Dungeon Defenders: Awakened Review

Dungeon Defenders: Awakened by developer and publisher Chromatic Games—Sony PlayStation 4 review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes. 

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If there's one title that could be considered a guilty pleasure at this point, it would be Chromatic Games' Dungeon Defenders series. Having been playing since the original launch, having covered the launch of the sequel and of Awakened's own relaunch, this tower defense action RPG has made its way back over to the consoles with some new content.

The concept of Dungeon Defenders way back when was a crazy one. Mixing in a tower defense style with action RPG elements meant that you were no longer simply in the passenger seat. Now, you had a front row seat to setting up your defenses and then aiding them as waves of monsters are unleashed with one goal. To destroy your crystals.

To defend your crystals, you'll have access to several characters which also act as classes with different attacks, special abilities and defense types. What I’ve always enjoyed with the character class selection is that there is something for everyone. Want to be up close and tanky? Squire is for you. Want to be ranged while having towers? Apprentice. Ranged and something a bit more flashy with exploding traps? Huntress. Up close and personal but on your own terms while slowing down enemies with an aura? The Monk has your back. Adding in the other characters such as the Dryad Warden, the Android Series EV-A Unit and the Dark Elf Rogue, there’s more choice and variety to be had.

The inclusion of these classes is something that I thought had been missing when Dungeon Defenders Awakened had first launched since the Series EV had been an original DLC character alongside a Barbarian that I would still love to see make a return alongside a Jester and Summoner. All together though, these characters can create some interesting defense combinations whether playing by yourself, as you can now have a hero deck of 6, or with others and concentrating all of your earned experience on one specific hero.

Looking back over my Dungeon Defenders: Awakened review for the PC, there are still some issues that haven’t yet been addressed that I wonder if they will be at this point. Playing with a controller has become much smoother than it was but the inventory was still a mess, if not worse with a controller as there was no select all option. Furthermore, the tavern is still bare and honestly I wonder why it’s being used since there are still no merchants or pet venders for certain cosmetics that existed in the original version all those years ago.

In terms of content, there are plenty of different modes to challenge yourself and others with. From the default campaign over survival which pits you against ever increasing difficult waves, challenges where you have to win through specific rule sets, pure strategy that you have to sit back and hope your traps do the trick and then a mixed mode to swap everything up a bit survival style. There are tons of maps and depending on the difficulty, hours upon hours of tower defense fun as a normal stage can go for 10-20 minutes depending on the spawn time so it makes it easy to do a few in between other gaming or waiting for your party to be ready.

And that’s really it at this point in time though I was happy to see some of the updates that have been done since the last time I dove into Eternia in order to defend the world’s crystals. Better yet, there is also more upcoming content so it looks like Dungeon Defenders Awakened is here to stay for a while. I just hope that some of the items listed above could be addressed to make certain elements feel more lively and useful because the original tavern was definitely an adventurer’s go to for everything.

Summary

Overall though, Dungeon Defenders Awakened for the consoles was enjoyable enough on the big screen and brings plenty of Tower Defense goodness for console players as it is also available on the Nintendo Switch and Microsoft’s Xbox.

Score: 7.5 / 10

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Dungeon Defenders: Awakened - PC Review

Dungeon Defenders: Awakened by developer and publisher Chromatic Games—PC (Steam) review written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

And we’re back for more Hacking & Slashing Tower Defense Action RPG goodness! In case you’re tuning in now, last thursday had our preview of Chromatic Games’ latest entry into the Dungeon Defenders series. Having literally released that day to the full 1.0 version, there were a fair amount of changes from the pre-launch build and a good week later with plenty of enemies having totally not passed, we’ve got our review!

Moving into its full release build it was clear that a lot of elements were worked on to bring about this final version. Probably the biggest item to note is that the interfaces are a lot cleaner and a lot of the issues that I had in the previous build are now gone especially when it came to things staying on the screen while using a controller. Another big item to note is that the previous build has been archived and while it will no longer be updated, it can still be loaded if that’s the version that you wanted to play and it can be found from the main menu. Otherwise? This brand new and shiny version has five different game modes waiting for you!

