Great core concept marred by significant flaws
Introduction: With a unique blend of action-RPG and tower defense, Dungeon Defenders already stands out in the crowded downloadable game market. It also has a charming side-story and colorful art style. However, these plusses are off-set by some key and pivotal minuses that otherwise turn an engaging and could-have-been indie classic into a niche darling with some unfortunate flaws.
Core Game Philosophy: Dungeon Defenders is a cross between Torchlight and Fieldrunners, with a special emphasis on Torchlight's art style and looting system. Like a standard Tower Defense game, enemies come out of specific entryways and it's your job to get rid of them either by attacking them directly or by playing towers or encampments to pick them off one-by-one. In the easier levels it's an absolute breeze to create an impenetrable defense, but in harder levels you'll find yourself running to different parts of the map repairing, selling and upgrading towers.
There are three things that constantly provide constant rewards during your play time with Dungeon Defenders:
Experience: Earned with each enemy you or your towers defeat. When you gain experience, you level your character up to gain boosts in 10 different stats, 4 of which go to the character itself, 4 to the towers it creates and 2 to special abilities the character has recieved.
Loot: Either equipped to your character to give him/her stat bonuses or simply sold to get more mana. Specifically, weapons and pets appear on your character with its distinct look and element.
Mana: Used to create towers while in a level, power-up pieces of loot you have equipped and purchase items at the tavern. Powering up your loot with mana becomes important in later stages due to its increased difficulty.
With these three types of stats, followed by a simplistic feeling but highly strategic core, Dungeon Defenders constantly wants to reward you with leveling up your character, giving you new and exciting loot and enough mana to create powerful defenses and powerful upgrades for your loot. Like Diablo and Torchlight, this keeps you coming back to make your character more and more powerful and provides a strong foundation to have a great time...
Customization: However, one key thing that most loot-based Action/RPG's do particularly right is the customization feel of the game. Sad to say, this is one area where Dungeon Defenders completely misses the mark.
First, you choose a class of four characters:
Apprentice: A prototypical mage character that uses a staff to fire projectiles at enemies. His towers are more projectile based, with a blockade and a "lightning tower" to boot. The apprentice looks like the typical mage with robes and a pointy hat. Meant for beginners, the apprentice is easily the most balanced character in the game.
Squire: A melee based character that looks like a miniature knight. His towers are meant to be more up-close and personal, dealing loads of damage when they come close. Two other turrets, such as the bowling ball and harpoon, give him some distance options. However, Squire's melee attacks are the strongest in the game plus he also has the most HP of any character.
Huntress: A trap based character with limited ranged ammunition. Armed with a crossbow, the huntress shoots bolts at monsters, but then needs time to reload her crossbow. The huntress uses traps instead of towers, which gives powerful attacks and abilities, with the cost of (once again) limited availability.
Monk: Both a melee and ranged character, but not adept to either, a monk's main "tower" are auras, which are pockets of air that has specific effects, such as slowing an enemy down, healing other party members and weakening opponents. Clearly meant to be a support character.
Now, instead of creating a character with your own name of color combinations, the game has you select templates with specific names and colors. There is literally no difference between characters and colors, they all start the same. In fact, you can't even name your character until you reach a specific level, which seems counterintuitive.
With the exception of weapons and pets, you literally look the same from the time you start to the time you reach Level 70. Items such as hats, armor, shoes and gloves do not change the look of your character, which is a huge disappointment. One of the key ingredients in an action/RPG is the feeling you are progressing by the visualization of your character's armor and weapons. The fact that Dungeon Defenders skips this entirely is a huge disappointment.
That said, you still do get to name your items when you level them up to max by spending mana. Also, leveling up your characters will create different templates of strengths and weaknesses, but it still hard to other players to know this when playing multiplayer since you can't tell the difference.
Multiplayer: Dungeon Defenders is meant to be a multiplayer based affair, but the game has some serious setbacks that hamper the grouping experience. First, matchmaking does not do a good job on finding someone on your level. This means your spending more time than you should finding a room with like minded levels.
Next, Dungeon Defenders doesn't do anything to make sure that there is a fair-minded, balanced multiplayer game. What I mean is that there is no option for group sharing or looting. This means that the game does nothing to make sure that XP, mana, loot or even towers are evenly distributed towards all 4 potential players. I've walked into dozens of matches where out of 4 people, one character has all the towers and the other three are just there to provide "cover fire".
What's worse, there's no griefing control. Let's say you put in a tower in a specific spot, ANY character on the map can go ahead and sell that tower and get it's mana without your say-so. This provides elitist jerks who must have it their way with the tools to do just that, even if it doesn't particularly benefit the group.
Finally, unless you pick up the mana or loot yourself, you have no way of gaining it for your benefit. This also goes for XP. So you could literally spend an hour on a map...and possibly get no benefit from it in multiplayer.
This is got to be one of the most disappointing aspects to Dungeon Defenders.
Final Verdict: With such a solid and almost fool-proof concept, just the fundementals alone should make for a great time. And honestly, it does. Problem is, if you want to go further in the game, there is tons of tedium and lack of accomplishment that comes with it. Factor in the problems with multiplayer and you have a game that came short even though it has a strong, unique concept.
Final Score: 6.0/10
Intangibles:
"Hey, I just want to play alone!": If you play as the Apprentice - Add 1 point - Clearly the most balanced character in the game, the Apprentice provides powerful attacks from its staff plus the most diverse towers in the game. Overpowered? Possibly. But easily the most fun.
- If you want to play as the Squire - Add .5 points - Melee focused, sure, but his towers are very powerful and provide tons of cover. May get old slashing his sword dozens of times, but still a fun game to play.
- If you want to play as the Huntress - Subtract 1 point - Because of all of her limitations, it's really hard to play as the huntress in single player. That said, her traps are very powerful and when placed right, can create more opportunities. Still, Huntress leans more towards support than ranged combat.
- If you want to play as the Monk - Subtract 2 points - His auras only last for a limited time and even then, they don't completely do the job. Also factor in a weak projectile, so-so melee and HP that doesn't last very long and you have a character is clearly only meant for multiplayer teams.
"I have friends who will play with me!": Add 1 point - If you have friend who will play fair and evenly distribute mana and loot, Dungeon Defenders can be a really good time for a group of friends.
"I honestly don't care about customization, I just like tower defense!": Add .5 points - The tower defense elements are solid and there are also modes that benefit on just using tower defenses.
"I'm not a fan of tower defense, but I do like action RPGs!": Subtract 1.5 points - The combat, while fun, is shallow and will bore you within the first 20 playthroughs. You have to enjoy tower defense to play this game.
"I can get this for $10!": Add .5 points
"I can get this for $5!": Add 1 point