Pox Nora - Planar Disturbances

The TBS genre is one tough nut to crack, because there are too many things that can go wrong and disappoint the fans. Units and factions must be balanced, the mechanics must work flawlessly, and on top of that you have to make sure that the players have some degree of freedom as well. Thus, it’s no wonder that few developers have the courage to tackle the subject, although it does happen every once in a while.

Pox Nora is not your typical TBS, on the other hand, because everything about it is slightly different from other games. To make things even more interesting, there are RPG and trading card elements thrown into the mix as well, just to touch as many sensitive subjects as possible. At a glance, the combination sort of makes sense, as long as the actual gameplay is fun and enjoyable.

In the case at hand, it almost worked. Pox Nora may be just a stew of body parts stolen from other games, but they seem to come together almost perfectly, at least until you experience the final result. What truly hurts is that some of the bad elements could be easily removed, such as the pay-to-win problems, but that is obviously not going to happen anytime soon, which is a shame.

The game plays very much like chess, except that you get to choose from a deck of champions at the beginning of the match. You can either play it versus another player or try it in two versus two, in case you have a friend to join you. The entire battlefield is split by a grid and the units move and attack according to their available action points, while Nora is the substance that allows you to summon more champions or cast spells.

Most of the gameplay is quite fun and balanced, which makes it a shame that you are able to break this balance by purchasing items and champions without working for them. Even if the maps are quite small and the visual quality is a bit too rudimentary for this day and age, the battles get exciting if you stumble into a worthy opponent, so it would be nice to just be able to enjoy it.

All things being equal, Pox Nora still has a chance to turn things around and become a very good game, with only a few vital modifications. However, it already lost a lot of people by this point, which probably wouldn’t come back if things got fixed anyway.