My review

[Wisp]

It doesn't really live up to the original game for me, but it's still worth checking out and seeing for yourself if it's to your standards, or maybe you'll find something in it that I missed. There's enough to do in the game to appeal to people who are super into the TD genre, particularly the boss battles. The battlefields are all a treat to look at, too. Buy it and try it up to two hours, you can refund it at any point before then if it doesn't hook you by then. This game passed through a lot of different writers, musicians and developers hands to get to where it is now, it's at least worth a glance.

if it's not your cup of tea and you've never played the first one before, there's a demo you can play to see if appeals instead.

[cANe]

Couldn't have said it any better myself, pretty much agree with all your points. I think we all wanted more DQ1 with some added features but instead we got a worse and uglier DQ1 with even less features.

Such a shame really, 10+ years for this

[Sabin Stargem]

Is there a modern tower defense game that feels similar to DF1's gameplay?

[Durahon]

I agree the art in cut scenes are hard to look at and everything else you sad.

[zukakog]

Yeah, I'm disappointed in the game too. Aside from some planning/business SNAFUs, the Dev had some tragedies in his life that explain the situation. https://www.fortressofdoors.com/defn/

I'm grateful that we got a game at all though, since many of my kickstarter/backer games just never materialized at all.

[djheat]

It really is something that it took them so long to come out with a game that's basically just the first one with fewer features. I opened DQ1 for a minute to remind myself how it was and laughed when I saw the first character you get had the exact same skills as the mc in this game. This feels like they cobbled something together just to ship after so long

[LotusBlade]

Originally posted by Sabin Stargem:

Is there a modern tower defense game that feels similar to DF1's gameplay?

Axon TD Uprising would be the most similar.

[KDD!^putler kaputt 26/93]

Originally posted by Sabin Stargem:

Is there a modern tower defense game that feels similar to DF1's gameplay?

you can try Hero Defense

[Sabin Stargem]

Thanks for the suggestions. :)

[```skunk3```]

DQ1 is one of my favorite TD games ever. I never expected a sequel to come after all of the delays. I almost choked when I saw DQ2 pop up in the store. It's a shame that it seems to be so lame. I'm not even going to bother buying this.

[Wisp]

Originally posted by ```skunk3```:

DQ1 is one of my favorite TD games ever. I never expected a sequel to come after all of the delays. I almost choked when I saw DQ2 pop up in the store. It's a shame that it seems to be so lame. I'm not even going to bother buying this.

Don't let my review dissuade you without trying it for yourself, Steam gives you a two hour refund window. And a lot of people seem to be enjoying it, it's a very love-it-or-hate-it experience.

At the very least check the screenshots on Steam to see if some of the boss battles would appeal to you.

[Senlin]

Originally posted by Wisp:

---

One more thought:

Release Date: January 30.
Armor Games Studios Publisher Sale: February 2-9.

I hope the release date wasn't intentionally chose to coincide with the publisher sale. If that had any impact on the store page launching with years out of date WIP screenshots, an overwhelming majority of cutscenes missing music, missing animations, or other promised / funded features.

You're joking, right? Of course it had an effect. They had to publish it at some point, they have already crossed multiple deadlines I'm sure, and the publisher invested much more than initially planned. At some point a publisher has to cut the losses, even if it means releasing mediocre game. It's not at all certain that even another year of developement would improve things noticeably. And it looks like the dev team was also happy to finally be done with it.

[Senlin]

Also, in general, comparing to the first game like you do, with all the improvements and upgrades that game received over the years, and the fact it was clearly a labour of love by everyone involved, does not really make much sense here.

[Senlin]

Originally posted by Wisp:

You're right in that it's not entirely fair to compare DQ1 Deluxe to DQ2, after all the upgrades it got. Even though I might argue if a sequel can't hit the base line its predecessor did, is that sort of development decay fair to the franchise or the consumers?

I disagree. In fact, I would say it's pretty much impossible for games that had plenty of support after their release. Look at Paradox games. They struggle a lot when making a sequel, because it's in practice impossible to achieve comparable state of content and polish that came through dozens of DLCs and a lot of feedback from players and countless free patches and updates over the years.

I know players expect exactly that, I'm just saying it's unrealistic expectation.

You aren't saying it's unfair to compare years of polish, but that it's unfair to compare the skill and tech limitations of a game released in Flash in 2012 to a game released in 2025.

No, I did not say it's unfair. I said it doesn't make sense.

[Senlin]

Well, yes, I ignored that part, because I don't see a point arguing about that. Clearly you have based your review on your experiences of the previous game, and in previous parts you have also mentioned things clearly specific to the improvements it got over the years. But even if you would somehow try to exclude things like the journals, it's a whole package, you can't really forget about those things. And then there's the fact the whole engine was changed, various little things were improved and polished.

Regardless, I'm not saying you are not allowed to do this or that your review is bad. It's not, I enjoyed reading it, even if it's a bit on the wordy side. But I don't think specifically comparing in detail the previous game to this is just, well, not really bringing us any benefits at this point.

[TheKbob]

OP has written one of the best reviews I have seen on Steam giving so much depth and background to make a well formed opinion off provided objective evidence. Kind of crazy to see, but here we are.

There's an old adage of "act your wage" regarding your responsibility in the workplace. A similar principle can be applied when taking on a creative project; you have to act within your boundaries of reality regarding time, funding, and capability.

I think using Kickstarter money for a sequel to first rebuild an HD version of the first title, unless it was stated, is a bit crap. They probably should have just did crowd funding for an HD version, judged interest off that for a sequel, and then moved forward versus all at once. Hindsight, so on, so on.

But the scope of the title obviously exceeded reach, as well. They over-promised and under-delivered; as stated in the review, it might be more favorably reviewed if it didn't have the branding of a cult class tower defense title from ye olde Flash game days. It should have stayed in that style of title, but instead went for more a A (or AA, due to who they landed for the music?) tier title and paid the price in falling short of expectations.

A tower defense game could work with this art style, it just needed more budget (and more artists) to accomplish a coherent vision, more animations, and greater depth in world building to go along with it. But it was left down to too many changing cooks in this "forever stew" of a project.

Perhaps this will be the Duke Nukem Forever for tower defense games in that it took way too long to get out and likely could have never lived up to the expectations.

Go back a few threads. Most of us pointed out what Wisp said about the art, gameplay, and overall cohesion of the game. It was extremely poor in the first major demo in 2023 (IIRC). But they pressed on. I suppose sunk cost or some publisher commitment (or both) got us here. I hope it finds enough of an audience to not be a net negative to all involved, but I know I will not be playing it.

I write this as someone who has the Steam version of DQ1 and physical copies for the PS Vita and PS4. One of my favorite TD games.