Review of the game

[Lag-wtf]

I'm slightly disappointed.

LEVELS/MAPS: I beat this game in 4 or 5 hours.... so yeah, 20 levels weren't enough. How much effort does it take to create a tower defense map anyway? The game should have had 100 levels. Also, the maps were all very similar. They were extremely linear with narrow paths that offered little choice. Part of the fun of playing tower defense games is strategically coordinating a maze. This game doesnt offer the ability to design a spiral or even a simple back-and-forth pathway.

TOWERS: Just like the maps, the game should have had more tower variations with much more differentiation between each of them. There were only 8 tower types? Come on... it feels like an intentional effort to sell DLC later. Next, the boost system was an unnecessary failure. It just became tedious. Literally every single tower had to be built with a boost, so it just became boring and redundant to have to build them over and over.

Graphics: While the graphics were "ok" the attacking units were microscopic. I literally couldnt tell them apart because they were all so small. I felt like a pack of fleas was attacking me. Also, the units should have been much more distinctive. There should have been more obvious variations: fast units, armored units, fireproof units, shield units, etc all existed, but the differences were minute. They all died to any given tower arrangement. I didnt get any feeling of differentiation amongst the different waves... there wasnt even any air. wtf why? Because all of the units were basically susceptible to all tower types, massing cannon towers will beat most levels easily.

STORY: The story was horrible. It was so bad I didn't even bother to pay attention. The robot voices were just annoying "i love raspberries" translated into disabling the sound and listening to my own music.

MULTIPLAYER: While the implementation of the multiplayer system was a great idea, and a big step up from DG1.... it's still not quite up to par. It feels like a 2004 era game in which just offering any kind of multiplayer play at all was sufficient. The 3 modes aren't particularly creative, but ehhhh.... it's something..

CONTROLS: I don't like the lack of cursor freedom. Moving the mouse to the left moves the entire screen frame to the left. It feels like it's designed for a console. It's not game breaking or anything, but I'd much rather have a free-moving cursor.

OVERALL THOUGHTS: While I love seeing quality games from the tower defense genre, I can't recommend DG2. Honestly I have played better TDs in custom maps on starcraft 2 and warcraft 3.

[chillgreg]

Gotta reluctantly agree with most of that.

[Kaboom]

Hey Captain! First off, I'd like to say thank you for sharing your feedback and suggestions with us. Hopefully I can help answer a few of your questions/comments.

Although there are only 21 levels featured in the campaign of Defense Grid 2, there are hundreds of combinations of ways to play them. There are different game modes (Open, Competitive, Competitive Unlimited Sell), several Game Types (such as Focal Point and Frozen Core), and 4 different difficulties. Some maps will featured a fix path, while others will feature more mazing. In regards to how long it takes to make a map, you might want to check out our DG Architect videos on Youtube. We show a glimpse at designing and adding art to a level :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICFPE0hUTD0&list=UUwYRBXnA6EN8gTxDBuHxOpQ

Your comment about always having to build a boost tower for every tower sparks a question, what mode/difficulty are you playing on? I've been playing Normal/Competitive and generally only need a few boost towers here and there.

Air units were replaced with new threats in DG2 such as the Regenerators and the Landing Pod, and although cannon towers are great, they do have their weaknesses. There are some maps that might require a wider variety of towers such as Split Decision :)

You mention multiplayer being "not quite up to par." Could you elaborate on features you'd like to see in the future? What do you currently like and dislike about what we have implemented?

Thanks again for sharing with us!

[SLMEPHI[GER]]

Автор сообщения: Kaboom

You mention multiplayer being "not quite up to par." Could you elaborate on features you'd like to see in the future? What do you currently like and dislike about what we have implemented?

hi Kaboom, i would have some ideas for gaming modes which eventually be much fun.

Less Ressources : only 5 ressources per tick not 10

Beat the waves: Unlimited waves of harder getting mobs, and you have to beat as many as you can. In the Highscore not only points are counted, even waves.

Who is the Boss: Only Bossmonsters will appear

The biggest Wave: 1 Wave with hundreds of aliens, you must build the towers during the wave

The last Core: only 1 Core is in the Corehouse

The Landing Wave: Landing Pods will Land all over the Map and disload their aliens, not only in the Corehouse, so there are per wave 10 or more pods and you cannot see before where they will land.

