Half good, half bad.
TL;DR Mixed bag. Interesting ideas, but they are not really shaped into an interesting game. Worth playing once. (If endings concern you, the 3 different classes has different endings.)
I don't know how to feel about this game. There are really interesting mechanisms there, things which weren't even in Diablo II, but also there are important mechanisms that were already present in the first Diablo, and somehow got omitted here. And the whole game feels like as if the creators were just reading a recipe and making a product - without adding too much flare, own ideas. I mean, look at how the game starts. There are tons of fantasy stories starting like this, average Joe gets portalled away to fantasyland. But still an interesting start. And somehow the game forgets that this was the start, and only gets mentioned through the game like once or twice (my the main - supposedly - sexy adversary). I guess they wanted to create a world with more interactions than Diablo - and still, no matter how many pointless random npcs are put into towns - to make them feel teeming with life - they fail to add a living background and also somehow they fail to notice that we are outsiders, we behave differently. Odd. (It is also pretty brave that ALL of the vendors are looking like fat Rob Scheider clones. :D ) Compare it with the first Diablo: it had 8 NPCs, but all of them were interesting, because they had nicely written opinions about every quest you had. (And a superb voice acting of course.) Focusing on the right things matter, guys! Not just splashing together ingredients. Felt like they had a checklist what to put into the game, but they failed to use these ingredients creatively...
- Inventory. Omg. Witcher 2 level crapfest. They invented consolitis before consolitis. (Later I read somewhere that they were planning the game to work with gamepads...) You cannot check items with a simple hover, you have to click a lot, you cannot order them, they are just get put in the order of pickups, and most annoying you don't have a proper doll with items, you just get a differently colored background for your currently equipped items. Oh boy... Like if they wanted to create the most useless inventory ever.
- Another 21th century silliness existing in this game is the "A bomb blast when lvl up" effect. It is just simply annoying. Constant regeneration is another "modern arpg" thingie, which shows that they tried to invent at places, but maybe not at the right places. Felt like they were ahead of its time when it was about certain trends... which trends I never liked (simplification, being bombastic etc.)
- The mentoring Airship Captain stays a typical part of the fantasy game recipe. But stays a papercut character like others. And he pops up at the most uncomfortable moments: you know that very rpg thingie when an npc starts talking with you and tells you that "aaah, and now I take you another place!", and all of your subquests and chances to buy items in the current town disappears? Nox does it multiple times. In later parts luckily it changes its mind and offers you the possibility to buy before leaving, but still annoying it can happen to you early game. Especially because repairing your items is very important in this game!
- Oh, talking about repairs! It is so funny that they didn't want (or couldn't, weren't allowed?) copy Diablo's simple system which tells you on your HUD that one/some of your items are getting rekt soon. Because if durability goes to 0 say bye-bye to your rare or expensive item. I had multiple occasions when a weapon/armor of mine vanished, because I haven't checked it every few minute or so in the inventory... (Yes, you have to enter the inventory to check durability problems...) It is super annoying! When I'm lucky, I notice it in time, then I have to switch to weaker items, because there is no repairman in a middle of a dungeon... and the next one is 2 areas away...
- The other end of the spectrum when you are in an area which is opened from a town, and you literally has to hoard useless items, and run back to town every 10 mins or so to sell them, because it is the only sensible way to get better items from merchants... or doing those horribly overpriced repairs!
- Controls are a bit clunky. Sometimes you have to double click to pick up something (it is very annoying when you meet the "thief" mages...).
- Skills... well, at least they tried... not really diverse, I solved most of the bigger problems with the warriors "charge" skill.
- The final battle with Hecubah was meh. You'll understand why when you get there. She is sadly one of those idiotic bosses who have a lair designes for you to survive and win...
All right, let's have some positive things, because they exist, too! Yay!
- Rewards you not rushing into the fray (especially when meeting those pesky mages and other casters later on). (Though the difficulty is very uneven - no hardship whatsoever until the mages, but boy, are they really hard! Or those onehitter little bosses later on.)
- Little secret areas. They won't give you super rare stuff, mostly just some gold, but I enjoyed their addition. Nice flavor thingies.
- Traps are good ideas, though most of them aren't really problematic. Good thing that there are completely lethal ones, too.
- The unique line of sight system. Really great, the only perfectly crafted element of the game.
- Artstyle is interesting, sometimes even cute, reminds me of Majesty (funnily enough there was only 1 month between their releases). I missed some uniqueness of the monsters, they feel small, and not really memorable.
- "Lord de Seis" before Diablo II! Boy, those stealing mages, how annoying they are! But the idea is great! And it won't freeze your system, just like de Seis did it in D2 - they deleted the Thief property with a later patch, because they couldn't stop the occasional freezes, lol! And de Seis could only steal your equipped potions, while these guys can steal practically any equipped item (though they primarly go for your weapon and chest armor).
- Mimics! Nice addition from AD&D! Though after the first encounters you will hear their latent noise, and recognize them from far, but you will still find some nice surprises! :-)
- Pushable objects! Not a basic thing for an arpg! Sadly it wasn't perfectly implemented, because almost every item can be pushed from swords and armors on the ground to tables, which can be really annoying when navigating through a level... you get slowed, because you left some cheap armor on the ground, or you just want to get out of a room full of tables. :/
- Creatures drop items which they can possibly have. E.g. bugs won't drop you full plate armors just like in Diablo games. ;)
- Diminishing XP! Which means every time you kill the same monster you'll get less and less XP! Really new idea for 2000! Diablo II later had a different system, based on your level, but Nox did it first - in a different way. While the idea is great, it gets mildly annoying when you dispatch a hard enemy - but you get barely any XP, because you killed say 5 of them earlier.
All in all an interesting game, with uncooked ideas, and it could have been much, much better with those ideas fully materialized.
3/5.