Defender Chronicles iPhone Review

At the heart of it all, Defender Chronicles for the iPhone plays out all tower defense. However, what publisher Chillingo’s game differs from traditional tower defense seems to take one from Puzzle Quest and throw in an role-playing element into the mix.

However, this element is simply a near-hit. But with the hand drawn art, tons of enemies, and vertical-style gameplay Defender Chronicles keeps you coming back for more slaying.

Oh, and you’ll get over the voice acting quickly, its absolutely ridiculous.

The game is et up in a vertical manner where enemies track up or down a mountain/valley/gorge/whatever. This allows strategizing in terms of placing a melee unit to engage enemies while archers rain death from above for instance.

It can be a bit confusing at first with different branching mostly due to caves that teleport enemies to a different part of the stage that you have to see happen before you figure out your strategy.

There are a total of four units, or guilds for this game, that a player can use to fight off the forces of evil. Playing through the story’s five levels unlocks you the whole cast.

Archers are your long range attack with potential (very helpful) poison attack, Warriors tie up enemies and can be upgraded to dwarven berserkers, mages provide powerful but slow magic attacks that one can have the ability to use chain lightning affected multiple foes, and last but definitely the least is the halfling with a quick, weak attack that can yield you more gold to purchase upgrades and guilds.

To be honest you will find yourself using the warriors and archers the most with maybe a bit of mage at least for the unlockable archmage ability that allows for chain lightning.

In addition to these characters you also have a hero. Taking a page out of Puzzle Quest’s book this is your last line of defense. Your hero levels up with experience from each battle and skills can help out your guilds abilities or how strong your hero fights.

Your hero also can equip items that increase his attack, armor, give archers a poison ability, and so forth. This is good idea that separates this game from other run of the mill tower defenses.

However, the hero portion is not done to the best of its ability because his powers aren’t the greatest. He can only engauge one enemy at a time so unless he bashes foes down in one hit he’s too slow to help in the event of five or six enemies trying to break into your gate.

Also, the item store is a bit sketchy with either really expensive items that amassing the payment for them would take forever, items that are too cheap thus not very effective, or items that are just out of reach. This is mostly due to the fact that only four items are available for purchase.

Additionally, the game needs to decide whether to be more story driven campaign mode or simply free play on the different maps. The main campaign is only five levels. Granted there are four difficulties to master but its the same o’ same o’.

Other than that there is a ton of replayability in this game simply because its TD, custom games, and leveling your hero. It would be awesome to see some WiFi battles and more campaign in future updates if at all possible.

The price is definitely right for Defender Chronicles, pick it up on your iPhone/iPod Touch for a challenging, addicting TD.

With a little more polish and defining use for mages (save one boss character) and haflings this could definitely earn four coins.

(Campaign played through on All difficulties, messed around with custom games, and played bonus levels to completion. Developed by Gimka, published by Chillengo)