have been quite impressive at the time but not so much nowadays -it is quite short and the universe left at your disposal feels quite empty -due to its hybrid nature (half a space sim during flights and half top down view during space station exploration), the game doesn't excel anywhere So in a nutshell, not a bad game, quite charming but not very good either. The pixel graphics are loveable (if a little sparse) but the mix of space flight and space station exploration lacks the complexity of better games of the same era (Sundog, Elite and some others I might forget).