Alongside the campaign where you’re going to want to start as it’s the easiest mode to level up in and get some base gear, there are the two previously mentioned Survival and Endless modes alongside two others that have been unlocked titled Mix Mode and Pure Strategy. Campaign is your story and the difficulty is pretty standard per stage. It gets tougher but it’s never anything you can’t handle if you’re moving at a decent pace. The other four modes are more or less a mix of each other with Endless and Mix Mode both being brutal survive the waves with everything you have while Survival and Pure Strategy will have you either just use your character, or just use your towers. Between the five there’s plenty of loot and experience to be found and the rotation is never a bad thing.

Taking it from the top, for at least the core mechanics that have you running around attacking enemies while your towers protect your crystals, you’ll be starting off each stage with a tiny monetary balance. This balance is enough to start letting you place a couple defenses as the first waves are never what you really need to worry about. From there, as enemies are taken out, they’ll be dropping both loot and crystals that can be used to either build more defenses or upgrade the existing ones. If you’re playing by yourself there’s never really an issue with this other than lacking company to hack & slash with, but if you’re playing with others, the fallen crystals have to be split and everyone needs to pay attention to the limit of how many defense points can be used up.

Each stage has a total number of points that can be deployed. The stronger the tower, the more points required. Selling a defense off will give you back the points and some more crystals to spend while if it gets destroyed, you’ll get the point, but not the currency. A neat touch is that you can allow other players to upgrade and repair your defenses so if you’re a tank and need to be out in a specific spot, someone else can take care of keeping everything running. The same applies with the archer and sniper spots. So with this in mind, there’s another feature that allows players to drop currency for someone else as if they are taking care of your things, the least you could do is give them something back.

As it stands now though, certain elements feel rather bare. Starting off each time in your tavern which acts as you and your party’s hub, there’s only the crystal to choose your game mode. There are no vendors, there’s no storage box, only two people at a counter with preset dialog. If you want new gear? You have to hope it drops. Selling or upgrading it is easy as it can be done from your inventory but that box gets packed quickly and even if you lock gear, it would be nice to be able to stash it somewhere else to make sure that it is really safe.

Where things REALLY didn’t work was using a controller. I had a fair amount of issues with it before launch and I’m sad to say that it’s actually gotten worse. You can no longer actually play with just a controller, you absolutely need a mouse in order to even get into the main menu. So if I was in the living room? I had one of those portable keyboard mice hybrid devices because I needed it to select my game mode, upgrade my gear and level up my character. None of these actions could be done with the controller which was really unfortunate especially when all of the previous Dungeon Defenders were on the consoles so the mapping should have been nailed down. Maybe this will be fixed by the time Awakened hits the consoles.

So overall, Dungeon Defenders: Awakened is a good return for the series. It’s fun to play both with friends and family though it will be interesting to see where things go from here. With the original success of the first, the troubles of the second, and then technically the original revamp of the first, Awakened has the opportunity to expand with the knowledge of the titles that came before it while also avoiding the issues that came along for the ride. I just hope that I get my Barbarian back...

Score: 7.5 / 10

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Dungeon Defenders: Awakened - PC Preview

Dungeon Defenders: Awakened by developer and publisher Chromatic Games—PC (Steam) preview written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes.

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There are few titles out there that could be described as "the one that started it all". Dungeon Defenders? Dungeon Defenders is one of those that kicked off the hybrid Tower Defense and Action RPG genres together in one solid package. Having had it's ups with the first, and down with the second, Awakening is a reboot to the series by throwing our heroes back to where it all started. Think of this as Dungeon Defenders 3 story wise.

Having recently been given access to Dungeon Defenders: Awakened on Steam's Early Access program, I didn't realize both how much I missed this and how much nostalgia it actually brought about. Originally released back in 2010, this “would have been” cult hit made it big and properly so. It had towers. It had dragons. Goblins. Knights. Archers. Ogres. And instead of kicking back once your towers were in place, you picked up your weapon so that you could fight as well. Leveling up only made you stronger and as a by product, made your towers more powerful in the process as their level caps increased while you increased their overall outputs.

