Dungeon Defenders by Trendy Entertainment is an ambitious title that strives to combine 3rd person dungeon defense, role-playing, tower defense and online coop action into one heady brew for your mobile device. Needless to say, this is a tall order not only for the developer but also the player and the hardware.
While the basic premise of Dungeon Defenders is simple, guard a magic crystal from an onslaught of Orcs, Archers, and Trolls, the game play is not. This is no pick-up-and-play mobile game. There are two phases to Dungeon Defenders, the build phase where you set your towers and blockades and outfit your Hero and the action phase where enemies invade the beautiful large areas through sets of doors.
In anticipation of player confusion Trendy includes a lengthy tutorial with a well-done voiceover and redundant written instructions that just block the screen. You can turn off the written instructions in the options. It will take you a certain amount of time to get used to the cluttered UI and overall game play in Dungeon Defenders as there is a lot of game here. At times there can be up to 15 touch buttons on your 4 inch screen.
You control one of four different Heroes with a familiar d-pad but unfortunately there is no swipe to look or pinch to zoom. Instead, you control the camera look and zoom by little arrows and +/- buttons around the map button which is neither intuitive nor easy.
Dungeon Defenders was designed as an online multiplayer game. The dungeons have up to six entry doors so if you try to play DD solo you’ll have to run from door to door checking your defenses and fighting. Hence, you’ll miss most of the action which is truly spectacular as the Unreal engine brings some fabulous looking creatures to life.
The levels consist of 5 waves of enemies between which you can collect mana crystals to build and repair your defenses and pick up armor and weapons to build up your Hero who also levels up along the way. For some reason, you must store your excess items and mana in an armory which isn‘t explained very well. There is also a tavern which I found little use for.
If you fail one of the 5 waves you have to start from the beginning of the level which means you need to set aside a large chunk of time to play DD, preferably at home with a Wifi connection. This makes Dungeon Defenders more of a console game on a small screen than a mobile phone game.
Trendy reaches far with Dungeon Defenders, perhaps beyond the limits of today’s handsets. While some will love it and everyone will appreciate the gorgeous graphics, action and depth of play, the poor camera controls, huge system demands (for Android devices), cluttered UI, lack of a simple inventory or saves and the lengthy play time required to complete a level prevents Dungeon Defenders from being all things to all mobile users. 3 Stars.
goyami@comcast.net