Won't somebody think of the goblins?
Dungeon Defenders 2 sees the famous foursome of the original game – that’s the Monk, the Squire, the Hunter and the Apprentice – caught up in even more trouble in the fantasy land of Ethuria. The nefarious Ancient Ones are on the rise again, and it’s only your sword arm and your array of unpleasant traps, towers and cannons that can hold them back.
As before you’ve got a nice blend of third-person hack and slash combat and tower defence gameplay, with each map separated into various lanes that must be defended from hordes of nasty critters. The melee combat, probably the weakest part of the original game, has been notably improved, with far less “lawn-mowing”. That’s developer Trendy Entertainment’s term for waving your sword at an enemy and chipping their hit points away without feeling any particular sense of impact – that’s been a focus during development, and in Dungeon Defenders 2 each swing of your sword or your staff feels like it’s doing real damage.
Not that the franchise is turning into Diablo just yet. The star of the show is still tower defence chaos, and it’s as entertaining this time around as it was before. Each hero packs a few unique contraptions alongside their melee skills, from the Squire’s ballista turret to the Apprentice’s ice and fire towers. Some are pure damage, some are defensive, and others debilitate or otherwise set up enemies for extra damage.
So far, so familiar, but a couple of new additions to the formula mix things up. Firstly, the sequel’s new level-up system allows for a lot of variety in how your team approaches each map. Rather than simple stat upgrades as in the first game, you can nudge your chosen hero in several different ‘Spec’ paths that set up interesting combinations. I played the Squire, a melee class, and chose to put points in a Spec that caused my spiked barricades to stun the enemy for a couple of seconds. Combined with an ice tower from my Apprentice companion, and the onrushing mobs were trapped in place for my damaging melee attacks. Until some heavy-hitting drakes turned up. Those guys are not messing about.
Trendy says that they’ve introduced named, elite enemies to further mess your perfect plans up, and a new AI spawning system that sounds kind of like Left 4 Dead’s ‘director’. If you’ve hit upon a strategy that is mincing goblin troopers into fine green paste regardless of their numbers, the game might bung a wave of pure flyers at you, resulting in an undignified scramble as you desperately set up a new bank of anti-air turrets.
Combat and tactical decision-making gel far more successfully now, with all construction and combat taking place in the same third-person view, rather than switching back and forth between that and a top down view as in the first game. Trendy has also, thankfully, split your combat and construction resources in two, meaning you no longer have to concentrate on one at the expense of the other. These are smart changes that keep hold of what made the original game fun, while cutting out the irritating quirks that held it back.
It’s not just the battlefield that has seen some major changes. If you fancy a break from all that slicing and dicing you can visit the Tavern, a hub level which houses everything a growing adventurer needs. This is where you jump into battles – via a nifty map screen presented by the Squire’s similarly well-armoured dad, no less – and set up your character builds, gear and so on. There’s even a spot with some practice dummies where you can test your skills. It will also house the game’s free-to-play aspects, though Trendy wasn’t showing those off just yet.
Visually, the sequel is leaps and bounds ahead of its predecessor. Gone are the thick black lines and vaguely cel-shaded look of the first game, replaced by a softer, more cohesive look that resembles a Pixar movie brought to life. One touch I really loved was the way Trendy has actually bothered creating a world that fits together, the way Dark Souls’ fortress of Lordran had a sense of physical scale. You might see a tower far off in the distance in one map, for example, then in the next you’ll be there, battling off an army of goblins carried by airships.
This isn’t a game that focuses heavily on story of course, but along with secondary objectives in each level, like saving a stubborn pumpkin farmer (and in the process preventing a new lane from opening up), the world feels far more characterful and well-rounded this time out. It helps that both design and animations have been vastly improved, resulting in some suitably spectacular venues. A throne room under siege in the midst of a thunderstorm, windows blown out and rain pouring in springs to mind. You’ll want to see what’s round the next corner.
Dungeon Defenders 2 feels confident and fun, and the mix of action and strategy gels a lot more convincingly than it did in the first game. Trendy’s been fiddling with various concepts for the sequel, including ditching a fairly half-hearted MOBA element that didn’t really work, and that isn’t usually conducive to a solid final product. Possibly due to their cadre of hard-working community testers, however, they’ve managed to strip away the excess fat and cook up something that plays really, really well. As with all free-to-play games, the proof in the pudding will be how well the free-to-play elements are introduced, but the developers are making the right noises so far about restricting transactions to purely cosmetic and non-essential goodies, so we can live in hope. Right now I’m eager to play some more.
Most Anticipated Moment: I played a fairly straightforward introductory session, but I’m itching to try out one of those later levels I saw with tonnes of lanes and secret objectives. Dungeon Defenders is at its best when everything’s going badly wrong.
