Dungeon Defenders, developed by Trendy Entertainment dropped onto the Playstation and XBOX Live networks this week. Surprising no one it's yet another, Tower Defence game. But does it do enough to set itself apart from the rest? In short, yes! Read on to find out why.
Dungeon Defenders starts up with a story we've all heard before. 4 Heroes, some crystals. Something about defending them. The stories thin on the ground, and loosely strings together the games stages. You start off having to create a character of your own, one of the four hero's, Mage, Squire, Huntress and Monk. These are essentially 'classes', they each have different roles on the battlefield, the mage and squire are your basic tower defence characters. They place down towers and blockades to kill the oncoming orcs. They each have unique towers and abilities of course but they're a pretty standard affair. The huntress and the monk are a little more interesting, the monk is a supportive class using his auras to slow and damage enemies over time, as well as healing allies, whilst the huntress is able to place devastating traps.
Once you've chosen your character you're thrown into the first level. Depending on whether you selected local or online you'll be with up to 3 other online, or local players (split screen). Together you must defend the crystal, and slay the oncoming orcs, elves, and other evil things that come out of the purple doors. Sounds familiar I suppose? but their are several elements that set Dungeon Defender apart.
For one, instead of just placing towers. You as your character, can go around wailing on enemies. On many tower defence games you're stuck watching your towers decimate enemies. The 'build' phase is the only significant phase and the combat phase is just a matter of watching your tower building strategy play out. Not on Dungeon Defenders however, this game is fast paced and forces you to get stuck in yourself. Towers are effective but your character can also decimate enemies on the battlefield. Depending on the character you picked you have a range of close quarters and long range attacks and special abilities. In higher waves, when there's over 100 enemies on screen at a time. It can get really intense. The combat itself is pretty mindless. I mean there's no block button, no real technicality to it - but it's fun to slay 10s of enemies at a time, and watch the chaos play out on screen.
The tower placement itself is a pretty standard affair. You have a limited number of defence units, and collect mana from killed enemies to both upgrade and create new, towers. The towers have limited range and AOE's that you must efficiently place across the battlefields chokepoints in an effort to defend the crystal. It isn't easy, and identifying the primary locations to defend and distributing your defences appropriately is as challenging as any other tower defence game.
Another differentiating factor is the character progression. As you play Dungeon Defenders the character you chose will level up. You can then distribute stat points and create a character build. If you want more damage from your towers, want more health yourself, want more damage for your hero, want more impacting special abilities, want towers with a faster rate of fire, and so forth, you can do all that - and the manner in which you distribute your stat points will have you playing in a very different way.
My monk for instance, low health, with a focus on DPS from his auras, has to play in an extremely supportive manner. Dies quickly in close quarter combat (but I engage anyway), and focuses on assisting teammates with their defences. Slowing enemies down as they travel through crossbow turrets, for instance. It's satisfying to create a character build to fit your own playstyle.
Beyond leveling up, you also have equipment. Enemies drop it, you can pick it up and equip it. There's also a tavern (hub) where you can sell and buy equipment and pets. As well as upgrade them and test out your character on one of the DPS dummies. The only downfall to these mechanics is that perhaps, at times the game can feel a little bit of a grind. For instance I started on normal, and I simply had no means of winning with the character level that I was, at stage 2... so it's important to move the difficult around (there's 4 difficulties for each map as well as variants like 'survival' and challenge modes like 'no towers') in order to have a less frustrating experience. Unlike other tower defence games it's not entirely strategy that comes into play. If you're character sucks, you might have a hard time on the normal and higher difficulty stages.
Speaking of stages, there's around 10 of them. Each featuring unique 3D worlds, and usually introducing new enemies. Orcs, Skeletons, Mages, Dragons, Demons, Elves and so on are common to see coming from the purple doors. Each require different strategies. Mages for instance need to be dealt with first, as they can heal their allies a great deal if you leave them be. Trolls on the other hand act as tanks, and Orcs, grunt enemies. Skeletons seem to come back to life if they have a mage in proximity. The enemy variety helps keep things enjoyable and adapting to different enemies should keep you on your toes. Having solid defences then seeing a dragon come and fly right over them can really throw you off.
As for sound and visuals. For a PSN game, both are top notch. It doesn't have the highest polycount, or texture resolution but it looks smooth, as it should, and sound is pretty much as you'd expect. Sword slashes, mages fireballs, and so on, sound like you'd imagine they would.
There's not really much more to say, for a tower defence game Dungeon Defenders gets almost everything right, and introduces elements (character progression and combat) that keep the game fresh, and fun. It's fun to play, it's satisfyingly difficult, and it keeps you coming back with the various modes, options, classes, enemies and character progression.
Loved
- Character progression - it's fun and adds lifespan to the game
- Diverse classes with different playstyles
- Visuals, it's cartoony, but it looks great
- Gameplay, tower defence and mindless hack and slash combine into something glorious
- 4 Player online co-op / 4 player split screen. (drop in/out)
Needs Improving
- The menus were clearly built for PC. You can change the 'interface scale' in the options screen but it's still a little clunky at times. Fortunately the games not that technical in what you need to use the menus for that this gets frustrating.
Verdict
Like tower defence? like action-rpgs? buy this game. You won't regret it. Especially if you have friends either locally or online to play with. (8.9)
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