I love RPG style games, but lately it seems the creativity has been limited to the graphical beauty rather than the story and game mechanics. You have a character angry at this or that super company/power and get friends to help take them down. you start off just like every other gamer and you have a few skill trees you can choose form to make you a little different as you grow in power. Even Final Fantasy has fallen into this cookie cutter style of RPGs. So when I saw what looked like a little kid, cartoon styled game, I was happy to overlook it. Then, one day, I realized I would not be able to pay for my Live subscription for a few days, so I downloaded a bunch of demos, Dungeon Defender being one of them. It was the only one I ended up purchasing.
I generally do not like games with an overhead view of the character. It makes it hard to see what is around you and keeps you from seeing something dangerous until you are right on top of it. Also, it is not how people see things in reality. Unless you have the self confidence of a salted snail, your eyes focus on the world horizontally. Dungeon Defenders defaults this kind of camera angle which did not please me. However, with a click of the right joystick you are offered a multitude of camera angles to see the world in. You have to reset it after each wave, but that isn't as big of a issue as not having the choice at all.
The other issue I had with this game is how short it appears to be. Lollipop Chainsaw is a great example of how having only a few levels and a few difficulty settings can ruin a game. Don't get me wrong, I love seeing big boobs, chainsaws and blood, but I want my game to have a little more to it than that. So when I realized Dungeon Defender was based the same way I let out a sigh of frustration. It didn't take me long to realize I was being more prejudice towards the game than I should have been.
Dungeon Defenders has a great deal of intricate content you wouldn't expect it to have until you did as I did and sat down to give it a chance. Dungeon Defenders is all about varying strategies. You are offered four characters with ascending levels of difficulty and ability. Each character has a specific style of weapon as well as their own style of summonable defenses.For example,the first character is a warrior type made specifically for you to get the feel of what you are doing in the game. He comes with a sword and can summon, among other things, a spiked barrier that will hurt any enemy that comes in contact with it. the enemies have to break down your barrier and get pretty thrashed while doing so. Wiping them out with your sword is a relatively easy thing to do once they are weakened this way.
The next character is a wizard that looks like he was stolen strait from FF9. His abilities are set up completely different than the warrior, making you have to adjust your strategy accordingly. He hits a little harder than the warrior, but is squishier than his counterpart. After him is the only female character in the game. She is the ranger type and instead of barriers and swords she has traps and a crossbow. The traps have a detonation and reset timer on it, so you really have to plan your defenses well or the enemies will simply walk over the corpses of their fallen, fiendish friends and right into your protected area. Finally you have the monk. By far the most difficult to work strategies with, he is by far the most powerful as his abilities increases. He carries a bladed staff to start with, casts green bolts out of his non-weapon hand and makes auras in given areas that can slow down enemies, heal himself or other characters, make enemies weaker and even get them to attack one another! As you can see, just playing out each of the characters gives their own unique challenges.
Now that you have a decent understanding of the characters, let me tell you about the plot of the game. Your kingdom was under the protection of four great adventurers who were called out on a quest, leaving the kingdom in the hands of four young students. The great adventurers had beaten and contained a great evil in giant crystals. Together the four students; the warrior, wizard, huntress and monk, accidently released this evil back into the world, and without the great adventurers there to save them, they have to deal with the problem themselves. Using your weapons and summoning abilities you must protect the giant crystals from the hoards of baddies that want to break it to pieces so they can release the evil overlords trapped within by the great adventurers. To this end, you need to survey the land you are in and figure out how best to use your abilities to keep them from their goal. This is not an easy task, especially as you progress through the levels and gain more crystals to protect. Your summoning abilities are based on both your character level and your mana pool. As you level you gain greater abilities as well as more mana to create them with.
You can buy items that can be upgraded with mana in your tavern, or you can get them as drops from various enemies. You can get armor the same way. The difference between the two is that the weapons have skins that change as you change weapons while the armor you wear does not change your appearance. Both weapon and armor add power to your personal abilities as well as your summoned abilities. You can also purchase or earn a variety of pets, some that resemble the character you are playing, that will give you boosts as well and can also be upgraded. As you go through higher difficulty levels the items and mana you get increases, as well as the amount of levels you have that you can upgrade with.
Perhaps one of the most delightful aspects of the game is being able to switch characters in the building phase. This way you can use all the abilities of every character even if you are only playing one player. This makes your possibilities nearly endless.
For such a small looking game there is literally years worth of replay ability built into it. And it is seriously addictive regardless of what age you are. I highly recommend this game for anyone who likes strategy games, as well as those who just like to see deadly fireworks blasting around them while they tear through massive ranks of monsters.
The Punished Backlog's Dylan Byrne writes: "I'm sure we've all been 'addicted' to a game before. Yet, while gaming addiction may seem exaggerated, the disease is not a fantasy: It's a dangerous curse."
Neil writes: "It’s very nearly Christmas and in the next week or so you’ll either find that you have more time to game than ever before, or considerably less as the festive season kicks in. Whatever your situation though, it’s always good to be able to grab access to some new games, and after a decent offering last time round, with the Xbox Live Deals With Gold and Spotlight Sale for 18th-24th December 2018, there are an abundance of discounted Xbox One and Xbox 360 games available for the next week. But what are they? Well, we’ve got the full list!"
Neil writes "Oh look, we're here again. The latest Xbox Live Deals With Gold and Spotlight sale is in place and the next seven days are seeing a whole host of great Xbox One and Xbox 360 games being discounted for our purchasing pleasure. Want to check out the full list of bargains available in the Xbox Live Deals With Gold and Spotlight Sale for 9th-15th May 2017? Of course you do."
Replies(1)
Why would you link to XboxHub instead of the actual Xbox site for Deals with Gold?
Pretty sure there is a box you can click in the menu that locks down the camera. I never messed with it, I just got used to the camera switching to overhead during the build phase.