Released: October 18th 2011 (USA) 21 December 2011 (EU)
Developer: Trendy Entertainment
Publisher: Reverb Communications
Genre: Tower Defense/ Action RPG
Players: 1-4
Format Reviewed: Playstation3 (PSN)
Other Format: PC, XBLA, iOS, Android
Trendy Entertainment brings us Dungeon Defenders a tower defense/action role-player game, with a strong emphasis on co-op play, with its cartoony visuals and tense difficulty, are these Dungeons worthy of Defending, or should they be left to gather dust?
The land of Etheria was once a place where evil, immortal monsters known as the Old Ones resided. Who were sealed away into giant gems known as Etheria Crystal. Now these Crystals are under threat and the only ones around to defend them are the pupils of the kingdom’s heroes (who have run off to fight in a crusade). Now these young, inexperienced pupils will have to defend the Etheria Crystals from the hordes of goblins, dark elves, ogres and other assorted evil critters who wish to shatter the gemstones and release the evil within.
Picking out your character from the choice of four junior versions of standard fantasy archetypes, with the Apprentice being a young mage, the Squire a knight, etc. and utilize their towers and attacks to face off against the endless hordes of foes. Leveling them up and collecting loot and new gear along the way. As you go through the game, you’ll gain experience and level-up, granting access to new units while you boost your chosen stats, paving your heroes long-term journey.
There are four characters of different types, The Squire can build strong defensive walls and other aggressive devices to block and slay enemies, and then go down into the fray with his sword to mop up ground enemies with relative ease, one-on-one, but can have issues fighting airborne foes. Meanwhile the Apprentice is more set to blast foes with his magic, and place mild defensive walls and cheap but powerful elements towers. By contrast, the Monk is more of a support character, able to boast the stats and health of others whilst draining that of his foes.
Like other 3D Tower Defense games, the game starts fairly easy, putting you into increasingly elaborate layouts with greater numbers of more powerful enemies, more routes for the monsters to use and, later on, levels with multiple crystals to defend. Each mission is broken into two distinct phases, build and battle. The build phase allows you an infinite amount of time to plan your armament positioning to deal with the foes, before having to deal with the enemy who emerge from the various doors. To aid your planning, panels informing how many of and what types of enemies to expect appear at each door, allowing you to prioritize which traps and towers you use where. The tower defense units that you can use are limited by a slot, with each type of defense taking a different amount of usable slots to bring into the field; with more powerful units using more slots.
Once you’ve set out your towers and traps, you can enter into the battle phase, opening the doors and letting the flood of enemies in. Goblins, Dark Elves, Orcs, Wyverns, standard western fantasy fare basically, are just a few of your foes. In battle mode, you take a hands-on approach to vanquishing enemies, or you can spend time supporting each other – the Monk’s whole thing is support based – and repairing damage done to your defenses.
Note that on your own, you can quickly become overwhelmed, although it is possible to play a majority of the game in single player, you find yourself unable to be everywhere at once, and sooner or later find your crystal destroyed after surviving waves of enemies. Impounding this, is that it can take a long time to go through the waves. Thankfully, any and all equipment, loot and experience gained is permanently added to your inventory, lessening the blow tremendously.
Mana, found in chests and dropped by fallen foes as crystals, is used for both the game’s sole currency and the use of magic, including healing. Your tower defenses also cost mana to spawn, and since you start at zero, you’ll have to grab some before you start. Mana is also used to repair and upgrade units, and the special abilities of the various characters.
When you’re not up to your armpits in green goblin goo, you can spent time in your tavern. Here, you can look up your game statistics, as well as buy, sell and forge new, more powerful weapons (that you can sell on). On a different note are a series of challenges, ranging from the simple – if impractical – notion of fighting waves of enemies without the ability to set up any traps, to protecting computer controlled allies.
With its cartoony graphic and outlandish character design, Dungeon Defenders holds similar conceits to fellow Tower Defense game Orcs Must Die!, with buckets of personality. Even when you notice the identikit animations you get when the same enemy types march next to one-another you won’t begrudge the game that much when it plays and looks as smooth as it is regardless of the amounts of enemies onscreen at any given time. . Detailed enough environments give plenty of character to each arena, from watermills, to the texture of wood bark and the rich glow of lava promising a quick death to an unwary orc. Outside of a bit of narration the sound is somewhat subdued, with the sound of weapons on spongy goblin skin and the death knells of your enemies. The muted sound allows you to better communicate with your fellow players, and is thus perfectly justifiable.
With the sometimes insane difficulty, and the sheer number of things to do in any of the levels at any given time, Dungeon Defenders will be a total slog to work through if you try to play it solo, the game was built to be played with others, and, as long as you can find other like-minded players, either locally or online, it succeeds on its terms admirably.
Rating: 
