Once again this is an absolutely superb, traditional RPG with hours and hours of gameplay. It is an amazing feat for a solo developer. That said, while it’s hugely enjoyable, it does have flaws. Not insurmountable in terms of having fun and winning, but occasionally frustrating. Isolated, none of them are too much of an issue. Combined, this makes for some significant problems (particularly for iOS players). The lack of minimap is one, as is the very limited fast travel system.
The main issue with 9th Dawn II is probably its addition of a lot of jumps and platforms. I admit these are elements I strongly dislike in any game, however I persevered. The developer has done an amazing job in making this game playable on iOS – BUT at the cost of a lot of gameplay window, which makes some dungeons difficult to even impossible, in at least one instance.
There are many cases where you’ll have to hit a lever while on a moving platform. I compared gameplay videos of the Steam desktop version to my iPhone version, and while they may get ages to view and aim at a level, an iOS player may get a couple of seconds. As a result, iOS players will have to turn platforms to “Slow”. Sometimes you’ll have to just aim blindly at a corner and hope. Sometimes I force quit and reloaded to clear the text in the top left, so I could actually see if there was a switch or a grappling post there. In once instance I needed to hit a lever across a chasm, but you couldn’t see the switch from the shooting point, nor the door it supposedly opened, which meant you were aiming blind, with no idea whether you had hit it or not. You would have to jump two gaps to get a side view of whether you had succeeded or not. I never did.
I’ve seen a lot of people on the forums claiming mages are overpowered and fighters underpowered. I didn’t find this to be the case. I played fighter all the way and found it fine. There are some balancing issues in certain areas. TIP:level up as many weapon types as you can. (This is made easier by Dual Wield – use two different types). I never, ever found a special one-handed sword, and when I finally got to the western section, my shop-bought swords weren’t powerful enough to kill an enemy in my path. I was very nearly nerfed by this. Eventually I managed to evade it and outrun all other enemies, and finally reached a town where I could buy the next level of weapon. Throughout the entire game I do not recall ever finding a special one-handed sword, until I reached the stage of finding dragon weapons. I found copious amounts of special weapons in other weapon types, none of which I could use because I had only levelled one-handed swords.
All in all though, I would highly recommend this. But I think given the choice again, I would play this as a desktop game, not a mobile game.
9th Dawn III is also in development.