The player can engage in unarmed and armed combat, explore the three-dimensional environment of Omikron City, and talk with non-player characters to progress the story.

Reviewers praised the graphics, soundtrack, story, character models, reincarnation mechanic, voice acting, and combat, but criticised the controls, loading times, and multiple gameplay styles.

The Nomad Soul is an adventure game played from third-person and side-on perspectives in unarmed combat, and first-person view in armed fighting.

The player may explore the three-dimensional environment of Omikron by walking, running, using vehicles known as Sliders, or taking elevators to reach apartments and offices.

They are provided with a computer terminal known as SNEAK, which is mostly used to access character information, call Sliders, open the inventory, and retrieve facts that are vital to story progression.

Magic rings allow the player to save the game at special points and buy advice for key information about NPCs to advance the story.

[6] Omikron exists beneath an enormous crystal dome, which was constructed to protect against the ice age that Phaenon entered into after its sun's extinction.

[7] At the start of the game, the player is asked by an Omikronian police officer named Kay'l 669 to leave their dimension and enter Omikron within his body.

Kay'l 669 asking the player to help him turned out to be a trap: supposedly, if the in-game character dies, the real human playing the video game will lose their soul forever.

They work in tandem with an ancient religious order led by Boz, a mystical being that exists in purely electronic form on the computer networks of Omikron.

Astaroth, who was banished to the depths of Omikron long ago, is slowly regenerating power while using demons to both collect souls and impersonate high members of the government.

[9][11] Cage had written down names of artists he wanted to work with, including Björk, Massive Attack, Archive, and David Bowie.

[9] At the behest of Eidos' senior designer Philip Campbell, Bowie was ultimately solicited for the music, which was done with assistance from guitarist Reeves Gabrels.

He portrayed a character named Boz and the lead singer of an in-game band playing gigs around Omikron City; Gabrels and musician Gail Ann Dorsey also lent their likenesses.

[23] The Nomad Soul was nominated as the best personal computer adventure game of 1999 by CNET Gamecenter, The Electric Playground, and GameSpot, losing variously to Gabriel Knight 3, Spy Fox 2, and Outcast.

[3] AllGame's Chris Couper said in his PC review that The Nomad Soul was "by leaps, bounds and great units of measurement, [his] favorite game of 1999".

[25] Having played the PC version, GamePro's Nash Werner observed that, at its best, the game was "a fresh approach to a neglected adventure-gaming genre".

He likened the graphics to Blade Runner and Tim Burton's art style, deemed the score to be "incredible" and key to the atmosphere, and considered the gameplay "smooth".

[28] Vincent Lopez's PC review at IGN lauded the "fun, but simple" first-person mode, preferring unarmed combat for its combos and animation.

Also subject to reproval were the save game system, "pretentious silliness" in the narrative, reincarnation mechanic, substandard graphics, and "blocky and often poorly animated" character models.

[6] Donald noted that Quantic Dream's incorporation of various styles was a failure and became disillusioned with the promise of an immersive world, judging it instead as "little more than a polygonal prop".

He questioned the originality of the world, considered the character animations "stilted and unrealistic", dismissed the unarmed combat as "silly" compared to other fighting games, and diverged from others on the soundtrack, saying it lacked variety.

[27] Dunham wrote that The Nomad Soul was best described as "Messiah and Shenmue's illegitimate child", disregarding the Dreamcast version as an "obviously rushed" port.

[20][38] In December 2021, shortly after the emergence of the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant, a cutscene featuring David Bowie's character encouraging a government uprising went viral on Twitter,[39] leading to a resurgence in popularity thanks to the game's North America title, themes, and storyline.