9th Dawn III

9th Dawn III is a great role playing game, and I absolutely recommend it.

For the first few hours of open world, top-down RPG 9th Dawn III, I was bouncing along, clubbing rats, opening chests, pulling levers and proving my bravery to the citizens of the few towns above ground. I was having fun, albeit in a simplistic way, and the game felt a little more like previous hack n slash release Throne Quest than it did a proper RPG. There must be more, I thought.

So, for the first time, I brought up the in-game map. It's huge, and I'd only covered a tiny portion of it, so I went to explore, leveling up and collecting tails, skins, meat and eyeballs from the creatures I'd slain. I returned to the first town you discover after leaving the game's starting dungeon (Valorware got the sewer level out of the way early, thank god), and realised all those empty buildings were only empty because I'd only ever passed through here at night. Now, all the people who were previously holed up in their homes were manning the various shops, taverns and crafting stations around the town, which they moved in and out of in real-time, even taking certain days of the week off to rest.

I learned to cook (badly) after doing a quick quest for a guy named Foody - sorry, Foddy - I repeatedly failed to create anything edible, but my cooking skill was slowly increasing nonetheless. Eventually I was taking the meat, fruit and veg I'd been collecting whilst out on my travels and turning them into salads, steaks, soups and more via a simple but fun minigame, where you have to keep the heat of the pan just right. The food I was creating gave various status effects when consumed, so it was all worth the while.

I popped over to another building, where I learned about trapping creatures instead of killing them. I learned I could potentially tame any of the animals I was fighting by dropping bait on the ground (which the tamer sold, naturally), getting little hearts to pop out of the creatures indicating they were beginning to trust me, before mercilessly leading them into a trap, at which point I could capture them and add them to my party! This was no longer a solo adventure - I could have up to ten critters following me around, all with their own stats, fighting alongside me! You can even rear them as you play, bringing out a wholly different tactical edge to the fighting.

Later on, when you gain a companion complete with their own gear slots and skills, one who follows you around and fights alongside you, and one who you can switch to controlling at any time, they can also have their own ten creature party. This means you are running around with your own small army, decimating everything, if that's the way you choose to play. And that's before you add a second local player, with their own creatures, companion, and companion creatures. You can adventure solo, or go crazy. It's surprisingly open to both styles of play, as you wish.

After the creature tamer, I found myself taking my various monster parts to an alchemist, who teaches you to combine up to three ingredients at the alchemy table in order to create potions for yourself. The ingredients have their own traits, so if you want to make a health potion, you need to combine items which have the HP attribute in order to succeed. Again, my skill increased whilst my results didn't fair too well.

And then there's the armoury, where you can craft your own armour. Or weapons. Or jewellery. You can weave your own magic, or smelt at the blacksmith, or go mining for ores. And there's fishing, with unique spots around the world to catch different fish. I even found a carpenter, although I haven't done anything for him yet, so I don't know what gameplay that entails.

Every person in the game can be challenged to a game of Fyued, a card game that's a little like the ones from Final Fantasy VIII & IX. Each of the game's NPCS has their own deck, and most of them have at least one 'shiny' card too that's unique to them. Cards are made up of the creatures of the world, with their own attack/defence stats and sometimes elemental properties. Stack higher numbered cards on top of or adjacent to your opponents, and you flip them to your colour - including any cards stacked underneath them. Elemental properties give a bonus to the points on the card, but work against each other in a rock-paper-scissors type of way. If you win the game by having the most cards turned your way up, then you get to choose one of the opponent's cards to add to your deck. There are normal, framed and shiny types for each card, and one aim of 9th Dawn is to collect them all and build the ultimate deck.

When you're not playing Fyued, crafting, fishing, cooking or doing alchemy, you'll be out roaming the 2D world from a bird's-eye perspective, taking part in the main storyline quest, moving from town to town, exploring huge dungeons, traversing fields, snow and mountains, and carrying out side quests for NPCs.

