Dungeon Defenders - Review

Smaller budgets, shorter development times, and less marketing; downloadable titles are relatively new to the world of gaming.  Dungeon Defenders is an action, RPG, tower defense game available on all download services.  How does it play, and is it worth your time?

Graphics

Dungeon Defenders can be played either from a 3^rd person perspective, or from an overhead view.  Different situations merit changing the perspective, but most importantly, both angles work well.  The color palette is very bright, and many of the maps really pop when you first see them.  The variety in map location and environments is nice, and it keeps the game from getting stale.  The enemies look a little jaggy in places and I did notice some slowdown when the action on-screen got intense.  Overall, these graphics are pretty good.

Sound
Sound effects are mainly grunts and growls from the enemies, along with a few yells from the heroes and some weapon noises.  Everything works pretty well, aside from the constant buzz of some weapons getting annoying at times.  From a soundtrack perspective, the music is good, although seems to lack some variety.  The final waves of some levels have some really epic music I immediately noticed when playing.  Some really memorable scores but overall it’s “good”.

Gameplay
Typically, most tower defense games require you to strategically create, build, and maintain in order to defeat waves of enemies.  This game adds four classes of characters that have unique towers, skills, and ALSO have the ability to fight enemies on their own.  On the surface, the game seems pretty simple.  Each character has multiple categories which can be enhanced each time you level up.  There are four “hero” stats, four “tower” stats, and two character-specific abilities that can be increased.  You only receive enough points to max out either the hero OR the tower categories, with the option of having a hybrid of the two.  In addition, there are weapons, armor, and pets, all of which can be individually leveled up to make your character a killing machine.  Trying different strategies and combinations of weapons and armor to best suit your character(s) is a ton of fun, especially when playing with others.

Campaign/Game Modes
Dungeon Defenders has a story, but it doesn’t matter.  The “campaign” consists of 13 maps to play through, with four difficulty levels on each.  In addition, there are challenges that take place on those same maps, tasking you to complete an objective outside of simply stopping waves of enemies.  What I like best about these modes is that the difficulty seems well paced, and even when you max out your characters (level 70 on consoles, 120 on PC) the hardest difficult is still friggin hard.  It’s never a walk in the park, which is good.  There are two additional modes, Pure Strategy and Survival.  These are variations of the standard campaign maps, and quite frankly seem like tack-ons.  They take many hours to complete and just aren’t that fun.  Luckily the campaign and challenge modes are more than enough to carry this title.

Lasting Appeal

When I first purchased this title, I thought I would play it occasionally, giving it time when I didn’t feel like playing one of the other retail games I have in my backlog.  Boy was I wrong.  After a few other friends picked up DD, it’s all we played for weeks.  The gameplay has such an addicting quality that it’ll pull you in and then won’t let go.  The armor, weapons, and pets all have somewhat random base stats and levels of upgrades, giving every reward and pick up the potential to be better than what you’re currently wielding (think Borderlands).  For $15 or less, you will hands-down, definitely get your money’s worth.  I was actually looking forward to finishing the final levels on insane so I could tell myself I had conquered the game, and be released from the addictive spell DD had over me.

Summary
Dungeon Defenders came out of nowhere and really caught me by surprise.  On the surface, it’s a fairly simple concept.  Take your character, build some towers, smoke some bad guys.  However, if you give this game some time, you’ll find out it has the depth of a full-blown RPG…and it’s awesome.  Just be sure to bring a few friends along, because the game doesn’t quite have the same impact when playing solo.  If you are looking for an inexpensive, addicting game, with a ton of replay value, Dungeon Defenders is definitely for you. 

Rating	Description
9.5	Gameplay A tower defense game infused with action and RPG elements.  On the surface looks simple but has an amazing amount of depth.  Much better with teammates.
8.5	Graphics The game looks good, but honestly, it’s not the most amazing graphics you’ll ever lay eyes on.  Enemies could use a smidge more detail.
8.5	Audio Overall, the audio is very solid, although the hum of a few weapons can become a bit grating.  Some epic scores for final waves, but a little lack of variety otherwise.
9.0	Campaign/Game Modes Campaign contains a good amount of maps and the challenges also are mostly unique and fun.  Pure Strategy and Survival modes feel like tack-ons and aren’t much fun.
10	Lasting Appeal I’ve already spent more time with this game than I would care to admit.  It’s a lot of fun and the depth will keep you always trying new things.  DLC will add even more.
9.5	Overall (Not an average of above scores)