Review: 9th Dawn Remake (Nintendo Switch)

9th Dawn Remake is an action RPG developed and published by Valorware. This title packs a punch for one or two players in an expansive open world. Between dungeon crawling and card deck building, you’ll spend many hours on this game before following the main story.

This remake comes from 9th Dawn, originally released in 2012. I never played the original, so I can’t compare the two. However, the game’s description offers “a re-written updated story, new and bigger dungeons, and more action-packed content”. I appreciate all this game offers, but 9th Dawn Remake was overwhelming for me. The amount of content is amazing, and it ran smoothly docked and in handheld mode. The developers were ambitious, and it worked. However, I don’t see myself returning to this game, and that’s on me, not the game itself.

The local lighthouse keeper has gone missing, and you go on a quest to investigate the disappearance. Throughout the gameplay, you’ll earn loot, buffing yourself up to take on stronger bosses. Each time you enter a dungeon, there are puzzles to solve, chests to loot, and enemies to destroy. When entering the same dungeon, monsters will respawn, but the chests will not.

Combating these monsters is simple enough, but I didn’t like the way the controls felt. The attack can be set to manual or auto, and I chose auto. However, I still had to aim, which is done using the right analog stick. Luckily, I found a staff early on, so my character had a ranged attack, because the hatchet didn’t quite cut it. It only hits in front of my character, which makes sense, but the range was awful. Slimes were kicking my butt in the beginning.

That said, you can have a melee weapon (swords, hatchets, etc.), a magic item (a staff), and a ranged weapon (bow and arrows) equipped at once. The more weapons you have, and the more you upgrade them, the easier combat gets. Pressing Y allows you to dodge roll out of the way, but your stamina, health, and magic regenerate on their own. If needed, you can get up close and personal with the enemies. 

The dungeons also have a map you’ll need to find, which shows the percentage of how much you’ve completed. You can also find ability orbs that you can trade in for special abilities on a skill tree that’s 13 pages long–yeah, I know; it’s massive. The skill tree includes spells, creature taming, passive skills, temporary buffs, and more. In addition, your weapons gain experience points and will level up every time you use them. You’ll never run out of things to work toward. No matter what you do, you’re simply rewarded for playing the game.

Attribute points are also rewarded, though I’m not sure how. It might be from leveling up. These points are used to increase your strength, dexterity, endurance, intelligence, and wisdom. However, the game doesn’t tell you any of this. To figure out my upgrades and skills, I needed to open the menu and check every single option to see if I had anything available. Quick pet peeve about the menu—pause doesn’t actually freeze the game. If you find a new weapon, you’ll need to open the menu to equip it, but do so when no enemies are around because they will attack. I realized that if I needed to pause the game for some reason, I had to open the map.

Finally, 9th Dawn Remake offers some mini-games, such as fishing and a card game. The card game is introduced right away. I thought it was the combat system and a tutorial of sorts, so I learned how to play. I sunk my first five hours of gameplay into this card game. When I got out of the game, I finally realized it had nothing to do with the main quest.

So, I forced myself to move on for the sake of writing this review. But then that’s when I came across the fishing mini-game. (I had no idea where to go to begin the main story–the hub world is large.) The fishing game wasn’t as time consuming as the card game, but it was still enjoyable. Essentially, the fishing game was a watered-down version of Vampire Survivors, which I also enjoyed quite a bit.

Overall, 9th Dawn Remake is a solid dungeon crawler that you’ll sink hours and hours into. The main game is fun, but I found the mini games to be more fun. I believe the reason for this is because of the controls. I felt the movement was awkward and attacking wasn’t always fluid. The game doesn’t explain much to you, either. When I unlocked my first ability, I had to Google how to use it. If you can get past the controls, then you’ll probably have a ton of fun with this game.