Dungeon Defenders Review: Defend This

[Reckoner]

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With the ever growing popularity of tower defense games, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to stand out amongst the crowd. Trendy Entertainment, however, is up to the challenge with their first game, Dungeon Defenders. By combining the tower defense sub-genre with action RPG elements, they've concocted an addicting cooperative experience unlike never before.

 

Dungeon Defenders puts the player in the shoes of a knight, a wizard, a huntress, or a monk. Each of these classes is fine-tuned to excel in a specific type of offense or defense. For example, the knight is able to place down defensive fortifications like barricades and spiked blockades while taking more of a beating compared to the rest of the gang. On the other hand, the huntress is a bit squishier, but is able to pump out the damage from a good distance as she hides behind her deadly poison and explosive traps. Needless to say, teamwork and cooperation play a big role in this game as you work together with three other players to defend your crystal from the horde of goblins, ogres and dragons.

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Now what separates Dungeon Defenders from other tower defense games is the ability to control your hero on the battlefield. Instead of simply dropping down towers or barricades and watching the enemy kill themselves on them repeatedly, you can join in on the fight. A third person camera follows your character around as they slash or shoot their way through the onslaught of monsters. Each kill earns you experience points that you can use to strengthen and fine tune your skills. You can focus your points on your hero and become a killing machine or you can spend them on your defenses. With each increasing level, you gain access to a larger moveset and more fortifications to drop down. Using this system, I sinked most of my points into my defenses. It felt great to just sit back and watch my souped up blockades and ballista hold down a portion of the map while I assisted my buddies on the other side.

 

From the minute you launch the game, you'll quickly notice just how beautiful everything looks. Powered by the Unreal 3 engine, Dungeon Defenders adopts a colorful cel-shaded graphics style that perfectly represents the characters and environments. While the art style gives off a great sense fun and humor, don't let the cartoon graphics fool you as you'll soon find yourself knee-deep in dead bodies and explosions. While the game gets pretty hectic at times, losing your hero among the action is never a problem. Now what brings this colorful and rich world to life are the crisp and clear sound effects. From the slash of your blade to the fire and fury of your traps, every sound is designed to match the power behind the force while maintaining that fun and quirky style. To tie it all together, each dungeon is brilliantly crafted to suit all kinds of playstyles and strategies that allow the player to experiment to find the one right that works for them. With a limit as to how many objects can be placed on the field, you need to find a good balance between offense and defense to survive.

 

From the minute you launch the game, you'll quickly notice just how beautiful everything looks. Dungeon Defenders adopts a colorful cel-shaded graphics style that perfectly represents the characters and environments. Each dungeon is brilliantly crafted to suit all kinds of playstyles and strategies.

 

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While Dungeon Defenders manages to boast an incredible multiplayer experience, the single player offerings leave much to be desired. Although it isn't completely impossible to do well playing alone, it's definitely much, much harder. When riding solo through this game, you are able to switch classes mid-fight. With this, it is possible to set up all the different kinds of defenses that all four roles offer, it becomes difficult to micromanage everything alone. On top of that, each class levels up completely separate from one another. Because of this, it's best to just stick to one or two characters and level them up accordingly.

 

Dungeon Defenders offers a fantastic cooperative experience that will leave you and your buddies playing for hours on end. With about a dozen levels to beat and several game modes to tackle, this game will keep you coming back for more time and time again. This is an amazing first title for Trendy Entertainment and I expect a lot of great things from them in the future. Priced at 1200 MSP ($15), do yourself and your buddies a favor and check this one out.

 

Score

9/10