Dungeon Defenders

If you participated in the achievement hunt for the Steam winter sale in 2011, one of the things you'll have noticed was that there were lots of tower defense games featured, and that's pretty much the reason I got today's game, Dungeon Defenders.

Dungeon Defenders is another entry into the latest release of tower defense games that allow you to take a much more hands on approach than is traditionally seen in the genre. Though when placed among other members of this grouping, specifically Orcs Must Die! and Sanctum, Dungeon Defenders does stand out as a much more unique experience, largely due to it's RPG elements and inclusion, even focus on, co-op.

The story behind the game is that an ancient evil was sealed away by a group of heroes. Those same heroes must depart to a faraway land, and entrust the keep of the Enternia crystals, which are said seals, to our young group of adventures. While playing at their larger counterparts, a crystal is broken, and suddenly these individuals must defend the remaining crystals from hordes of orcs, goblins, ogres, elves, and many other typical fantasy fare.

Or sometimes it just one really, really big guy.

In the base game, there are four playable classes. The Apprentice, the Squire, the Huntress, and the Monk, with each one increasing in difficulty over the last. My preference was for the Apprentice, as his selection of towers allowed me to try the game more as a true tower defense game, placing flame towers, lightning towers, and deadly strike towers at places where enemies would be forced to travel through, resulting in a bit more of a hands off play style, since I could manage the hordes of enemies with nothing more than my towers. This compares with the Squire, where most of his defenses are baricades or short range physical damage, the Huntress who places traps with limited charges and cool down times, and the Monk that uses auras to slow down enemies, increase the damage they take, or heal friends.

In addition to the summonable defenses each class has, at five each, there are also two class specific abilities. The Apprentice can activate an ability that will drain mana, but rapidly increase the construction time of his defenses during the attack phase, or just use a mana bomb, which will do massive damage. The Squire, as a character that is encouraged to participate in the fighting directly, can either uses an AoE whirlwind type attack, or activate Blood Rage, which doubles his speed, damage, and resistance - perfect for slaughtering a large group of enemies. The Huntress is much more of a strike from behind type character, and her abilities emphasize this, allowing her to become invisible for a time, or fire a piercing shot from her ranged weapon. Finally, since the Monk is really just a support classes, he can either buff other classes defenses or other players, which can be extremely helpful in the right situation.

Physics is F=uN, where u is the coefficient of friction of course.

The different classes do make for an interesting mix of options if you were to try four player coop, or even higher on certain maps, since you could have the Squire block off paths, the Apprentice set up towers behind those barricades to kill enemies, the Huntress can go invisible and set up explosive or stunning traps behind enemy lines, and the Monk can make everyone's job easier by increasing the damage enemies are taking with his auras. Though if you'd rather just play by yourself, I would strongly recommend steering clear of the Monk or Huntress, because the lack of solid offensive defenses makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to advance very far. And since I'm someone who prefers single player, my few attempts with either of those two classes when horribly, horribly wrong.

One of the more interesting ideas behind Dungeon Defenders is the heavy investment into RPG/Action elements usually associated with games like Diablo. You see, each time you start a new character, you have to level him up. At each new level, you get a few points to spend amongst 10 different categories: player health, attack, speed, and attack rate, a similar four categories focused on your defenses, and you two special class abilities. The result is you could have two level 70 Squires, equipped with the exact same gear and weapons, but perform drastically differently depending on they allocated their points, with one being a heavy melee hitter, while the other invested more into their defenses. Furthermore, gear can be upgraded as well, as most items will have some number of levels associated with them, and if you choose to invest the requisite amount of mana in it, the item in question will gain a level, allowing you to increase one of the stats on it, but not add any stats that weren't already there. Ditto for pets.

Strong towers = less work for me.

At this point, you may be wondering where you get mana, since it seems to be critical to upgrade your items, which is true. However, mana is much more than that, since you pretty much need it for everything you do. Summoning defenses, using your character's special abilities, repairing your defenses when they get damaged, or just healing yourself - all these things require mana to complete. Mana is found in one of two ways. When you begin a level, and at each break between successive waves, several treasure chests will spawn, which contain mana, and occasionally an item. You'll uses these to get started building your defenses. After they are up, and the attack wave has commenced, you'll get far more mana by killing enemies, allowing you to continue building defenses while the attack is going, or simply let it remain on the ground until the next break, at which point you do with it as you please. However, it does not persist from one wave to the next, so as soon as you start an attack, it vanishes, so don't try and stockpile it up for the incoming horde. Instead, use what you want, and deposit the rest into your bank, so you can purchase new items or upgrade old ones.

