Dungeon Defenders II: Early Access Impressions

Dungeon Defenders 2 is a 3rd-person co-operative tower defense game.  Released on Steam in by Trendy Entertainment in December of 2014, Dungeon Defenders 2 is still in early access.  Because of this, this will only be a summary of my impressions on the current state of the game, as early access games are bound to experience many changes during the development process.

Click the link to read more!

The first thing you will probably notice about Dungeon Defenders II is that it tends to be a little buggy and laggy at times.  Sometimes the game takes an unnecessarily long time to start, and often during gameplay you will experience frame drops and stuttering.  Of course, these things are easily excusable, as the game is still in early access.

Main Menu

Once you enter the game you find a nice splash on the main screen, and you are presented with a couple game options:  one for a private game to go solo or bring friends, and one to play with anyone.  These aren't exactly self explanatory at first, so it takes a little fiddling to figure these out.

I quickly hopped into a game and invited my friends to join.  The first time setting it up didn't seem to go too smoothly.  At one point there was a communication error and the whole game was disbanded.  After that first mishap, I re-invited my friends to a new match, and the game ran smoothly and we had no connectivity issues after the first incident.  Matchmaking with random players does seem to have issues unless you invite them beforehand.

One thing I find odd is that the game only has 4 classes to choose from, a lot less than the numerous classes in the original Dungeon Defenders.  It could be considered a downgrade, but it can also be seen as simplifying the experience by getting rid of needless classes.  Time will tell if this is a good change.

Example of visuals

Upon entering the game, you will notice that the art direction in this game is beautiful.  Characters are bright, fun, and full of life, and each class has its own unique look.  Enemies are also really cute, but sometimes it is difficult to tell one class of enemy from the other, which can often be a pain if you are the melee class.  Environments have a lot of care put into them, with many small environmental details to add depth to levels.  Even the areas which you cannot access are gorgeous.  I kind of wish this was an open world game, just so I could explore the world in its entirety.

If you are playing solo, the levels can get really confusing though.  With 6 paths you need to defend at once in certain levels, (I haven't played all the levels, so it could be even more on some) it can get really confusing to run around from place to place trying to defend multiple points.

Tower placement is very intuitive, although repairing them during combat is often difficult and unresponsive.

A large variety of enemies keeps the game constantly interesting.  Instead of throwing the same enemies at you endlessly, and slowly increasing their health, Dungeon Defenders 2 takes the high ground and consistently throws new and more powerful enemies at your defenses, which keeps combat interesting, and keeps you on your toes.

There be dragons

During the combat phase, enemies you defeat drop equipment to use on your character.  This is definitely one of my favorite parts of the game as it adds a little more depth to character customization in addition to the usual levelling up system.  Figuring out which of your new items is better than your current loadout is fun, but there can be an overwhelming amount of items to look through.  If you don't check your items after every match, you are going to find yourself with far too many items to look through.  In general there are a lot of customization options and they should allow you to make a character who is perfectly suited to your playstyle.

After our first match, we entered the private hub world, also known as the Tavern.  The hub worlds can be a little overwhelming at first, but the game slowly introduces you to each character in the hubs, so it allows you to slowly gain your footing, instead of throwing absolutely everything at you in the first seconds of entering the game.  I greatly appreciate the pacing of content, including the unlocking of abilities and turrets.

Conclusion:

Overall a solid experience.

Levels do get a little confusing at times, but that is remedied by having more players.

Lots of customization options will allow you to craft the perfect hero for yourself, but having fewer classes than the original does cut down on customization a bit.

Gorgeous visuals.  It doesn't look like an early access game at all.  It looks gorgeous.

A large variety of enemies and intuitive turret placement keep combat engaging.

Would recommend.

EARLY ACCESS SCORE:  8.5 / 10 

I cannot wait to see what they do with this game in the future.

Also, don't hesitate to try this game out here, as it is free-to-play on Steam!