Quick Look: Dungeon Defenders

neat

Generic title eh?

I want to get this

Its a great game, feels like you kinda need to be 4 players though.

Seems way more fun with 4 people but I found the demo enjoyable

I love this game. So very much.

Edit: also, Brad spends way too much time insulting my favourite class: the Apprentice. Lightning towers = godlike.

This doesn't look like a good game..

sounds alot like Fate.

The cartoony graphics look pretty nice. The levels' visual aesthetic reminds me of Orcs must Die.

Mmm, Squire is the way to play for beginners, and should be novice instead of Apprentice, buuut, i'm going to say you were probalby playing apprentice wrong, That character should be played TD style, relying almost fully on towers.

It's good fun, was playing it with my brother last night. The Squire and Apprentice complement each other quite well. The Apprentice has high damage towers, a ranged attack and a crowd-clearing knockback attack. The Squire has great defensive towers, high health and good defensive options, but relies more on getting in there and attacking with the sword.

Also, for you Apprentices out there, go for tower attack rate instead of attack power. You can take a full second off the attack time of the base tower in just a few levels, which is really useful.

Looks kinda ghetto after playing through Orcs Must Die! even though Orcs Must Die! had like 1 tileset and 10 character models total. But what was there looked pro and flowed well. This looks like a mod in its first stages.

No idea what Brad is talking about here, I played as the mage before the warrior and found it MUCH easier and more satisfying.

I've been playing the Hell outta this on Steam. The login issues from day one have been largely resolved. They just had more people purchase the game than they expected and it overloaded their TrendyNet secure servers.

On the Steam version you can choose to play on either ranked servers via Steam or Gamespy servers. At some point there will be cross platform playing between PC and PS3.

I've been playing the crap out of this game on PSN, it's really fun and addictive even if it is punishingly hard at times. Satisfies that diablo-esque loot lust while providing a pretty fun action-RPG/TD setup. For a $15 game, there's a surprising bit of depth.

Been playing as a Huntress, which combos really really well with some of the Squire barricades. Very tough for solo play though, but this game really does seem to be all about co-op.

The skill levels for each class is pretty accurate though. Trying to play Monk or Huntress out of the gate (which I did do) can be...really really hard.

I've been enjoying Orcs Must Die! way too much, and heard this was better. I'm not seeing it. Guess I'll have to check out the demo.

@RAStemensaid:

The cartoony graphics look pretty nice. The levels' visual aesthetic reminds me of Orcs must Die.

The visual style changes drastically from level to level--unlike Orcs Must Die's sort of 'generic dungeoney-look'.

Example:

@Paul_Is_Drunk said:

I've been enjoying Orcs Must Die! way too much, and heard this was better. I'm not seeing it. Guess I'll have to check out the demo.

Despite the fact that they're both cartoony-looking, fantasy-themed, character-based, pseudo-role-playing tower defense hybrids, they're drastically different games. I've played both extensively, adore both, but man Dungeon Defenders is leaps and bounds more appealing to me than Orcs Must Die!.

I think the one advantage Orcs Must Die has is that everything feels a lot more responsive and tactile. If you like action real bad, OMD will likely be your sort of game.

On the other hand, the breadth of content, the depth, the RPG mechanics, the co-op... these are all things that Dungeon Defenders excels at. You've seen all the loot in the Quicklook, you've seen how you can distribute stats to whatever you like (you get about 4 points each level, the level cap is 70). On my most recent stage with 4 players, we had a total of 1800 mobs to kill and a legit (non-Ogre) boss. It was insanity. There are far too much loot to sift through (about 100 pieces each wave). I gained about 3 levels.

You can invest mana (currency) into any item to upgrade it, and choose to either counteract a curse (negative stat) or upgrade a positive stat to be more effective (like the amount of missles a staff shoots out, or the projectile speed. Likewise, there are hundreds of pets to collect and level up via a similar investment system.

Each class operates drastically differently. Apprentice and Squire both have a breadth of towers and barricades. The Monk and Huntress, however, have no towers or barricades at all. Understanding each class, and even more specifically, each player, is key to surviving later stages. Some choose to invest all their stats into towers, others focus primarily on their own damage; example: using that excellent DPS Squire to kill a boss while the tower-defense focused Apprentice fends off and repairs the other 100 fodder units is smart strategy.

Brad NOOB!

I played the demo as the wizard. The pea shooter is bad is you just spam it but if you charge it it does pretty good damage. Also I'm fairly sure that LT does an area attack. Also I think he can build more offensive towers so you can afford to be a bit more passive in you'r play style.

It doesn't seem to be on UK PSN yet but I'll be grabbing it as soon as I can. It has cross platform play with PC and Android.

That'll be great if it works.

Brad is worse than me at Tower Defense. Much worse.

I think the reason they recommend the Wizard for starting is it is the most traditional 'tower' style. You make towers, let them kill the waves of minions, like in most TD games. Brad doesn't seem to like building towers, which is probably why the wizard was lacking for him. The Squire has more like barricades until the harpoon launcher, and the Huntress/Monk don't even make actual towers so much as traps.

Played this on my PS3 yesterday and getting in games was lightning fast, didn't had problems with that at all, just once I had a connection lost.

game is actually awesome :) bought it on steam 2days ago, havin a blast so far!

You can see that it's coming from iOS. Everything's so slow.

While the trend of action tower defense is nice and all, I feel like these games are becoming less and less tower defensy. Take Orcs Must Die! as an example, several maps in that game are built around the idea that the player is gonna kill most of the enemies. It's a hard balance to achieve though, as if you want the player to actually be able to deal with enemies that get past the traps he has to have a certain strength. But then if he just starts attacking from the get-go the traps just become secondary. I think the key to striking a good balance would be to make the player attacks limited, maybe even a shared pool with building resources. That way you would have to choose between instant damage or damage over time.

