If only that were true. Wait until you try to play any of those difficulties. The game is balanced entirely around items. No matter how many levels you add to a hero (each skill is capped at 50, which extends to 70 after unlocking legendary) it won't actually make a difference compared to the gains from equipment. So to beat a given stage, it requires reloading the shop which refreshes the inventory with randomly generated items. Keep doing this until you find just the right ones with high enough bonuses to stack up. If you're skeptical, check the user guides hosted at the official site. They all stipulate required stats and a general guideline of which items you will need to be generated in order to progress. And even then, the strategies often don't work. Sadly, the first game was the same way. The problem is Gimka stated they don't feel the extra difficulties should be played by anyone not willing to buy IAP and uninterested in the tedium of juggling equipment instead of playing the game. Basically you're supposed to consider the game concluded when you beat something at Master level.
I liked the first game and it was worth it to me to get this when it launched. The game has plenty of other shortcomings for those curious about it. The entire inventory system is one of the worst you will find. If this were a PC/console game, reviewers would drop it from a 7/10 to a 6 for the tedium of selling and managing items alone. Which is made all the more painful in a game where they decided to dump junk on players after every completed stage, creating a virtual chore that is as inexplicable as it is tedious. In fact, most of the menus are flat-out awful. Beginning each level, there is a page of story that must be clicked to pass. At the end you get a comic to also click. They never go away even after umpteen consecutive plays. There is no simple way to restart a stage: you must abandon it under the options screen, click past the next two screens, relaunch the level, click past the too-familiar story, loading screen, tutorial screen (if you're playing below legendary), then play. The game is full of minor nuisances like this suggesting the developers pay such little attention to how people will play it. The balance is a curious issue. On the one hand the game is intricately balanced requiring a specific alignment of numerous factors before one will be able to proceed. On the other, it's tied to equipment which is sort of like if Final Fantasy required those 1% rare item drops to beat each boss at the end of an area. Read: not the bonus bosses post game--just the normal bosses. Where most games progress with increasing exp or a try-try-again method, this one shoulders it all on randomly generated items which must be _just so_ in order to meet the basic stats required to defeat some enemies. By doing so, they sacrificed any semblance of strategy and gameplay. And of course, the fact it has IAP hovering over so many aspects of the game. Why toil playing a game when the shortcut is always present, and all one has to do is pay a couple more times the cover price?
Great, you put me off BIG time! But then again I already had doubts about this game and you've confirmed them. Thank you for saving me £0.69 + the space it would've taken up on my iDevice.
i wanna get a refund from this piece of crap! this game is a shame compared to something like kingdom rush
Yea, reading people's reviews, guess I'll pass up on this one. Wasn't all that keen on the first game, so many good tower defense games... In fact, I rarely have time to play them. Guess, I'll go buy the new frogger instead. Ribbit!
I agree with everything dib stated above, and I will add that the tutorial is weak and there is no indication of what enemies you will face next. However, I am still really enjoying this game because it looks good, has a lot of depth and nice features and is different from the run of the mill TD game. Come on folks, for a buck there is a ton here to like. Yes, it is not a Kingdom Rush in terms of great balance, polish and game play, but it is still really good and interesting. I suspect the balance issues do not come into play until after a number of hours of play as I am having no trouble unlocking new levels playing on Novice and Casual difficulties and I have not read the manual or looked for tips anywhere. I have already gotten more then my dollars worth of enjoyment here.
There are no balance issues. You have to search for loot in the shop yes, but that's part of the experience. Finding that one good item required to beat a map is pretty satisfying to some players. Keep in mind that this is a TDRPG, nothing like kingdom rush. There is much much more depth to this game than kingdom rush can ever have. If you don't like the depth then this game simply is not for you. The IAP are there only if you feel like throwing money at the dev, they are completely unnecessary and become quite useless after you beat heroic. There is really no incentive to buy them as they are just as good as the current items you can buy from the shop.
TDs Hmmm, I've been a big fan of TD games for quite a while, think my first iOS one was Fieldrunners. Tried many more since them and so many of them seem almost identical except for the graphics. One think that is definitely unique about DC is its RPG element. Its not Diablo by any means or Aralon, but the combination of a hero and "NPCs" or guilds that you use as the tower component works quite well. It has progressively staged difficulty levels, which means you can start on the easiest level and just throw towers down and have reasonable success, but as you complete the easier levels and open up the harder levels, each choice in the game and how you prepare for it takes on more and more importance. Its sort of like the endless games you can never win because the monsters never stop coming and just keep getting stronger and stronger until they overwhelm you. The challenge is just to see how far you can make it with your playing style and interest. As you play you have the chance to build up your troops and hero making them more powerful or giving them new abilities. You earn experience which you can use RPG style to increase stats like your hero's strength or range, or the power of your troops. As you complete maps you earn gold which you can spend in "stores" to buy equipment that also make your hero or troops stronger or grant them certain abilities. At first if you are playing a map where archers seem the best solution, its pretty easy to shop for a few items that really boost your archers, but as you get to the higher and higher difficulties, you do indeed need to spend quite a bit of time shopping to find just the right, or the most powerful archer items. Some people seem to love this challenge and the ahah! when a rare and powerful item is found, while others dislike the time required to overcome the odds of finding a rare item. But this is only needed if you wish to push the envelope. I think the biggest confusion or frustration in the game is when have you beaten it? You play through each map on an RPG quest watching a comic strip like cutscene as you work your way through it, but on the easier difficulties, that can be done in a day or two. Do you then need to complete it on the next higher difficulty, or the one after that? I think it is your own choice as to how detailed and far you want to go. The developer says it was designed originally with only the 4th or 5th difficulty level, but that the easier ones were added to allow casual players to just click throught hings, and the crazy higher difficulties were added even later to allow hardcore players to just keep playing and playing until they couldn't go any further. Anyway, if you like the idea of an attractive hand drawn TD game with a neat RPG twist, a fun story with great narration and a cool soundtrack, I think you will really enjoy this game. Just remember that it gets harder and harder as you progress until you just can't go any more.
I read a lot of good to great reviews of this, including touch arcades own and really expected great things of this. Didn't read this thread until after I'd bought but before I'd played unfortunately...... Don't get it, I'm not going to go over anything that's already been posted suffice to say I agree with all the bad points already up here. My biggest disapointment in the recent sales, I nearly bought it full price cos of the TA review and very glad I didn't.
Mostly I appreciate the couple posts that namedropped Kingdom Rush. Picked it up and I have been hooked. It's heads and shoulders above some of the other major disappointments in the TD genre, like Jelly Defense, 4Towers, Tiny Heroes, etc.
Yeah, I got that over this game, and I am impressed with how it looks on the new ipad. I do like Jelly Defense though, it has such cute cartoony graphics. And the music is great. It's not that great in strategy, but it does a lot of the intangibles right.
I've stopped playing Defender Chronicles lately. It's clear I'm never going to get past legendary mode. I would welcome them rebalancing the game, but Gimka are too busy with the handful of diehards to care what most gamers think. Loving Kingdom Rush. I enjoyed the fact that even when I get slaughtered, I can see where I went wrong and how to compensate next time. And it has worked every time. It's the rare TD game that truly has a sense of balance relying on strategy. More to the point, it's just _damn fun_. Fingers crossed for an expansion. I would gladly break my no-IAP rule to purchase new levels if they keep it going.
Yep -- it's the old game but improved and deepened and *HARDER*. Also more characters to play. But very similar to original -- and I loved original!!
I gave up on this game. Full price and I hit a paywall. Was quite frustrated. Remains uncompleted and deleted. I would pass unless its free then you can make a call on the IAP coins. Disapointed.
