Dungeon Defenders: Awakened, developed and published by Chromatic Games, comes to the Nintendo Switch to another audience to experience this co-operative Action RPG/Tower Defense game. Having been out on the PC platform, this game fits the Switch console with playing with friends. This is the third installment of the series, with Dungeon Defenders being the first and Dungeon Defenders II being the second installment. I came into Dungeon Defenders: Awakened not playing either of those titles, however, one does not need to when jumping into playing this game.
Dungeon Defenders: Awakened is based around the tower defense gameplay that most are familiar with. Like many games now, there are a set of five heroes that one can choose from to protect the core crystals of the arenas. As the waves come, the difficulty increases with enemies with different abilities try to get past you to get to the crystal. To combat this increase in difficulty, the player will be given the ability to upgrade their heroes to what they desire, which I appreciate this RPG feature to the game. With tower defense games, you have a build stage to change heroes and prepare traps and turrets for the incoming wave. I enjoyed being able to change heroes in this stage when I become bored of the hero I was using and wanted to change up the experience.
This game is based on a cooperative experience with up to four players to join you in fighting off the waves of enemies. You can get online with your buddies to make this a fun experience, which I did with one of my friends. We enjoyed being able to jump into this game and try different builds of characters. With the heroes being able to share the experience points, you don’t have to worry about having to level each character, which can be time-consuming. Also, Dungeon Defenders: Awakened can be enjoyed as a single experience, but the game is boosted up with other players on the map with you.
The heroes come with different abilities for the player to choose from. The heroes to choose from are The Squire, a knight based around using physical abilities with different blockades and turrets to help him through the waves. The Monk, who can be a supportive character for others based on his auras with focusing on the speedy abilities to attack. The Series EV-A is based around some beam attacks that are based around ranged abilities to keep the waves at bay. The Apprentice, who is based around magical abilities that are used as ranged attacks to take on the enemies. Lastly, The Huntress, another ranged-based hero that uses a variation of traps and ranged attacks to take on the enemies. Some RPG aspects come into play when upgrading the different heroes that you play. With points that can be gained to help mold the hero more into what you want them to specialize in. Let’s say you want the Monk to be an ultimate support character you can upgrade them into full support with lots of focus on the aura abilities he has. While let’s say you want The Huntress to be a full attack with boosting the damage and having more effective traps to keep the enemies at bay as you take them down. This gives the player a ton of choice when taking on the waves and many different specs of heroes can be created which creates replayability. Even the ability to change the specs of each character is an easy thing to do so if you want to change around the character to try a different way of playing then that can be done as well.
To build on that RPG aspect of this tower defense game is the items that will come from the enemies that are slain. The items will have different abilities that will help with how the player wants to build up the hero that they are using at the time. The items you can put on your hero are a weapon, armor sets with a helm, chest, gloves, and boots, then different accessories to help different abilities you want to improve.
This is a game that has been ported over to the Switch to the PC, which can lead to some bugs and difficulties in how it runs because of the decrease of power with the Switch. This port of the game, though, has surprisingly run smoothly with no game-changing bugs or horrible graphics. The handheld mode was better than expected as well, while not amazing, it runs decently and the controls are not too hard to get a hang of. However, with the decrease in size of the screen, there comes some difficulties with being able to see all that is on the screen. One can tell quickly that this game was not made initially for the Switch handheld as the loot can be hard to see and the enemies can get on top of each other so it can be frustrating when trying to aim at specific enemies. So, this can be difficult for people with poorer eyesight, and for me, it ruined my experience of handheld at times, as I prefer handheld on the Switch with being on the go a lot. But the dock mode is where this game plays much better, in my opinion. With the Switch being docked the larger screen, it allows for fewer issues with the small things on the screen and the frame rate does improve a bit when playing in this mode of the Switch. So, for me, if I had a Switch Lite or only use the Switch on the go, I would personally think about if this would be an issue for you as it will be a difficult experience in the portable mode. Overall, the port of Dungeon Defenders: Awakened does its job but with some rough edges when it comes to portable mode.
I enjoyed my experience when it came to Dungeon Defenders: Awakened since I have not played a tower defense title in a long time it was refreshing to jump back into the genre. I enjoyed the RPG aspects of the game as I always enjoying messing with different builds of characters and gaining the best loot for each hero. While the game was difficult to play at times in portable mode, my preferred way to play on the Switch, it still was a decent port that is better than other ports I have played. This game did not blow me away and didn’t add an experience that I have not played before, however; everything it does do is done solidly, which gave me some hours of entertainment with my friends. Based on this, if this sounded like an experience you would enjoy then check it out, but if not then probably check out another title.
Score: 7/10
Check Out the Dungeon Defenders: Awakened Trailer:
For more information about Dungeon Defenders: Awakened, please visit the official website, follow the development team on Twitter and Facebook, and join the Discord community.
Gaming has always been an outlet for me to interact with different people and explore all kinds of possibilities. I play a wide variety of games always willing to try different mechanics and storylines that developers are trying to create for their games. I grew up delving into MW2 and World of Warcraft, I miss the Wrath of The Lich King days, and as I have gotten older I have found a love for RPGs and strategy games, my favorites being The Witcher 3 and Total War. Always looking forward to the next great game.
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