Eventually, more was added to the mix. A barbarian class, an Android, new stages, new enemies and then? A sequel. Our heroes were no longer the kids that unleashed the apocalypse while the parents were out. They were now the heroes. Sadly, this was not to be. With loads of issues from inside the company and its development, Dungeon Defenders 2 just wasn’t working like its predecessor. I gave it a few tries from having covered it from another site to loading it up down the line to see how things were coming along. Overall? I just couldn’t feel the magic like the first.

So I am quite happy to say, that even with some issues that I don't think should be existing right now, that Dungeon Defenders: Awakened is looking pretty good and prioritizes the player first, not some multiplayer lobby that crashes the game before you could get out of it and into your own private one.

Campaign, Survival and Challenge are currently the three modes for you and others to tackle with the original four characters making a return in their new no longer powerful adult bodies. Knight, your sword and board, Mage, your magic slinger, Archer, death from afar, and the Monk, the man with the stick and the auras to make him scary. Together on your own or together with others, the core of the experience is back into place and for the most part offers a solid experience.

The campaign, which is really where you should be starting is a series of stages split into acts that must be completed to move on. Each stage gets harder and harder not only throwing more and more enemies your way, but also making you have to defend more than one crystal’s location. So do you put down the Knights or Mage’s towers? The Archer’s traps or the Monk’s auras to help you do it yourself? As a single player it’s really something to be thought about however, you’re never “alone”.

I was to re-thank our PRs for multiple codes as both my brother and I got the chance to get back into this together. The original got me through a tough time years back and being able to get back into it with Marc was great. Knight and Mage going at the horde was great, but when he went offline and I still needed to take the other classes for a spin and not hold up an open lobby game? Here’s the part where you’re never alone.

Available between every wave is the ability to switch between the characters that you have in your deck. Up to four characters can be added and each character in the deck receives a share of the accumulated experience allowing you to level multiple characters up at once. Need to rush level your new character? Now you don’t need someone else to do it for you. Combine that with being able to put down several different types of traps and things become a little easier when playing single player, however, you’ll generally want someone else along for the ride as this is still definitely “Better with a Partner”.

The gameplay itself is smooth. You can run around, double jump, swing at enemies or shoot at them depending on your class or sit back and relax if the wave is really not worth your time OR if you want to make sure that your defenses are actually working. Nothing is worse than hacking & slashing at things only to realize that you left a glaring hole in your defenses if you walked away. Placing towers takes a few seconds, you can easily rotate them around and then repair or upgrade them as needed. Better than that? You can upgrade or repair other classes / player’s towers if you’re closer than they are. That or if you have the budget for it.

Where things don't quite work so well right now, and it's Early Access so there is that leeway, it’s the item and menu management. With a controller. It can be downright hell and with the previous two to look back on, I'm not sure why. Oftentimes it would select but then not continue. Leveling up was impossible without a mouse. Upgrading gear was impossible without a mouse. You could get to where you should be doing the action but then you couldn't actually put points in. The screen just stared at you.

Only making matters worse was when you were checking out your gear an item that you weren't even looking at would stay on screen. Permanently. Well permanent until the whole screen reloaded itself with a transition into a stage or back to your tavern. So with that, often I would leave checking out new gear until getting back to the tavern because trying to defend your base and your crystal when you can’t see where you’re aiming or if there are enemies left in front of you wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Fighting a boss was next to damned near impossible.

That aside though, Dungeon Defenders: Awakened brings back the magic of the first and plenty of refinement to the gaming experience. It runs smoothly, it’s pretty to look at and it’s fun to play. Being in Early Access there are things that need to be fixed, but as things are now? There shouldn’t be much holding you back from this hybrid Tower Defense Action RPG especially if the original was your jam.

Score: N/A

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