“Oh noooo they are coming… “
“Oh wheere?…”
“Never mind, I clicked on them and now they are gone…”
“Oh, the excitement….”
Dungeon Defenders 2 is a free-to-play tower defense game. You control a knight, wizard, archer, or monk (and presumably other characters later), run around, and defend stuff by frantically clicking on things.
This is going to be a short and utterly subjective review. One of those weird ones. I don’t want to waste even more time with this game. I would also like to disclaim that I didn’t play a lot with it, it’s perfectly imaginable that it gets tolerable after a while, but just like going back in this review to fix the sentences to make them more natural and smooth, I can’t be bothered with it.
The Good
Well it’s free. I would still like my money back, please.
The Bad
This is how Facebook or any other social media nonsense or mobile games would look if they were a game (see what I did there). A completely bleak and nihilistic experience hidden under a thin layer of sugarcoat. Your sensors are constantly overloaded with lights and colours and ping sounds, everything continuously blows up and lights up and sparkles and cha-chings. The term “opium for the masses” has never felt so accurate and actually non-pretentious for a change. And you don’t even feel like you did anything to earn the aforementioned opium.
I feel like a grumpy old person, honestly, like I don’t know where I am and what is happening and it is really weird for me, no idea who does what and why and how, sometimes there is a boss coming and you just point your mouse at it and keep pressing the button and it dies. Same goes for the navigation, where am I, is this the hub, at one point I’m in a town then in a tavern then in an overly sugary Christmas decoration area (what happened there, did they forget to take off the winter skin?), and all this time I am seriously struggling with launching a private game or finding my co-op partner. Compare that to Dauntless, another completely free game, where there is a hub city, one merchant for each equipment type, you find your partner(s), and launch a mission.
The game is also extremely easy, I don’t think it’s possible to lose. Level design is as confusing (can they come from there, is this a route, am I supposed to use the scorpio, or is it there for decoration) as it is boring (oh, none of that actually mattered). Not rewarding, and to quote Monty Python, dull, dull, dull, dull, so dull.
I really did not care about my characters and upgrading them, there are dozens of different types of upgrades and armors and runes and whatnots, but I aggressively did not care. Switching between characters mid-fight is the least immersive solution since Trine did the same for some reason. For a game this dumb and pointless, you would assume that it’s at least simple to pick up, and there is a nifty tutorial, but no, majority of the things are never explained. And once again, I know I sound like a lost grandparent in a video game, but I’ve been doing this for three decades now, so if I don’t get the interface of the game, I refuse to entertain the notion of it being my fault.
All right, so we have a game that I did not like, but it was free, so what’s the harm? As you might have guessed, the game is plagued with different ways of spending your (or, let’s be honest, your parents’) money. And it doesn’t have to be like that. There is a small title called League of Legends that comes to mind. Say what you want, I think that was (is?) an important milestone, toxic and miserable the whole experience might have been. LoL has a number of things you can waste your money on, but it’s definitely not pay-to-win, I know people who played that game without spending a single cent on it. You don’t have to, but you could buy heroes for real money, and I did the math, a LoL hero comes to 1/5th of what a hero costs in DD2. Same with Dauntless, the option to spend money is kinda there, but it’s never in your face per se, and you can absolutely do everything without the cosmetic upgrades you can buy. Which is I think the correct business model. DD2 takes the opposite approach, you have to pay for everything other than the base four heroes.
Ehh. Pointless, boring, annoying, frustrating. So far, Niffelheim was the worst game, and that already has the lowest scores possible, but as far as I’m concerned, Dungeon Defenders 2 now proudly takes the crown of the worst video game we have ever reviewed.
The Co-Op
It doesn’t matter what you do, a very bleak game experience under the cheerful sounds. I guess you can bond over your shared lack of fun?
The Recommendation
No.
What you need to do instead is buy (yes, buy, crazy concept, I know!) Orcs Must Die 2, a game that is superior in every aspect, with almost the same premise, and even similar in aesthetics. Sometimes, you just want to pay $9.99 for a game like an adult and expect some passable 10-hour entertainment in return, have proper fun and be challenged.
And if you want a free and light and colourful game, Dauntless is endlessly more entertaining.
Info
| Release Year | 2017 |
| Genre | Tower Defense |
| Difficulty | Very Easy |
| Number of Players | 1 to 4 |
| Length | playing the game: 70 minutes, ranting about it: 2 hours |
Rating
| Overall | Terrible |
| Story | Terrible |
| Co-Operation | Terrible |