Is Dungeon Defenders any good?

[Aeshi]

Was considering picking it up to play with a friend or two, I enjoyed the demo but I'm still not sure how well that reflects the game as a whole given the amount of DLC it has now...

 

[w9496]

Depends. I bought it, but I hardly play it anymore because it can take an hour and a half to beat one level.

The gameplay is solid however, so if you don't mind going on a long haul, you may enjoy it.

 

[Jdb]

I'd play it with only the campaign expansion DLC. Anything more, like classes, and the game starts to feel bloated and unbalanced.

 

[Fr]anc[is]

The base game is a good buy. About 12 levels plus a modified challenge version for each of them, all perfectly playable with the base 4 characters. I can attest that the Series EV and Summoner are fun additions, haven't tried the Barbarian yet. Other than that yea it is pretty heavy on the DLC spam, but the core game is fine.

 

[DustyDrB]

It's really fun to play with friends. Alone...it's ok.

And yeah, there really is a crapload of DLC for it.

 

[Smooth Operator]

It doesn't feel like you need any extras because it doesn't have much staying power, by the time you do everything in vanilla you will probably be bored to death with it... but that is just your standard tower defense problem.

Also that DLC malarkey is just horrid nickel-and-dimeing, you will end up paying the game 5x over if you get caught in it so just don't .

 

[joe-h2o]

It is good fun, and the original game and original 4 classes are fun and challenging.

The Summoner is *utterly broken* because he has his own defence units pool (well, it's shared across all summoners on the same map), that is separate from the rest of the defence unit pool, so it's just too easy to cheese a level by effectively having double the amount of defence units that the map was designed for. It makes some of the harder modes really easy to beat, especially if you have another class you can swap to during the waves. He's interesting to play since his mechanics are different to the other classes, but it feels somewhat unbalanced.

It's a great game to play with some friends though. You'll all have a blast, especially if you use your own voice chat (skype/vent/etc) rather than the inbuilt one which is pretty poor, or just so it on a LAN.

 

[Aeshi]

It is good fun, and the original game and original 4 classes are fun and challenging.

The Summoner is *utterly broken* because he has his own defence units pool (well, it's shared across all summoners on the same map), that is separate from the rest of the defence unit pool, so it's just too easy to cheese a level by effectively having double the amount of defence units that the map was designed for. It makes some of the harder modes really easy to beat, especially if you have another class you can swap to during the waves. He's interesting to play since his mechanics are different to the other classes, but it feels somewhat unbalanced.

It's a great game to play with some friends though. You'll all have a blast, especially if you use your own voice chat (skype/vent/etc) rather than the inbuilt one which is pretty poor, or just so it on a LAN.

Was actually going to get the Summoner if I do buy the game, since that particular 'archetype' of character has always appealed to my inner RTS player.

 

[joe-h2o]

It is good fun, and the original game and original 4 classes are fun and challenging.

The Summoner is *utterly broken* because he has his own defence units pool (well, it's shared across all summoners on the same map), that is separate from the rest of the defence unit pool, so it's just too easy to cheese a level by effectively having double the amount of defence units that the map was designed for. It makes some of the harder modes really easy to beat, especially if you have another class you can swap to during the waves. He's interesting to play since his mechanics are different to the other classes, but it feels somewhat unbalanced.

It's a great game to play with some friends though. You'll all have a blast, especially if you use your own voice chat (skype/vent/etc) rather than the inbuilt one which is pretty poor, or just so it on a LAN.

Was actually going to get the Summoner if I do buy the game, since that particular 'archetype' of character has always appealed to my inner RTS player.

I never actually use the "top down RTS" view that he has, although it is interesting to see. He's much more effective dashing up to chokepoints, going into "phase mode" and applying upgrades or repairs without the possibility of being damaged. With full mana and a reasonable level he can keep a wall up indefinitely against an Insane-mode red ogre. Just dip out of phase mode briefly to collect mana if you are low.

He's fun to play once you get past the first 15 or 20 levels - his inability to attack anything himself directly makes him annoying to solo level early on before his minion summons all unlocked, and then levelled up a bit (more speed and more range/health etc). Once he unlocks the Ogre at level 30 he's virtually unstoppable in anything but Insane difficulty or above, especially when paired with almost any other mobile dps class like a huntress.