It's only one of the few games I've ever had the pleasure of playing. Yes, I loathe tower defense games with a vengeance, normally because I can never progress to the tougher, later levels without cheating. We're not here, however much I'd have enjoyed it, to endure my complaints about the tower defense genre.
Defender's Quest is an ingenious combination of tower defense and RPG, so not only does it contain the rudimentary elements of tower defense, such as the strategic placement of available offensive units, as well as the ever-present dilemma one naturally faces in any tower defense game between quality and quantity in terms of offense, Defender's Quest tells the tale of a young female protagonist on a quest to rid the world of a terrible plague, confronted occasionally by terrible abominations resultant of the plague known as Revenants. Throughout the journey, you'll encounter a number of fascinating characters who will aid you in your battle against evil, all the while providing refreshingly witty banter between each other as a breather between battles, ensuring that every moment spent on the game is an enjoyable one. The cutscenes are more a series of Powerpoint slides, which seem to be better off without the storytelling benefits of animation. Think of it like reading through the pages of a comic book, where every page vivdly captures every emotional nuance of every character.
Defender's Quest plays deeper into the RPG scheme of things with the Diablo-esque skill tree system. Every character comes with a class-specific skill set that you are free to customize to fit a certain function in the field. You can choose to build a fighter who hits fast and hard, or one who deals considerable damage on multiple foes simultaneously; an archer who shoots multiple arrows in a wide spread, or one who inflicts serious status effects on the enemy; and so on. The battlefield is your playground, where you can experiment with countless strategies using every available unit with their own specifications. Let's also not forget what makes RPG so much fun: the ordnance. You'll be continually upgrading your weapons and armors for your team as you advance off what limited funding you might have at the moment, the currency being, curiously enough, utter junk.
Effectively maintaining a balance between the serious and comical sides of the story, Defender's Quest is certainly an appropriate fix for those who tire of convoluted fantasy lore and monotonous Shakespearean dialogues. The game works out so well such that it manages to combine two entirely disparate genres without coming off as discordant. If you happen to find yourself with a hankering for a bit of a challenge, during a lunch break perhaps, you can always try your hand in every difficulty level for every stage, a feat achievable with only one hand while holding a sandwich with the other. If you never seem to get the hang of the multitude of tower defense games out there, like me, that's okay; Defender's Quest lets you play at your own pace, as you can always choose to level up by grinding your team in the previous stages, though it would probably make everything seem a bit too easy, consequently taking the fun out of managing competitive battle strategies.
Defender's Quest is available to all via either the game's website, or Good Old Games, where I bought it for a reasonable $10. There are other websites that you can look for the game, such as Steam, the details of which you can check on their Facebook page.
On an unrelated note, one thing still niggles me: why do they feel it necessary to credit the conception of the game's story to an English major? I'm not trying to sound condescending (which I usually do, though not intentionally... most of the time), though it seems rather... arrogant(?) to confine good storytelling to a specific qualification. Why not, 'The game was designed by a software engineering major', if we're going on about giving people due credit here?
Defender's Quest is an ingenious combination of tower defense and RPG, so not only does it contain the rudimentary elements of tower defense, such as the strategic placement of available offensive units, as well as the ever-present dilemma one naturally faces in any tower defense game between quality and quantity in terms of offense, Defender's Quest tells the tale of a young female protagonist on a quest to rid the world of a terrible plague, confronted occasionally by terrible abominations resultant of the plague known as Revenants. Throughout the journey, you'll encounter a number of fascinating characters who will aid you in your battle against evil, all the while providing refreshingly witty banter between each other as a breather between battles, ensuring that every moment spent on the game is an enjoyable one. The cutscenes are more a series of Powerpoint slides, which seem to be better off without the storytelling benefits of animation. Think of it like reading through the pages of a comic book, where every page vivdly captures every emotional nuance of every character.
Defender's Quest plays deeper into the RPG scheme of things with the Diablo-esque skill tree system. Every character comes with a class-specific skill set that you are free to customize to fit a certain function in the field. You can choose to build a fighter who hits fast and hard, or one who deals considerable damage on multiple foes simultaneously; an archer who shoots multiple arrows in a wide spread, or one who inflicts serious status effects on the enemy; and so on. The battlefield is your playground, where you can experiment with countless strategies using every available unit with their own specifications. Let's also not forget what makes RPG so much fun: the ordnance. You'll be continually upgrading your weapons and armors for your team as you advance off what limited funding you might have at the moment, the currency being, curiously enough, utter junk.
Effectively maintaining a balance between the serious and comical sides of the story, Defender's Quest is certainly an appropriate fix for those who tire of convoluted fantasy lore and monotonous Shakespearean dialogues. The game works out so well such that it manages to combine two entirely disparate genres without coming off as discordant. If you happen to find yourself with a hankering for a bit of a challenge, during a lunch break perhaps, you can always try your hand in every difficulty level for every stage, a feat achievable with only one hand while holding a sandwich with the other. If you never seem to get the hang of the multitude of tower defense games out there, like me, that's okay; Defender's Quest lets you play at your own pace, as you can always choose to level up by grinding your team in the previous stages, though it would probably make everything seem a bit too easy, consequently taking the fun out of managing competitive battle strategies.
Defender's Quest is available to all via either the game's website, or Good Old Games, where I bought it for a reasonable $10. There are other websites that you can look for the game, such as Steam, the details of which you can check on their Facebook page.
On an unrelated note, one thing still niggles me: why do they feel it necessary to credit the conception of the game's story to an English major? I'm not trying to sound condescending (which I usually do, though not intentionally... most of the time), though it seems rather... arrogant(?) to confine good storytelling to a specific qualification. Why not, 'The game was designed by a software engineering major', if we're going on about giving people due credit here?