Ah, Brad was great in this quick look. Never change, fella!

@Sogeman said:

You can see that it's coming from iOS. Everything's so slow.

When you have 300 enemies on screen attacking 25 different defenses, with 4 players huddled up, trying to survive... you won't say it's slow.

The amount of enemies scales to the number of players (in this case, 1 player, on the second level in the game...). Even toward Wave 5 and 6, Brad could barely keep control of his defense.

@Ares42: To an extent that's true, but there were only the first couple levels here. Proper placement of Defenses is key to making it far in this game at all, as you can see with Brad's attempt at level 2 (and that's only on Medium difficulty, with two harder options). Later levels there are multiple crystals to defend with 6-7 gates spawning enemies, so if you forsake defenses you will be utterly steamrolled.

There's also a Pure Strategy mode for levels, where you can ONLY use Defenses and your character's attacks are disabled, which may interest the TD purist.

@monkeystick said:

I've been playing the Hell outta this on Steam. The login issues from day one have been largely resolved. They just had more people purchase the game than they expected and it overloaded their TrendyNet secure servers.

On the Steam version you can choose to play on either ranked servers via Steam or Gamespy servers. At some point there will be cross platform playing between PC and PS3.

not just PC and PS3, they also said you could play with iOS and Android people too

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/02/ps3-pc-ios-android-cross-platform-multiplayer-achieved-in-dungeo/

so its just too bad they choose the 360 version to show...

@Ares42 said:

While the trend of action tower defense is nice and all, I feel like these games are becoming less and less tower defensy. Take Orcs Must Die! as an example, several maps in that game are built around the idea that the player is gonna kill most of the enemies. It's a hard balance to achieve though, as if you want the player to actually be able to deal with enemies that get past the traps he has to have a certain strength. But then if he just starts attacking from the get-go the traps just become secondary. I think the key to striking a good balance would be to make the player attacks limited, maybe even a shared pool with building resources. That way you would have to choose between instant damage or damage over time.

See, I think Dungeon Defenders does a wonderful job at striking this balance because the effectiveness of your character and your towers is entirely dependent on how you decide to level up. A tower-specced Squire is just as effective as a melee-specced Squire. They both serve drastically different functions and play entirely differently, but they're both viable.

I've tried it. It's fun with 2 or more. :)

I'll check this game out during the steam xmas sale for sure, chances are it'll be $7.50 or so, and I got a pile of games to play till then to keep me occupied any ways :)

Looks alright

I can't watch this video with goddamn Kessler's face there... watching me...

I've been playing a lot of Orcs Must Die and compared to that this looks sooooo sloooooooooooow. It still looks fun and I'd like to pick it up, especially for co-op. But wow does it feel slow.

The reason that the wizard doesn't do as much damage is because his towers are more offensive and he doesn't need to attack the monsters. His first tower actually attacks unlike the knights which is just a spiked wall

Turrets infront of Barricades, why do you do this to me.

Got this proper controller support on the PC?

Just got done playing this for several hours with my boyfriend. It's lots of fun and better than any TPS/Tower Defense hybrid I've played in the past. It's not much fun with strangers though - most people don't know how to share mana and loot. Play with friends!

If anyone is interested in this for Steam you should know that Amazon has it on sale for $12 and it activates on Steam.

what game did ryan play that looked just like this?

also- looks trine-ish. same characters too.

I think this is great for people who might not be used to playing tower defence games and all, but as for me personally, I truly miss me some proper TD titles... :(

what game did ryan play that looked just like this?

I like how Sanctum started the "trend" but nobody on Giant Bomb seems aware of it because it's not on XBox LIVE.  Ah, consoles.  It's also colossally better than Orcs Must Die, which bored me to tears about 2 minutes in.
 
EDIT: I stand corrected.  Still annoys me that I never see anyone talking about it these days considering that I haven't seen anything that comes even close to topping it.
 
That said, Dungeon Defenders actually looks pretty good and I know even a bunch of people who are normally quite :monocle: about things enjoy it, so I might have to take a look.
 
Also: OH MY GOD NUMBERS IN A STRATEGY RPG?  HOW DARE THEY!  WHERE IS MY (A)WESOME BUTTON, I NEED TO KILL SOMETHING!  Jeez, come on guys, it's what, like five inventory slots and a handful of stats?  And those colours are so friendly and inviting and easy to read, too, not at all remotely confusing.  Why is this so difficult and intimidating?  I almost want them to do a retro quick look of something like Arcanum, or even Vampire: Bloodlines, just to see how "overwhelmed" they are.

Play the honey play the honey play the.....f**k :(

I own this on Steam and it's great.

I preordered this game like a year ago. It was supposed to come out -last- September >,<

It's driving me mad that he's maxed on mana for so long and never summoning defenses.

I like how Sanctum started the "trend" but nobody on Giant Bomb seems aware of it because it's not on XBox LIVE.  Ah, consoles.  It's also colossally better than Orcs Must Die, which bored me to tears about 2 minutes in. That said, Dungeon Defenders actually looks pretty good and I know even a bunch of people who are normally quite :monocle: about things enjoy it, so I might have to take a look.

@sear said:

I like how Sanctum started the "trend" but nobody on Giant Bomb seems aware of it because it's not on XBox LIVE.  Ah, consoles.  It's also colossally better than Orcs Must Die, which bored me to tears about 2 minutes in. That said, Dungeon Defenders actually looks pretty good and I know even a bunch of people who are normally quite :monocle: about things enjoy it, so I might have to take a look.

Who are you referring to when you say nobody on Giant Bomb is aware of it? There was a Quick Look back in May. I'd also like to point out that Dungeon Defenders came out on iOS and Android months before Sanctum was released.