As you move on up through the levels, they get harder and harder, as one would expect. This is for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that, at certain points of the game, the number of Eternia crystals you must protect increases. Dungeon Defenders isn't like other tower defense games where units must simply reach the end of a map for you to loose points, and if enough make it, you fail. Instead, each crystal has a health bar, and enemies will attack it until it's destroyed, meaning that a single small enemy could cause you to loose just the same as if all your defenses failed and it was like a dam broke, unleashing a flood of pain on your crystals. The problem is further compounded because if just one crystal is destroyed, you lose. You can't always build up huge defenses around every crystal either, because each defense requires a certain number of units, and maps are capped out, meaning you've got to judge if placing an 8 defense unit is worth the cost, or if you should go with two, weaker, 4 defense units to guard your crystals. So pay attention, because if one sneaky goblin makes it to a crystal, and you ignore him since you've got an army knocking on your front door, you still failed.

A shot of me failing. At least this time I did it on purpose.

One way you can counter the insanely large number of enemies you'll be fighting is to upgrade your defenses, which costs 100 mana, but doubles at each new level. Now, while it is nice to have stronger, healthier defenses, your enemies can do this too. Every now and then, and increasingly so as you progress through the levels, you'll find upgraded enemies. These guys are no joke, especially when the upgraded units are the big guys, like ogres, as I've seen their HP go from 17k to 82k for a double upgrade enemy, and yes, that's a lot. Further complicating things, especially when I was playing as an Apprentice, is that enemies are sometimes immune to certain elements, rendering attacks of that type null. There's nothing like having a perfectly function lightning tower destroyed by the one enemy that is immune to it.

There are, particularly towards the final levels, a metric ton of enemies you'll face. While they never seem to be in a hurry to attack the crystals, the number of them can easily overwhelm you. Thankfully, attacks come in waves, and between each wave, there is a build phase. This isn't a short phase, such as in Orcs Must Die!, where you get a 15 second break between waves, but as long as you want every third wave or so. Rather, Dungeon Defenders lets you take all the time you want each wave, letting you repair your defenses, build new ones, or gather up mana. This is nice, because after fighting off a couple hundred enemies, things start to break and you need to get geared back up, especially if the next wave is a boss wave, where the regular enemies don't stop spawning until the boss is down.

I actually beat him before the regular guys got there. It pays to know what's coming up next.

Despite this games interesting take on tower defense, and the appeal of many different aspects of it, I found I really didn't enjoy this as much as I had expected. Coming off of other TD games, I was hoping for something a little faster paced. While it sounds great that I can kill hundreds of enemies per wave, they take a long time to get to the points where I have towers set up, making it feel like the waves are dragging on and on. Additionally, even during the down time of the build phase, it felt like everything moved so slow. Building towers, running around and repairing everything that took damage, finding every chest and unlocking it for more mana, and so forth, just took a long time, largely due to how spread out everything becomes, and as such, made it less enjoyable.

The RPG elements, though interesting, also felt a bit odd, and really diminishes the enjoyment I get out of this game. You see, the achievement that was required for the Steam sale was very late in the game, and in my case, I actually beat the game on normal, then went to the bonus level that you needed to do, so I've got a level 36 or so Apprentice. Yet even at that point, I am far from hitting the max level, and the appeal of grinding repeatedly through the same content for more exp, more mana, and more gear, just isn't there. I didn't like it in Diablo, nor Borderlands, and I sure don't want to do it here, because I've already experienced the game once, so why don't I just move onto another game, another experience?

The idea of leveling multiple characters is another issue, though one I'd be much more forgiving on if some of the upper difficulty characters didn't appear to be so reliant on the presence of others. Add in the difference between official multiplayer servers and ones that let you use your local play character, as well as the inability to complete achievements, for those of you so inclined, in a local game, and you get something that rubs me the wrong way.

But I can't say it isn't pretty.

In retrospect, I do view Dungeon Defenders as a solid game, one that I enjoyed playing when I did, and that I might even come back to one day, perhaps if I had some friends that wanted to devote some serious time to it. After beating it once, I see no point in going back and continuing to grind my way through the levels, increasing the difficulty until I'm ultimately playing at the Nightmare level, because it doesn't substantially change the gaming experience. I could get some of the DLCs for this game, of which there are plenty, costing you $56 to purchase each pack individually or $50 for all the DLCs and the base game, but I'm not willing to shell out that much for this, fun as it may be. I got Dungeon Defenders in a trade deal, but it has been at the $3.74 mark numerous times, equating to about 75% off, and would suggest you wait until then, either just getting the base game, or the complete pack. I put roughly 14 hours of time into the base game, which is pretty good, but in the end, the game does fall short of the enjoyment I've gotten out of other similar TD games - 6 out of 10.

So, the final breakdown:

Score: 6/10

Suggested Price: $3.74/75% off