Recent reviews by Casserole

This game, after releasing to the public in early access, showed a lot of potential. The balancing, the loot drops, everything seemed like -- with a little refining -- it would develop into a true successor to DD1.


So...why a negative review?


Well, any veterans of the original game will remember grinding maps to finally get the perfect piece of mythical/transcendent armor to match your set, or grinding moonbase for a moon pet with perfect tower stats (if you could even reach wave 35).

Building tower characters and dps characters is now a thing of the past. Grinding until you get the perfect pet for your tower character? Not anymore. The developers thought it was a great idea to make equipment have specific roles (i.e. armor has tower stats, while weapons, pets, etc. only have hero stats). The idea, by the developers, was to get rid of the heavy focus on towers that the game had and create a balance between towers and hero abilities. This idea is the complete antithesis of what Dungeon Defenders is about. What is the point of "pure strategy" anymore if there is much less focus on towers? The recent updates are a big "screw you" to any DD1 veterans.

Not to mention, item drop rarities are now beyond screwed up. In DD1 (and before this update in DDA), do you remember getting a big dopamine rush from getting your first mythical or your first transcendent item? Now high rarity items are tossed around like pieces of candy. A friend and I recently went through waves on insane difficulty. Before, we would be lucky to find legendary equipment with good stats. Now, after the update, most of the items are mythicals and transcendents with really poor stats. The fun in finding an item of high rarity has since been ruined, which in turn, ruins the fun of grinding wave after wave for drops.

Even if you would like to still build a somewhat "tower focused" character, the defense rate of towers -- apprentice towers in particular -- have been capped by the developers. On another review the developers made the excuse that it had to be capped because of "performance issues". This is one of the few worst game-breaking features that was implemented. As an example, in DD1, having a very very high defense rate (to the point of the projectiles being shot so fast they look like a beam of light) was super useful in creating good tower builds for certain maps. If a game that old gave you that freedom, why do we have to have a new game that restricts it? Why not figure out a way to implement this while circumventing the "performance issues"?

Throughout all of this, there are still no player stores and there is no trading items with your friends/others. Such a huge feature in DD1 seems to be forgotten in DDA.

This game has taken many step backwards, which I didn't think was possible. I was excited to see where this game was headed until the developers took it the wrong direction.

Sadly, I cannot recommend this game in its current state until these issues are fixed. If you want a good Dungeon Defenders game, get DD1.

I started playing this game years ago on the Xbox 360 when I got it for free and logged countless hours. Once I started PC gaming, this was one of the first games I picked up because I enjoyed it so thoroughly. I remember enjoying it, but I didn't think there was much content at first (I thought the last campaign boss was end game). I started joining others in the community and found out there was so much more ahead and I was nowhere near the 'end game' after seeing crazy harpoon turrets that would shoot like laser beams and electric towers that would pretty much kill everything on the map. This was when I realized the true potential of this game.

My friends and I grinded for hours for loot and we met a lot of amazing community members through our journey. There would always be a lobby open to join with people there to help you farm or be generous enough to give you some better gear. This game was beautiful in every way and it had the potential for hundreds of hours to be put into it.

Now and then I hop back on the game to get a taste of the past. After playing for a while recently, I realized this game has come at the end of its life. The community is nearly gone and there are barely any active members. The moments shared with the community are also gone and it just doesn't seem to have that charm anymore.

Overall, this game is absolutely stellar and I have never enjoyed anything quite as much as this. Even though the community for the game is gone, it is still an amazing experience to enjoy for someone who has never played it before. I wish Dungeon Defenders II felt like a good successor, but no game got to or surpassed the bar that the original Dungeon Defenders set.