Vaporum

Wanted to wait till completing the game on the normal difficulty before writing.
Preface: Never played any grid based real time games in my life. Mostly shooters old and new and been slowing getting into in more JRPG's and turn based RPG's in general so take my criticism with that in mind.
What does it offer: A 8-10 hour ride with RPG perk building for your voiced character. Puzzles are try and error you will not get some of them unless you know their coming with a guide or this isn't your first crawler. Enemy models are recycled throughout the entirely of the game with the final acts having one new model which is reused 2 additional times but given "abilities". No new game plus or additional rewards for beating the game. Single ending that just ends the game without much additional Narrative closure.
Reasons to buy: Art design of levels and rare steampunk style story and setting. Lore of what happened and why everything went wrong are told through notes, environment and diary logs following similar trends as Bioshock storytelling. Combat is tight and challenge is welcome.
Reasons not to buy: Leveling takes a lot of grinding through and cannot pick more then 3 perk trees to complete, enemy ambushes and instant death traps and many puzzles are not explained via notes or context clues in area leave a frustrating and unfair experience sometimes.
Final thoughts: Good 8/10 with guide use. Advice for builds do as you please but put points into rifles, you'll thank me later with the knock back.

I bought this game because I was looking for another experience like the two Legend of Grimrock games (my first experiences with a grid based dungeon crawler). While this game doesn't reach the excellence of those games, it did scratch the itch. It has only a single character that you play as, which I honestly found easier because you don't have to balance all of the party members at the same time. It has a cool steampunk setting, and the story is decent, although the voice acting isn't great. I wish they had opted to not voice the protagonist, but that's a minor complaint.

Ignore the recommendation and Read first:
Honestly, the puzzles, the story and the general feel of the game were a bit generic. Nothing too crazy to break your experience and want to stop playing but just underwhelming. It also unfortunately felt like a relatively lazy Bioshock wannabe story-wise (without getting into spoilers). Absolutely no issue with getting inspired from somewhere and wanting to emulate such a masterpiece, just could have been done a lot better.
Unlike other people I didnt experience any crashes, so Im sure it's compatibility issue/driver issue.
Overall I would recommend it, given how it was the studio's first game. It definitely wasn't a bad attempt and I saw there is a continuation of the story which I will give a try. Just, probably not worth the full price.
So if you want to scratch that Legend of Grimmrock itch and have a few extra dollars and this is on sale, that's a good way to do it, although iirc LoG had plenty of free mods that had better puzzles and story overall despite not having a "Fully-voiced main character."

Steampunk RPG heavily inspired/influenced by Legend of Grimrock, although it doesn´t reach the same level of quality as LOG does. The story is decent, often presented to the player in form of diary entries and voice messages. The graphics is decent. RPG skill trees as well. These are however the only things FatBot did better than Almost Human in LOG I.
Level design is average, secrets are very difficult to find - usually it´s some small, hard to spot button hidden in the shadows or in a corner of a wall part. The puzzles quite simple and not very fun. The worst part for me is the combat - the game feels like it was designed as an fps with a grid movement system thrown into it at the last minute. The enemies are quite tough and there´s a lot of them. There is a lot of closed arena fights too - in Serious Sam/Doom 2016 style, the player can´t leave the room until all enemies are dead. Sometimes these fights are accompanied by a metal music.... Overall I don´t think Fatbot fully understood how a proper dungeon crawler should have looked like.
6/10

Easily recommended to fans of dungeon crawlers, it holds its own against the best in the genre but suffers some of the same pitfalls such as occasionally relying too heavily on obscure puzzles to move forward. I would also recommend you check out Operencia, StarCrawlers, Infinite Adventures, Legend of Grimrock, Might and Magic X, Bard's Tale IV, Dungeon Travelers, Sakura Dungeon, or Etrian Odyssey.

+Visuals, environments
+Options, rebinding
+Voiced dialogue and main character
+Difficulty options
+Auto and manual saves
+Intuitive controls
+Choice of rig/class
+Variety of skills, weapons/armor
+Choices on level up
+Automap
+Gadgets
+Variety of builds
+Time slow/stop

-No character creation
-Some obscure puzzles block progress
-Frequent backtracking
-No minimap
-Interactables not always clear
-Items/keys need manual use, not detect inventory
-Many junk items, no selling/convert
-Leveling can feel slow
-Some instant death trap gimmicks
-Infrequent autosaves
-Some speed puzzles
-Unclear direction at times

This game is great. There is not exactly many Steampunk Dungeon Crawlers, but even considering Dungeon Crawler games globally this one is probably near top. I like the upgrade system, which offers numerous playstyles (tried Thauma and Tank, now will do Ninja build). Even on hardest difficulty (played as tank) the game is fair except maybe towards the end, where having 4 enemies at tail at all the time is just ridiculous (took like 2h to defeaf final element of this game on hardest difficulty with Tank build).

Pros:
- Leveling system: Enough rigs and enough skills (with just right amount of skill points) to try to play this game multiple times.
- Level design: I like the diversity of floors. This is what I didn't like much about first Legend of Grimrock, where it was all "stone corridors" and "different stone corridors" until the end, where it was "metal corridors".
- Enemy variety: Just enough enemy types and they differ enough to warrant different approach. Even Shock Spider and Acid Spider require different strategy, because Acid stays for some time on those 9 tiles.
- Puzzles: Could be more difficult, but otherwise okay, I liked the one with lamp in dark room, you know which one. ''Lockdown'' put too much puzzles in game IMHO, which reduces desire to replay the game as you already know the solution and it's just a padding afterwards.
- Story: Cliche Storm but oddly enticing.
- Voicing: I like this game is voiced. I like banter between party, for this reason I like Wizardry 8 a lot.

Cons:
- You need to pull item from inventory to use it, instead of just clicking on object it interacts with. I know that this was solved in "Lockdown".
- Can't reset skill distribution, but that's the one I can live with.
- Most secrets are accessed by super hidden buttons, some of which person virtually can't spot unless they already know they're there. ''Lockdown'' solves this better by making secret rooms partially visible and mostly accessible by solving extra puzzle than finding hidden switches.

I wonder how that Ninja Elemental Warrior build will go, anyway. ;-)

Legend of Grimrock brought back the old school dungeon crawlers and made them cool again. Vaporum is one of those games that came after LoG and is surprisingly good, nearly as good as Grimrock in my opinion. Its mechanics are very similar, but with unique twists and features. That, together with completely different setting (steam punk) makes Vaporum an original and interesting game that every fan of dungeon crawlers should have in their collection.
You play as a single man who enters the mysterious tower full of traps, puzzles and deadly machines trying to kill him. You explore the tower and discover the secrets behind that dark and frightening construction and its inhabitants. And you fight numerous enemies. I played on hard difficulty and the game wasn't too difficult - except those (way too frequent) moments when you press the button or enter the room and suddenly you're locked in a very small area with huge number of enemies attacking from all sides. Also, I was a bit disappointed with the secrets - which I love to discover by myself. While initially they were based on some clever ideas, later on they become purely based on hidden switches that are difficult to find - who has time and patience to observe every inch of every wall to find the small switch that opens hidden stash?
But apart from those minor issues the game is very nicely put, everything works perfectly and bug-free, skills and level progression are interesting and allow for different builds. The story while not groundbreaking, fits the overall setting well and kept me interested throughout the game. If you're a fan of "modern" dungeon crawlers - this is something you have to play.