Nox Archaist

[h1]Pure Nostalgia[/h1] Back in the late 80’s one the best games I played was Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny. I remember being totally lost in the game for weeks. During the game, my walls were covered in hand drawn maps and I kept a notebook near to write down notes. It was the first real immersive open world game that I experienced. Since that time, I have not been able to find, in any game, the experience that I had with Ultima V, except with Nox Archaist. This game has been pure nostalgia for me so far in so many ways. Not to mention the fact, it has Lord British in it, he even refers to you as the Avatar. If you miss those early Ultima games, you will be wanting to play this.

God this kills me because I want to love the game but the massive input delay for everything just destroys any potential fun completely. And I say this as a game dev who cut his teeth on an Apple ][e using BASIC back in the 80s too. What's really strange is I have no idea WHY there's this input lag. Sure, it's an old Apple game however Ultima or Might & Magic didn't have it and neither did Deathlord which has a giant map. Even a game with an intensive tactical battle system like Curse of the Azure Bonds wasn't lagging this bad. They get rid of that one thing and this game would improve tremendously. Unfortunately I can't recommend this particular one how it stands currently.

[h1] Nox Archaist - A Landmark in Recreating Old RPG-Journeys[/h1] [i]The Enthusiastic People of "Workshop 6502" did an brilliant Job: Capturing the Spirit and Atmosphere of a traditional 80's RPG-System, with the Tile-Based Look taken from its clearly inspiring Series, the legendary Ultima-Series from Origin Systems.[/i] As a longtime Ultima-Fan this gave me first strong Nostalgic-Feelings because of the iconic (Apple II)-Optics that were familiar. But the Great and Real Strength of Nox Archaist is the fascinating, unique World-Design and Concept of the Title, which makes the Hours spent Ingame so rewarding: It's Fun to Explore, uncovering piece by piece more of the complex Storyline, which adds Depth to the Oldschool-Playing Experience. Bolstering your Party for the growing Dangers and the complete Freedom of Specializing your Characters does the right Thing for the Motivation. I like the tactical Turn-Based Combat-System, where Positioning the Party, efficient Spellcasting and Weapon-Use can make the Difference between Success or Death. The well placed Eastereggs and occasionally spread in Humor is a nice Bonus on top. Rumors spread Nox Archaist had such an Impact, that even Lord British himself traveled the Dimensions and showed up for some Help! Heck, when you told me 10 Years ago, that i would ever type in Keywords to an NPC in my Keyboard or take a Pencil and draw my own Paper-Maps of the Dungeons, i would surely told you that you are a little crazy! Now look at me... Besides that, i really enjoy the "Quality-of-Life-Features" that the "Quick Combat"-Option or the built-in "Journal" do for some nice Comfort, while adventuring abroad the Lands and Seas. So, let's come to my final Conclusion: Nox Archaist, thou dost have my humble Recommendation! The Title is a pure Loveletter to the early RPG-Genre, made by Fans for us Fans! Chapeau!

I've been playing Ultima V for 30 years, and Nox Archaist is the only worthy successor I've played. In many ways, NA is the same as the classic Ultima games: a 2D, top-down, party-based RPG in a fantasy world with medieval technology. Many of the keyboard commands are identical, and interacting with NPCs is the same. I felt right at home. But NA improves on all the parts of the classic games that were painful. Combat is no longer an onerous trudge: obvious targets are automatically selected, monster counts are lower, XP and treasure are automatically awarded instead of making you manually rifle through corpses, and if you make an invalid choice it doesn't cost your turn -- you can choose a different action if you accidentally tell a character to attack when no enemies are within range. Inventory is easier to manage. Magic is more useful and the spells that exist are well-suited to the way combat works; there's even an "automatic" mode that's (reasonably) safe when your enemy is weaker than you. Like the Ultima games, NA expects that you will keep your own notes to track quests, the plot, secrets, etc. There is a quest tracker, but it doesn't care about the many other non-critical adventure threads that turn up casually in conversation with NPCs. You should keep a list of important topics to ask about. Fascinatingly, NA also adds a "loudness" dimension to conversations: each of your statements can be spoken at normal volume, yelling, or whispered, at your discretion. Nox Archaist is written in assembler for the Apple IIe computer. If you have an ancient Apple computer, you can play this game on it. On a modern computer, you play it inside an emulator; Steam handles all of that for you automatically. This is not just a technical flex, it's kind of "method acting" for video games, and the result is that the graphics and audio are exactly like the classic Ultima games. I played those games back in the day, so you can take my word for it: NA feels exactly like a classic RPG. I have not finished the game yet. I guess it has 60+ hours of content, and my party is still just level ~4. Based on what I've already seen, I'm confident the rest will fall into place.

