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- Level Up Labs
- Level Up Labs
- Level Up Labs
- Level Up Labs
Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten
Released On: Jan 20, 2012
Metascore
Available after 4 critic reviews
8.3
All Platforms
Between its addictive gameplay and sliding difficulty scale, Defender’s Quest offers gamers a great deal for such a small investment of time.
It's no accident that Defender's Quest is incredibly fun to play. The team behind it clearly had an appreciation for the genre and knew how to offer something familiar yet fresh. The promise of free content updates has me excited to continue playing. You should strongly consider joining me.
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 88 User Ratings
8.3
81% Positive
71 Ratings
71 Ratings
15% Mixed
13 Ratings
13 Ratings
5% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
User Score
Generally Favorable
Based on 88 User Ratings
8.3
81% Positive
71 Ratings
71 Ratings
15% Mixed
13 Ratings
13 Ratings
5% Negative
4 Ratings
4 Ratings
Ver rarely do I give out 10/10s, but this is deserved.
Defender's Quest is the first game in years to compel me to complete every battle, superboss, and achievement imaginable (which I have, save for saving both Zelemir and Azra with full health in NG+ Extreme difficulty on the final battle).
I could make a very long review and lavish praise all over it, but I'll try and keep it straightforward: this game is as polished as it gets except in some of the technicals (had quite a few Nullpointer errors and being sent straight back to the desktop). Its characterisation is both entertaining and funny, and portrays quite well-written characters. Goofy as they are, they all provide a good time.
The story manages in a fairly short time to provide a lore that feels deep and logical, and succeeds at building an atmospheric world and very entertaining storyline, that unlike a lot of lesser games, does not ever fall into the shallowness of entertainment by fun. It is entertaining by being profoundly thought out and engaging, whether it gets dark, silly, or relatable, it always feels like consistent characters are telling you their stories and their evolution without flaw. There is no unwarranted joke or misfired line, every character and every story arc provides a deeper mining of the lore and adds its own flavor to the cast and storyline.
Sort of like Undertale but in a completely different style, it manages to stay charming, jokey and lighthearted, while simultaneously building a great lore(which Undertale couldn't do) and does not ever shy from exploring a truly dark story. It's a complete success, both in the writing itself and the ever-difficult mix of sad or tragic and lightearted, silly stuff.
The music is really solid as well.
The HD remake has made the whole thing look quite good, and every character's design works.
Lastly, and more importantly, the gameplay is refined to a T. This game has so many ideas on how to make itself less boring or less generic, it offers a lot of complexity and thinking through and I found myself playing 100 hours of it and yet feel like I didn't play half of that. Every battle offers new challenges, every challenge has its new difficulties, and if you get to finish everything to the last mission, New Game + offers a huge span of new challenges with completely different power levels and way harder monsters.
It has been a joy to play and think through during these 100 hours and my only regret is that now that every achievement is done, I can never find another challenge in the game (except the last mission in NG+ extreme, but at this point I think it's impossible).
I highly recommend anyone to play this.
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PC
Probably my favorite all time Tower Defense game, slightly edging out Kingdom Rush and the classic Desktop Defender. Entertaining and well written dialogue. Impressive game play balance. After finishing the game on regular, New Game+ and collecting most of the achievements, I got a good 50 hours of fun out of it.
Not a perfect game, but I hear there's a sequel in the making I'd like to see more variety in the enemies, a longer story arc, and the bonuses implemented in NG+ (unique equipment, journal entries and sidequests) available during the regular campaign.
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PC
This game is fun. I am a tactics game addict, this isn't exactly a tactics game but a tower defense game where you use characters for your towers. These characters have classes and can level up and then be specced certain ways. So with 6 different classes and having up to 6 of each class in a battle, then with different specs per class there is a lot of depth to this simple looking game. Lots of fun!!
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PC
Just got a free HD update which is pretty decent. Adds a bit to the game, visuals still seem to a bit blurry however (as though they're still stretching to fit and aren't truly HD). However, a free update can't be beat. Game itself is fun but gets repetitive pretty quickly, best played in short bursts.
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PC
Plays like a mix of tower defense and Final Fantasy: Tactics. Soundtrack is obviously heavily inspired by Uematsu (the main battle theme has several segments that sound like they were lifted directly from the Final Fantasy 8 battle music), it's well done but loses points for being such an obvious copy.
Replaying missions at higher difficulties for increased rewards is fun on paper but does essentially amount to grinding in order to meet the demands of those challenges, instead of rewarding smart play.
Defender's Quest is a bit too long for its own good.
The 800x600 native resolution means that the only way to make it fill up your widescreen in order to reduce eye-strain is to stretch the image, which ruins the appearance of the art.
Game is good for what it is, overall I'm excited for the sequel because I think all the concepts presented here are unique, and they could really turn this into something special.
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PC
I don't understand any praise this game receives. I've played every major TD on the market, and as a big genre fan I have to say that Defender's Quest is one of the most tedious and outright annoying that exists anywhere, on any platform.
The story is outright terrible, cliched in every sense of the word and told in the most uninspired and lazy "Penny Arcade talking heads" method imaginable. Horrible, horrible writing and dialogue for all characters and sequences. Any random talented child could write a better story AND dialogue in 3 hours. Even Disney movies have more originality. I winced repeatedly just trying to follow the storyline itself, and actually gave up after the 4th or 5th sequence involving irrelevant nonsense and bad jokes unrelated to the game or the plot. The story in tower defense games is mostly irrelevant anyway, but a truly bad story that actively annoys you (even if it can be skipped) detracts from any type of game.
The actual gameplay in Defender's Quest is tediously mathematical. You appear to have choices in units, items, upgrades, and the like, but a few glances at the actual stats/levels reveal that the game uses a linear scaling of raw numbers (and not even complex raw numbers at that) to up the "difficulty" as you advance in the story, and through the individual level "challenges". Any combination of proper numbers (equipment + characters + abilities) will defeat any level. Strategy of placement is only occasionally required, and when it is it's obvious. If you can't find any reasonable combination of raw numbers from your current party you can always go back to the story (or back to challenges, if you were stopped on the story). This makes the entire game a simple wash-and-repeat repetition of "drop towers and hit x4 to finish faster, then endure the next story sequence". This isn't tower defense, this is bad game design.
Overall Defender's Quest is just a bad game. The ending isn't any good, and neither is the journey. Deleted.
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PC
Summary Defender's Quest is a unique blend of real-time Tower Defense strategy and tactical RPG meta-game, complete with a colorful cast of characters and fast-paced story-telling.
Platforms:
- PC
Initial Release Date: Jan 20, 2012
Developer:
- Level Up Labs
Publisher: Level Up Labs
Genres:
