Dungeon Defenders Review (PSN)

We could talk all day on the strides made by Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade and Sony’s Playstation Network in recent years to create interesting new single player experiences, but on the multiplayer side of things, eh, it leaves a little to be desired. Outside of cutesy side-scrolling adventures like Castle Crashers and Scott Pilgrim vs. The world, there isn’t a huge amount of fun to be found for you and a selection of your closest friends.

Tower defence games have been done to death, especially with the rise of mobile gaming, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they have been done right. It’s here’s where Dungeon Defenders takes a step up onto a perfectly placed turret, raises its sword up into the air and says its time to play motherfuckers. Not only does Dungeon Defenders do everything right; but it does it in an engaging, unbelievably addicting and incredibly fun manner that you just aren’t likely to find in any other four-player co-op game currently on the market.

Taking the familiar formula of other tower defence games, you are presented with a tightly spaced map and an objective to defend. It is your goal to intricately place turrets, traps and other agents of mass infliction to stem the growing hordes advances. Mix this with an intuitive 3rd-person hack and slash mechanic and you can see how Dungeon Defenders is changing the rules of the game.

Instead of being forced to sit and watch from the sidelines as your world comes crashing down, now you thrown into the thick of battle defending that all-important Eternia Crystal. Slicing, slashing and fighting back the waves of enemies, while still being able to drop defences on the fly – It takes a usually two-dimensional experience, and expands it into an ever-changing battle that, when combined with friends (sat next to you on the couch or through the magic of the internet), is quite simply an unmissably fun experience.

Dungeon Defenders doesn’t skimp out when it comes to characters either. Every player is given the option of one of four avatars. The classic archetypes are all here, the Mage, the Warrior, The Monk and The Huntress – each with their own play styles and difficulty curves. This is where Dungeon Defenders becomes something more than a vehicle for violent banter between adventurers’, and becomes a growing game of gear hunting and stat building like you wouldn’t believe. It is here, surprisingly, where a lot of the games lasting appeal can be found.

You are given the option of putting points into everything from your character’s base damage and health, to increasing your defence’s longevity and stopping potential. When random players join your party mid game, its exciting (and an eternally worrying) time period where all you can do is guess what their particular strengths and weaknesses will be, and hope to an armour-clad god that they can tip the scales in your favour and turn the tide of battle.

Loot grinding is also present; giving you the ability to hunt for new swords or staves and level them up, creating increasingly awesome-looking weapons of mass destruction. Sadly the look of your character never changes aside from an initial colour change, so while you can find new helms and clothes they never really affect anything other than a few stats. It would have been nice to show-off your battle hardiness to other players with a simple glance, but it’s such a small complaint that I debated leaving it out entirely.

Enemies and games scale constantly, assessing the skill and levels of the four fighters in the fray, creating a challenging experience across the multiple difficulty levels. Tower Defence games can often suffer from players gaining an over-familiarity with the maps, but every game seemed to end the same; with you slashing in a desperate fury as an intricate maze of traps comes crashing to the ground with your fellow sons of Eternia screaming to the high heavens that an ogre is on route to the crystal. It’s a tough but fair state of affairs, and never have I wanted to defend a crystal with as much heart (sorry Crystal Chronicles) or gusto as I have done in Dungeon Defenders. The things we do for a mana gem and a 6th wave of enemies are unbelievable, right?

In short: Dungeon Defenders is a fantastically enchanting multiplayer experience that’s not to be missed by anyone with four friends hungry for battle or the lone wolf riding the waves of the internet. It’s engaging, frantically fun and hopefully one we will be talking about for months to come, especially when it comes to that all-important decision of what to crank out at a party. Couldn’t recommend this one any higher. Buy it, enjoy and pray your pals are up for a challenge.

Dungeon Defenders is out now on PSN, PC and XBLA.