Since buying a PS3, the Playstation store has been one of my favourite things in gaming, Wednesday has become a day I anticipate with joy, because on Wednesday the Store has its weekly update. So in mid December when Dungeon Defenders, a PSN title that for different reasons got pushed back, was released I was ecstatic, but does it live up to the very high expectation I had? Let’s find out.
In Dungeon Defenders you take the role of the young Apprentice, Huntress, Monk or pants-less Squire and your objective is to defend the Eternia Crystals, which contain an old evil, from hordes of enemies. This task has fallen upon the youngsters as their parents, who trapped the evil in the crystals, have travelled to a place far away to fight in a war. You defend the crystals by building towers and traps and engaging in good old hack’n’slashing combat. Besides Tower defense and Hack’n’Slash, role-playing elements play a big part; from choosing a character to customizing stats and abilities when leveling up to the large array of equipment.
Playing the game is split in two phases, the build phase and combat phase. In the build phase is where towers are strategically placed around the map. To build these mana is needed, mana can be found in chest spawning between waves and from slaying enemies. But mana is not just used for building and upgrading towers but also for using the two abilities each character have and it’s the currency in the game meaning it can be used for purchasing new gear and pets and upgrading weapons and armor. Buying new stuff is done in the tavern, a place you can go to between missions, besides the tavern keeper who acts as the merchant as well, there’s practice dolls for comparing DPS on weapons and the trophies you have earned trough-out the game is on display is various places in the tavern.
I have played a lot of Tower Defence games and I do enjoy them but when the towers have been placed and enemies start approaching there is nothing to do but watch, luckily that is not the case in Dungeon Defenders. The combat phase is where the game in a lot of ways really shines, here it turns into a colourful, crazy, headache inducing slaughter fest of goblins, elves and the likes. When over a thousand goblins, orcs, skeletons and dark elves starts pouring trough gates it gets mental. Combat is simple but fun, attacks are performed by pressing R2 and hits have a good pop and feel of impact and most important attacking actually helps. The second and very important part of the combat phase is managing the buildings, make sure they are not destroyed or in the case of the traps don’t run out of detonations. To use abilities, repair, build and much more the game utilize a radial wheel, but for easier access it’s possible to 
map four things to the D-pad. With several different entry points for enemies and thus the need to have towers all over the map it can get very hectic, and to make it even “worse” there is the loathed Wyverns just flying past most defences. For combat Dungeon Defenders has an auto-lock system which generally works well, but, and this is part of why I called it headache inducing, when playing as the Squire or Monk, who uses sword, axes and so on, the camera makes a lot of small twitches when targeting other opponents and that partnered with the bright and colourful colour scheme, which I like a lot, makes it quite stressful for the eyes.
One thing I need to make very clear is that Dungeon Defenders is meant as a co-op game, it can be played alone, but doing so on any difficulty above easy is not advisable and it’s just not as much fun. It is possible to join strangers online, but that serves a few problems as well; planning and strategizing is harder, distributing mana in a proper way is almost impossible and the same goes for equipment. Fortunately I have been able to play the game with Thelocaluk and Mr. Gincairn and simply said it’s just a fun and manic game. Trendy Entertainment really got co-op right Dungeon Defenders. There is a clear need to work well together to be successful and that is both when in combat and when designing the defence. It’s easy to see the need for working together when putting up towers, but in combat it’s not as obvious, sure everybody need to take part in the slaughter, but that hardly count as cooperating. But when I tower needs repair it can be hard to do when being shot at by a dark elf or when an orc is smashing the defence your trying to repair, this is where it’s handy to have a partner ready to clear the area. This is also where there is a neat little feature I’m very fond of, it’s simple yet so useful and genius. By pressing the circle button you do a war cry, signalling to the other players you need help, it also puts up an icon on their screen making it easy to locate where the help is need. It is so satisfying to see someone needs help and then go and clear the area while the defence is repaired. But maybe the most important part in making it such a good co-op experience is the classes and how they supplement each other so well. The four classes offers completely different play-styles, the Apprentice rely on ranged attacks in both his towers and himself, the Squire mainly use close range melee attacks and his towers act as blockades, the Huntress rely on traps dealing deadly damage, stunning or confusing opponents and of course use ranged weapons such and gun and bows and finally the Monk who lays out magical auras doing a variety of thing such slowing, weakening and of course damaging.