You'll be finding tons of gear while you do so, so if you don't like crafting, don't worry, the game caters for you too. You have a load of gear slots to equip as well: You can wear up to six rings at once, as well as slots for your torso, head, gloves, arms, legs, feet, neck, belt and cape, whilst carrying weapons in either or both hands, carrying a book around, fish bait, a relic slot, and having bolts and arrows equipped at the same time. That's a whopping twenty-two equipment slots to mix and match your gear!

As you level up from killing, questing and other activites, you gain attribute points which can be put into several main stats, increasing attack, defence, endurance, magic and the like. How you distribute these is up to you, so if you want to be a tank/wizard, you can.

As well as gear and stats, hidden throughout the world are unique ability coins, which are used across twelve different skill trees, allowing you to unlock one off bonuses that have a permanent effect on your character, a little bit like Fallout's perk system. They do anything from making you endure more damage to unlocking magical spells with unique properties, so are well worth seeking out. The coins can be spent as you wish, across any of the attributes.

On top of all of that, you also have 38 skills spread over six categories, which increase as you use them a la Elder Scrolls. Each skill affects what you do in some way, so the more you do something, the better you'll be at it. These range from weapon skills such as Axe, Polearm and Great Sword to crafting jewellery, mining and catching and rearing creatures.

In many ways, this sounds like the ultimate fantasy RPG, and in many ways it is. With systems upon systems that gel and compliment each other, as well as a huge variety of side content to keep you busy, and of course working through the myriad of quests on offer, you'd be hard pressed to find another game which offers so much for your money. The fact that it's come from a single man, from the sprites to the music, is miraculous. But this also means it has it's drawbacks, and those are going to put some people off, and that's unavoidable.

The presentation isn't mind-blowing. It's a low resolution 16-bit affair, completely 2D with a simple paper-mario style character animation system, although the UI and fonts are all nice, sharp and hi-res. The music is also big and bombastic - no chip tunes here - although there's no voice acting at all.

The camera is zoomed in quite a way, with no option to adjust it, so your field of view is rather limited. This does make exploring more rewarding though, and gives the game world a kind of Ultima feel to it.

Gameplay itself is also very simple, with one stick to move and the other to fight in any direction. The other buttons can all be assigned to different items, spells and weapons, which you access on the fly by holding a trigger then hitting the button.

Surprisingly for a game this deep and involved, with a 24/7 time cycle and random weather, there's not much in the way of world interactivity apart from smashing crates and barrels. So don't expect to go looting people's houses or pickpocketing their valuables, getting into trouble with the law, or fighting with the locals, because you can't do any of that. You can ride a camel, though, which is fun.

As smooth as the gameplay is and as polished as all the systems are, I know that some people won't be able to get past the presentation. If you can't, you can't; some people don't enjoy the 16-bit style of gameplay, and that's fine. For everyone else, there's so much to like here, and it's all so well done, balanced and bug-free that I highly recommend you give it a shot. For classic CRPG fans, this should be a shoe-in.

A word on achievements

This is not going to be a quick completion! You'll be tasked with... Doing everything in the game. Literally. Clear every town and dungeon, catch every fish, catch every creature, craft everything you can, cook everything you can... You get the idea. If you can do it in 9th Dawn III, you'll need to do it. All of it.

On the flip side, the game caters for this so well. For a start, every achievement you unlock is also tied to an in-game reward, from experience to gold to Scrolls which level your stats up. Secondly, and most importantly, the in game journal tracks all of this for you! You can look up everything you've done and see a percentage of how much you have left to do in every category, and dungeons and towns you clear are marked off on the world map with a big green tick.

This means you should not, under any circumstances, be put off by the achievements! It's going to be a proud completion and a long one, but shouldn't be too difficult.

There are a handful of miscellaneous achievements too, including ones such as casting your first spell, or using the stealth skill to attack a creature from the shadows. These are pretty easy, and self explanatory.

Summary

For those of you who enjoy your 2D, old school RPGs, you're going to find a lot to like here. So much work has been put into the game and its systems, and they're so well balanced and play perfectly. Leveling up your character and your skills is very satisfying, as are the various minigames for the crafting systems you come across. Gwent or Triple Triad fans will spend hours just completing their Fyued card collection across the huge world.

9th Dawn III is a great role playing game, and I absolutely recommend it.