Dungeon Defenders is an Action RPG/Tower Defense game developed by Trendy Entertainment. This particular genre is one that has been gaining popularity. With games like Trenched(Iron Brigade) and Orcs Must Die coming out and being insanely popular it make sense for Dungeon Defenders to come to the home consoles. Dungeon Defenders originally came out on iOS devices, and with how this game plays and is meant to be played, it does not seem like a game that would work on those platforms.
When you jump in to the game you are given a choice of what character you want to play. You have four choices, Apprentice(magic),Huntress(ranged),Squire(melee), and Monk(melee/magic). When you chose your poison there are a bunch of choices to customize your character, but all are colors. You chose your color and you can also customize your crystal, which is the thing you will be protecting in the actual game. I will give the game credit as they offer you an option of a short or full tutorial, which I opted for the short which I ended up skipping. I recommend that ,unless you have a friend that know this stuff and will be willing to help you, you take the full tutorial and sit through the whole thing. There is a lot going on in this game.
On the surface Dungeon Defenders looks like a button-mashy Action Tower Defense game, but there is a lot of depth. While playing through the waves of the 13 different levels you will constantly be getting items. You will get weapons, helmets, gloves, boots, and chest guards, which all have their own stats and when you hover over them it will tell you if what you are going to pick up is better or worse than what you currently have. That particular thing is really helpful as you get new things all the time and if that was not in place you would be spending a lot of time comparing loot. Each class has the weapons that they can use and when playing you will only get weapons that you, or the other classes in your party, are playing as. On-top of getting all those items the majority can be upgraded to different levels of upgrades. You upgrade these items using mana that is stored in a bank.
Upon leveling up you gain more space to hold mana on your person. During gameplay the mana is used to summon defenses and upgrade those defenses. Beside the defenses there are certain character abilities that are also activated by using mana. This gives you some thinking to do when you have to decided what to spend your mana on. When playing with at least one other person, which is what I recommend, it is better to spend most of the mana on upgrading your parties defenses. You can play through Dungeon Defenders by yourself but that makes the game harder and a lot less fun. Even with an extra player the game is ridiculously difficult. I played through most of the game with one other person on easy and we wiped multiple times. When playing with people you can drop items and mana to give your party some extra stuff which can help. Also in the game are pets which I was given one by the person I was playing with and I am not completely sure what they do, but the look kind of cool flying over your shoulder.
Outside of the main campaign mode there are survival and challenge modes. The survival is what it sounds like, which means just kill waves of enemies for as long as you can. The challenge mode has the same gameplay as the main campaign, but they have different challenges. Things like, warping crystal,and a wave of only Ogres, are what you are going to be faced with in the challenge mode. If you are a crazy person and think that any of these modes are too easy you can choose from four different difficulty modes the hardest of which is INSANE.
Overall Dungeon Defenders has a bunch of content in to that will keep you occupied for countless hours. It is available for Xbox Live Arcade, PlayStation Network and Steam for 15$. At this price I highly recommend this to anyone that likes this kind of game. If you are one of those people who like to get some achievements this is not the game for you. You will spend way more hours than any sane person should to only get a hand full of gamerscore.
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