Dungeon Defenders II is a more casual version of Dungeon Defenders. Stat-building and careful resource management have been replaced with a more action-y and streamlined gameplay experience--for better and for worse.

Dungeon Defenders demanded that you make smart choices when it came to leveling your characters. Choosing what stats to allocate your points into felt like a meaningful process because of how it changed your playstyle. If you're deficient in any stat, it's something that you can feel working against you and made you approach the game based almost entirely on your build.. For example, a character with no speed can barely move at all. That character would likely want to be a defense-heavy character and place those defenses closer to the objective. They'd be completely unable to dash across the map to shore up any problem areas or clear out waves of enemies.

It placed an emphasis on figuring out tactics to beat levels and then optimizing them for tackling them on harder difficulties to get better equipment. The game demanded a high level of skill if you wanted the best stuff.

It's hard to play Dungeon Defenders II and not think that something has gone wrong when you start the game with the movespeed that would come close to matching a maxed Dungeon Defenders character and you have all of your traps unlocked for whatever character you've chosen after maybe an hour. Maining Squire, I was able to nail down a pattern that worked for everthing I've come across in 20 hours.

Lay a blockcade on a chokepoint at each enemy spawn location and then lay down a couple of cannonball towers at each one. Keep adding more towers at each location and then upgrade them after you run out of space. As long as you're making sure to check for blindspots, it starts out as a walk in the park and then turns into a nap in the park after two waves.

I've been playing on the hardest mode I can and no matter what map I play, the strategy works out fine. Nothing about these maps demand the same type of care and attention to detail that Dungeon Defenders 1 asked from its players, and I don't know why these maps would be designed to be able to be completed in such a boring and repetitive way. Why they'd almost always be wide with lots of building space wherever you need it is beyond me.

Things are more optimized in Dungeon Defenders II! Being able to switch between characters on the fly and having all of your characters be the same level fixed almost every problem I had with the original game, especially soloing it as anything other than a Squire/Other combo. Automatically equipping the best gear, auto-looting, getting gems at the beginning of each wave instead of scrounging for chests...these are little things, but really help streamline the moment to moment play to have much better pacing than the original did.

And it's not as though the game has no depth. There's a number of little things that you can do to specialize your character in certain ways. It's just that you rarely will need to until much later on, because

1. Stats seem much less important this time around.

2. You get enough gear just casually playing through the campaign to almost never struggle getting through it. And it's not until level 50 that you're able to unlock many of the build options.

Racing towards end game is not my idea of a good time. Tower defense games live and die on their level design and on the experience they provide in small pieces, which is something Dungeon Defenders I was excellent at. There was always a little something that you could be doing to give you the edge that you needed to proceed, from learning the map to altering your build. This game does not feel like that at all.

Decent enough to run through with a friend, but if you want a timesink, just play the original.

Dungeon Defenders II is a more casual version of Dungeon Defenders. Stat-building and careful resource management have been replaced with a more action-y and streamlined gameplay experience--for better and for worse. Dungeon Defenders demanded that you make smart choices when it came to leveling your characters. Choosing what stats to allocate your points into felt like a meaningful process because of how it changed your playstyle. If you're deficient in any stat, it's something that you can feel working against you and made you approach the game based almost entirely on your build.. For example, a character with no speed can barely move at all. That character would likely want to be a defense-heavy character and place those defenses closer to the objective. They'd be completely unable to dash across the map to shore up any problem areas or clear out waves of enemies. It placed an emphasis on figuring out tactics to beat levels and then optimizing them for tackling them on harder difficulties to get better equipment. The game demanded a high level of skill if you wanted the best stuff. It's hard to play Dungeon Defenders II and not think that something has gone wrong when you start the game with the movespeed that would come close to matching a maxed Dungeon Defenders character and you have all of your traps unlocked for whatever character you've chosen after maybe an hour. Maining Squire, I was able to nail down a pattern that worked for everthing I've come across in 20 hours. Lay a blockcade on a chokepoint at each enemy spawn location and then lay down a couple of cannonball towers at each one. Keep adding more towers at each location and then upgrade them after you run out of space. As long as you're making sure to check for blindspots, it starts out as a walk in the park and then turns into a nap in the park after two waves. I've been playing on the hardest mode I can and no matter what map I play, the strategy works out fine. Nothing about these maps demand the same type of care and attention to detail that Dungeon Defenders 1 asked from its players, and I don't know why these maps would be designed to be able to be completed in such a boring and repetitive way. Why they'd almost always be wide with lots of building space wherever you need it is beyond me. Things are more optimized in Dungeon Defenders II! Being able to switch between characters on the fly and having all of your characters be the same level fixed almost every problem I had with the original game, especially soloing it as anything other than a Squire/Other combo. Automatically equipping the best gear, auto-looting, getting gems at the beginning of each wave instead of scrounging for chests...these are little things, but really help streamline the moment to moment play to have much better pacing than the original did. And it's not as though the game has no depth. There's a number of little things that you can do to specialize your character in certain ways. It's just that you rarely will need to until much later on, because 1. Stats seem much less important this time around. 2. You get enough gear just casually playing through the campaign to almost never struggle getting through it. And it's not until level 50 that you're able to unlock many of the build options. Racing towards end game is not my idea of a good time. Tower defense games live and die on their level design and on the experience they provide in small pieces, which is something Dungeon Defenders I was excellent at. There was always a little something that you could be doing to give you the edge that you needed to proceed, from learning the map to altering your build. This game does not feel like that at all. Decent enough to run through with a friend, but if you want a timesink, just play the original.