The few problems I have with Dungeon Defenders are concerning the camera. It has four different settings, a traditional 3rd person view mainly used in combat and 3 overhead ones, each one being further from the character. Every time the combat phase starts the camera automatically goes to the third person view, which is great, but when it’s complete it goes back to the overhead one closest to the character, as a user of the one furthest away it would be nice if it switched to the one used before the combat phase. My other gripe is on a map with narrow corridors such as Magus Quarters navigating can be a little challenging. On the other hand I’m amazed by the game Trendy built in the Unreal Engine, even when thousands of enemies is approaching the Eternia Crystals there is no frame-rate issues what-so-ever, very impressive.
I only have minor gripes with a game that overall is very good at what it does and one that is so loaded with content. For £8/€10 you get 13 missions each with a challenge, 4 difficulties and a survival mode. Considering completing one mission can take half an hour, maybe more, Dungeon Defenders should be able to keep you entertained for quite some time. A certain amount of grinding might not be avoidable, especially if you want to play as all the character, but even after having played some of the levels 3 or 4 times it has yet to get tedious. I anticipated Dungeon Defenders for quite some time and it did not disappoint, from the colourful graphics I’m such a fan of the ultra fun game-play, Dungeon Defenders is a joy to play. I strongly recommend buying this, it’s a true bargain… if you have someone to play with, if not maybe you want to give it a pass. The answer might be clear at this point, but to answer my opening question anyway, Dungeon Defenders certainly did not disappoint.
(5/5)
As mentioned I played Dungeon Defenders with Gin and Local and to give you a few different thoughts of the game they have written a brief review of their own summarizing what their experience with it was.
Thelocaluk:
Mobile games brought over to console, this is something that doesn’t often happen, how glad I am that Trendy Entertainment have taken their beautiful little game to the console platform. I’m not a fan of tower defence games, in fact I can’t even name a tower defence game I may have played in the past, I find this genre nothing more than a tedious time waster. Dungeon Defenders has converted me into a tower defence building whore. Thanks to some clever additions of RPG elements this game feels much more like playing through areas of an MMO by adding the magic addictive element of levelling up your character and gear, plus letting you loose to hack and slash your way through hordes of ogres in a very satisfying way.
Many may mock the cute graphics which are straight from the mobile game and rendered in HD, but on the big screen this game still looks adorable with its cartoon like graphics. The only gripe I have is this game isn’t designed to be as satisfying to play solo, though it does make for the perfect team game. If you’re looking for a satisfying local and online co-op bargain on the PSN store then Dungeon Defenders should be your first download, in fact I can’t see another PSN game topping this in 2012 and the year has only just begun.
(5/5)
Gincairn:
It’s difficult to classify Dungeon Defenders, it looks like a slightly more serious Fat Princess but plays like a deep strategy, this is even more evident playing Single Player.
With the four available characters, the player has some choice as to how they wish to play the game, but that being said, it’s obvious that this game is designed to be played in multiplayer as there are some characters whose defenses are so weak that they are borderline unplayable solo.
Back on the highs though, the inclusion of boss fights was a welcome surprise, especially since it didn’t just leave you having to hit this giant tank of a creature, instead it requires some thought to dispatch these big baddies and it’s oh so satisfying once you down one of them.
The loot system and shop system works very well, my only complaint was the cost of some of the items, but being able to lock items for future viewing was a nice touch.
Combat is solid and the personal wade-in option also adds a nice touch, higher level characters can actually sit back and relax at times, letting the defense towers take out the oncoming hordes.
If I had to criticize the game, I would say that although there is the option of going through a tutorial, it doesn’t cover a lot of things that you may need to know, such as weapon levels and how to increase their stats, it relies on trial and error, now I’m not saying I need my hand held for this sort of thing, but it would have been nice to have included some of this information in a tutorial section.
My only other issue boils down to the split screen co-op with menus being unreadable due to size restrictions on the screen, this does not seem to be changeable meaning that 2 people playing co-op straight off the bat, may not actually know what they are using when they select to build their defenses.
Overall though, it’s a solid game and well worth both the money and the time that a player could and should invest in it.
Clearly this is a game we all like and think is well worth a buy and luckily this week (Untill the 25th) it’s on sale on the PSN Store, it costs €6,19 and PlayStation Plus members save an extra 30%
Loading tweets...
Recent Comments