OnlySP talks about the retro dungeon revival and cites Vaporum and Operencia: The Stolen Sun to argue the genre's possibilities.
More information.The old-school dungeon-RPG genre never really went away, but, like a miracle, bigger names than ever are now paying attention to its crunchy allure. The industry saw, of course, the triumphant return of polished real time RPGs with Legend of Grimrock and its imitators, the constantly expanding Etrian franchise on DS and 3DS, Severed by Drink Box (developer of Guacamelee), and, arguably, the growing popularity of Shin Megami Tensei and its spinoffs.
Last month saw the console release of Vaporum: Steampunk Dungeon Crawler, which OnlySP reviewed, as well as Zen Studios's Operencia: The Stolen Sun on Xbox One and the Epic Store.
Both hearken back to the first-person dungeon-RPGs of early 3D--though with a beautiful layer of modern graphics and accessibility on top--but also approach the genre in very different ways. In the interest of exploring what is possible in grid-based retro games, here are some of the biggest ways that the two titles differ.
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