9th Dawn II vs Vaporum: Lockdown
9th Dawn II
9th Dawn II is the exciting sequel to a pretty awesome game series. Similar to the original game, 9th Dawn II provides players with a wide, open world of Caspartia, which consists of a myriad of places to discover. But instead of locking you to a single class even before you start playing, the game adopts a more Runescape-like (old-school) approach where your skill use determines which type of character you’ll be. So, if you want to be a mage, simply use magic often.The game also features a much-improved GUI, which makes managing your inventory, spells, world map and quest journal easier. However, many players have complained that the starter gear for the class they are trying to build just costs too much. It’d be nice to lower the prices so newcomers can at least have some gear and be able to slowly ease into the game.
9th Dawn II, like its predecessor, is the sort of old-school RPG that appeals mainly to fans of the genre. Unless you really enjoy hard, old-school RPGs, you might find this game too difficult to get into or too grindy to be enjoyable.
Vaporum: Lockdown
Vaporum: Lockdown is a first-person, dungeon crawler featuring old-school grid-based dungeon-crawling gameplay with real-time combat, fun Sokoban-like puzzles, cool steampunk-themed setting, and an intriguing mystery to uncover. In this game, you play as a scientist, Ellie, who’s trapped within a locked-down facility called the Arx Vaporum filled with murderous robots and mutated creatures. Will Ellie be able to escape the place in one piece? What will she discover as she makes her way through Arx Vaporum?In terms of gameplay, you’ll be moving Ellie, the protagonist of the story, one grid at a time. Turning to face a certain direction before you can say turn a corner also requires an extra tap of the keyboard. However, this also means that you can actually move like a crab in this game if you’re sure of the path you’re on. Like most dungeon crawlers, Vaporum: Lockdown comes with devious traps, enemies and puzzles. Traps in this game can be rather easily avoided as long as you got the timing down right.
The interesting part about this game is that combat plays out in real-time here, unlike any other old-school dungeon crawlers we have experienced before. This means that it is entirely possible to loop a sequence of “move and attack” when facing something stationary so you can avoid getting hit at all. However, this also means that more mobile enemies can be trickier to slay – it all boils down to timing really.
There are also fun Sokoban-like puzzles in this game. Most of them involve having you to move crates around to fill holes in the ground, block danger from the path you want to take, or even to serve as paperweights on metal pressure plates. For hardcore treasure seekers, the game even has several hidden compartments that an inquisitive explorer might be able to find, each of these alcoves usually come with some nice rewards. There is a sufficient variety of loot, and you can get better gear as you progress.
Being a prequel of the highly-successful Vaporum, Vaporum: Lockdown definitely does the original game, and the Vaporum universe as a while, proud. Besides the few new features here and there, the gameplay is generally similar to the original title and hence, would be instantly familiar to fans of Vaporum. The storytelling here is great as well, offering so much more lore than before, and of course, the fantastic atmosphere here will pull you right into the fumium-obsessed world that Ellie Teller lives in.