Reverse Mode: The exit and the entrance will be changed

Battle Mode: You have to battle highscores of friends or off the community, there you get a highscore which is over you in the list and you must beat it

I also want some changes:

In Dg Cooperated Defense: all two players have the same points because now its not cooperated its more a battle who is the best and that would be bad because of the places you can build at the map mostly 1 has better building slots at start.

In DG Fighter: Delete the map where you see a remote card of the opponents map, only build there a strategic map with shown towers, this may get a better stability and a faster gameplay.
Also delete the timeout at the end, i will play to end when anyone has lost all cores. because always at end the 1 wins with more points and often i can see the opponent has 200 point more than i and 15 enemies more killed but all two have all cores.

Multiplayer: Add a Lobby where multiplayer players can join and search groups, can chat and can wait, where youc an see who waits and so on.

Mainmenu itself: Delete the Pointview at the upper right because it only shows 1 maps scores and often there are points which did not show the same difficulty and so on. On this place show a Online friendlist that i do not always have to go to steam to see who is on.
You can already show the points of the friends when choosing a map but there please in the same difficulty

I think the most other things are allready written in other discussions and i hope you will enjoy something and send it to the coders.

[Lag-wtf]

Thanks for taking the time to write a sincere response. Honestly I wasn't expecting that. I wasn't writing with the intent to provide feedback/suggestions. Rather, I wrote a review simply because it's fun to share my thoughts, and I thought it might be useful for people who are considering buying the game to have a casual player's opinion to refer to. So, forgive me for not being more proactive in offering solutions to aforementioned grievences.

I neglected to mention one aspect of the game that was brilliant: the landing pods. I'm glad you brought them up. They definitely add a new element of strategy to the game. I'd love to see more unique and creative units like that. They force the player to adjust his/her strategy, which is a great way to keep the levels fresh.

Again, Defense Grid isn't a bad game, it simply isn't an amazing game. I'd love to see more maps, more towers, more mazing, and more TDs.

To answer your questions:
I played through the campaign mode, earning "gold" score on each map in "normal" mode and have begun to do a few on "hard." I boost nearly every tower because the 20% damage bonus is very cost efficient... plus I run out of good tower placement spots towards the later waves on most maps, so it's important to consolidate.

As far as the multiplayer goes, I expected to see a standard head-to-head gameplay mode. Meaning 2 players battle against each other side-by-side on the same map against the same waves of spawns. Each wave increases in difficulty, and the first player to lose all of his/her cores loses the match. This is a fairly standard playmode for most TDs that I have played. Many allow 8 players to battle against each other simultaneously. Most TDs of this variety also include the option to spawn units at your opponent's tower maze for a price. ie: send a shielded unit that will draw fire from the enemy's towers until killed, or send a beam to temporarily disable an enemy's tower, etc etc. This concept is similar to the existing "DG Fighter" mode. However, the DG fighter mode seemed to spawn enemies at random locations all over the map every time the opponent killed an enemy. It's an okay concept, but I would prefer that spawned enemies start at the map entrance (unless they are landing pods or some special type of unit.) Perhaps this already exists and I simply haven't found a way to activate it, but the DG Coordinated Defense and Co-Op Doubles modes definitely need a way to activate "fast forward."

[Kaboom]

Hey Captain, we're always happy to hear your feedback and suggestions. We're a very community driven team, and we're always listening :) I'm glad to hear you're enjoying the Landing Pod! It's an interesting take on a new threat, and it presents a whole new challenge to players like you said.

In regards to more maps, there's a few options available right now. We offer community created maps through the in-game store that are available for purchase. These have been approved by Hidden Path first before being pushed to the store. There's also another thread on the Steam forum (http://steamcommunity.com/app/221540/discussions/0/613937942846542769/) where you can try other community created maps for free! These aren't the maps you'll find on the store, but you'll be sure to find more content to dive into there. The thread features full instructions on how to download and submit your own maps.

Boost towers are definitely useful, especially on the levels where you have access to all 3 boost upgrades. I would say on Easy/Normal they aren't AS required, but once you start moving into harder difficulties I find I need them more often. Like you said, to consolidate space as well as provide additional benefits.

Thanks for the suggestion on the fast forward option in MP, that's definitely something that's been noted on our feedback document. In regards to DG Fighter, when you kill an alien on your map they respawn on your enemies map in the same location (they died on yours) only stronger. So it's a game of who can outlast the other! You can also use that to your advantage by killing aliens in an area where they have not built towers (you can see on the mini-map in the corner), that way they don't have a defense setup for when you start sending aliens over.

Cheers!