Dungeon Defenders is a unique recipe for a game. It takes elements from tower defense, RPG and 3rd person action to make one surprisingly solid game experience.
At it’s core, Dungeon Defenders is a tower defense game. When you take the tower defense aspect and mix it with a very in depth RPG system, you find that you have one of the most addictive titles this year. The basic concept of the game is defend dungeons from all sorts of enemies like Trolls and goblins. At the start of your game you are given the opening options of choosing your character. You have four classes to choose from. You can choose between a Monk, Squire, The Apprentice and the Huntress. Each has different qualities and types of weapons and traps that they can set in the game. This is a nice addition in any game to have multiple classes to choose from, but I found this especially useful considering the games rich co-op experience. I reviewed this title with our very own bdar5k and the ability to set a tower inside of a tower really comes in handy if you’re using the right class combination or if you play 4 player co-op.
You’ll find that mana serves a very important purpose in the game. It’s used for currency as well as the resource for casting your towers during gameplay. Mana is not entirely hard to come by,but the game runs a fine line of having a hefty supply while allowing you enough free to keep to cast your defenses while playing. A lot of your time will be spent in something called “The Defenders Forge”. This a station you go to in between rounds or when you are in The Tavern, which serves as a home base to launch mission and level items. In the forge, you can view your loot items you pick up as well as sale any items you would like to and level your equipment. Most all armors and weapons are upgradable to various levels and can make a huge difference in several of your heroes stats. Each time you level something up the cost of leveling will increase per level. While you may pay 275 mana to upgrade your pet to level 2, you may find it to be 5,000 to upgrade him to level 6. The game does a nice job of making things balanced, and always throwing you a challenge.
The gameplay is what is just another part of what makes this game addictive. It’s 3rd person action title all while having RPG and tower defense elements. Each level has a set amount of waves in which you have the sometimes daunting task of defending your Crystal. The first may feature 5 waves and 5 levels in you may be doing 8 waves. Before each wave there is a “build” phase. This gives you the chance to go around you current dungeon and gather loot, repair defenses, upgrade and repair defenses as well as check the round spawning chest that are around the area. After the build phase you move into the “combat phase”. This is where the meat of the game takes place. While the first wave may have 68 enemies, you will come to the final wave on some levels that will give the challenge of 500 enemies. There are always ways to gain more loot, mana and XP. As each level gets considerably harder, you find that sometimes it may be better to boost your level by playing previous levels of the game. Each character has a current level cap of 70 and you’ll spend a fair amount of time trying t reach this cap.
Each dungeon is designed very different from any previous you may have been in. This is always challenging you to come up with new ways of defending said dungeon. In some levels you will have the sometimes daunting challenge of defending multiple crystals. This can be a maddening challenge, even with another person with you. Unlike other tower dense games, you are not able to just let your towers do the bulk of the work. Due to the overwhelming amount of enemies that are coming from each point on the map, you’re required to always be moving and trying to work all sections of the map. Either way due to making each level feel truly like a different type of challenge, it always feels fresh and does not get stale to any
means.
I was impressed with the games sound. Not only the music, but everything from the enemy sounds to the sounds that each unique weapon and tower makes. More importantly, not only does everything sound great all the ambient noises and sounds feels right for the tone of the game. Most of the voice work in the game sis from the store clerk in the tavern or the narrator, but both are well done and not there enough to be cumbersome.
Dungeon Defenders as a whole is a solid purchase and a unique entry into the immense collection of games on XBLA. The achievements are not easy to come by, but if you mange to emerge yourself into the game they should come all in due time. With the game featuring not only online co-op, but couch co-op as well you really can’t go wrong. With most games today demanding the high 1200 MS point price, it’s nice to know that a game that’s asking that will give you your moneys worth and a whole lot more.
