EA RPG From 2000 Just Got a New Update, and It’s $1.39 on GOG
An Electronic Arts RPG from the year 2000 just got a new update 26 years later, courtesy of GOG. Fittingly, the EA game in question has been discounted alongside this on GOG to just $1.39. The new update is the result of the EA RPG being added to the GOG Preservation Program. For those unfamiliar with this program, it is an initiative from GOG to preserve older PC games and ensure they work on modern computers. This keeps them from aging out and being stranded on outdated builds that cause compatibility issues.
As for the EA game in question, it was published by EA and developed by Westwood Studios, a team that was shut down in 2003 but was owned by EA at the time. It was best known for the Command and Conquer series. What it was not well known for was the 2000 action RPG, Nox. While Nox was reviewed fairly well, earning an 81 on Metacritic, and ambitiously included multiplayer, it never caught on; hence why its sequel ended up being cancelled. The quality was there, but not the sales. In the years to come, it became a bit of a cult classic, but in the many years since, it’s been forgotten by time.
To this end, it’s a great candidate for the GOG Preservation Program, and the fact that it’s been made available for essentially $1 means anyone who missed the game back in the day, for whatever reason, can check it out for less than the price of a candy bar, or at least its single-player mode. Meanwhile, those who prefer to get their games on Steam won’t even find it on Steam, highlighting the value of having a GOG account. As for the update, in addition to upgrading the compatibility of the game with modern systems, several longstanding bugs and technical issues have also been fixed.
A Diablo-Style RPG
As you can see from the trailer above, Nox is a Diablo-style RPG, and as you can also see, visually it does not hold up well at all. To this end, unless you have deep nostalgia for this style of RPG and you grew up playing these types of games but missed this one, it’s hard to imagine extracting a ton of joy. At basically $1, though, you got nothing to lose.
Like many traditional RPGs of this era, there’s not much in terms of story. It’s a simple and pulpy story unlikely to leave any impact. In other words, don’t expect narrative or character development to carry the dated gameplay as you would from Baldur’s Gate or Planetscape: Torment.
Those who do decide to check it out because of all this should expect a runtime of about 15 to 30 hours, depending on how much the side content is engaged. Completionists will need more, like 40 hours with the EA RPG.
If this classic PC game doesn’t tickle your nostalgia, there are two other classic PC games, even older, that are currently free for some GOG users.