The Font and screen is terrible and mostly unreadable. The options to change this seem purposefully difficult to use. I read they used an apple to program this, but this seems to be an excuse for either bad and lazy work or an attempt to feed on nostalgia rather than competence.

A true masterpiece and work of love.... I always wanted to play old ultima games (4 and 5) to experience them myself to know how those simple graphical games can inspire generations to come and always praised as 'deep' and 'detailed' games. However, I was worried that they may not be accessible to gamers who are not familiar with old systems. When I read that a new game based on a similar engine was developed, I was interested. With the helpful tutorial youtube video made by one of the game developers (Chris of 6502 workshop), I could start without much difficulty and I was instantly hooked. Behind simple graphics and dialogue system (typing name, job, join and other capitalized letters to know further about them), the story, exploration, and combat were a blast. Really deep and interesting puzzles. As I have explained I have no nostalgia value of this game since I never played Ultima 4 or 5. Now I am planning to play Ultima 4 because of this game (reverse causality here ^^). Several tips for new players. 0. If you dont like blurry fonts, you can use alternative fonts as explained in one of the post by the developer at steam. Alternatively, you can download Nox Archaist Companion App developed by one of the loyal fan of the game. I will explain this app below shortly. This app has much clearer font and you can adjust game speed very easily using pull down menu. IN the original game (steam version) you can adjust the game speed by ctrl+shift+w and then 6. But app makes this very simple. 1. I have never used discord before. But the developer of the game suggested that I join the discord server of the game when I post questions here at the steam (BTW, the response from Mark, the developer of the game was real quick here at steam). I am really happy that I did. There are many players there who are very kind and willing to help. My questions were answered within several minutes in most cases. In one occasion, Mark looked into my save file to help me out of a situation I accidentally created. The team and forum members are greatest I have ever experienced in my game long gaming history. 2. I think after certain point, hintbook is really really helpful. Of course if you are diehard old rpg players you may not need it because you are accustomed to drawing maps yourself. However, hintbook really saves a lot of time and you can do every quest in the game. I warn you some puzzles are really difficult (of course you can play without the hintbook by asking questions at the discord server) 3. There is a Nox Archaist Companion App developed rikkles, one of the loyal fan of the game who frequent discord server. rikkles did his speedrun of nox archaist as well. This app is amazing. You can adjust game speed very easily and you can see your equipped items, magic lists, and coordinate in one screen. It is very simple to use as well. In my case, the first time I use it I got help from forum members (one or two questions were enough for me to use this app). In choosing profile, you have to use v.1.1.4 (anyway you can ask about this at the forum. Believe me that it is very easy to use). 4. The game ships with the OST (mp 3). OST can be purchased if you like to have FLAC version of the files. OSTs are superb. At par with the OST of Baldur's gate 1 which I loved. While playing nox, you can play these OST and can immerse yourself with the wonderful and challenging game world. Overall, I strongly recommend this game. This game is an experience. You will experience wonderful world and wonderful forum members as well. Now this game is one of the top 3 RPG games that I like along with fallout1 and baldur's gate1.

Having played games since the early 80's I was psyched for this. The font is unreadable. It doesn't even have to be. I bet this game is good though. The font looks readable in the pics on the store page. The actual game though, not so much.

I like the concept but it’s too burdensome to play, even coming from experience with early Ultimas. I can’t speak for the actual content of the game as I didn’t get far. Input delay is awful even sped up, no music 99% of the time sucks, everything is super fiddly. Some things shouldn’t be replicated. Feels especially bad after Skald and Moonring, which I’d recommend anyone to play before this game.

Feels like a modernized early Ultima. Very satisfying traditional RPG gameplay. Highly recommended if you have any familiarity with Apple era games, as this applies some modernization to the ancient formula. Play can be slow due to the capabilities of the machine being emulated, but if you relax into the zen of ancient gaming you will enjoy it.

Mad props to anyone willing to create a brand new game for the Apple IIe in this day and age, with full on maps and books to go along with it. Just like how games used to be made before the internet. Works great on separate Apple II emulator, and I wish I still had original hardware to play on. Keep up the good work, and I hope this gains more popularity to encourage future titles of this nature. I'll try and recommend it to everyone I know who used an Apple II back in school.