Defend the Rook

Good first impression, but as soon as you get deeper into the game it just gets you disappointed because this game is not about your tactical skill, but about getting good RNG. [list] [*] Tactics. There is barely any: all enemies are able to cover half the map in one turn, so your only viable option is to kill them in one turn. While you can try to go for defensive play, defense upgrades scale poorly and higher difficulties will spawn new waves before you are able to clear the previous ones, so you will get overrun. [*] Builds. There are none: you are offered a choice of 3 upgrades each wave, but since you get only 1 per character you can’t reliably build anything if you don’t go all-in on one character. And even this way you are completely at mercy of RNG, because the upgrades are imbalanced even on one rarity tier - getting reliable damage bonus or getting a reactive protective bonus that you don’t even want to proc (HP loss) - guess which one is better. You also have a skill tree between maps of your campaign, but even those are random so you can’t rely on them too. [*] Difficulty. There are 10 different levels that add incremental bonuses to enemies (and sometimes penalties to you). On lower starter difficulties you can’t lose if you are not actively trying to, because even with bad RNG your progression is enough to deal with enemies. For higher difficulties though it is either “I won” if RNG gave you something like a map-wide attack upgrade or “Better restart” if you roll only bad upgrades, and the higher you go the luckier your rolls need to be. The game basically becomes a RNG based DPS check, not a tactics game. [*] Variety/replayability. Or lack of it. You can unlock alternative heroes for your party - but they have the exact same upgrades as the stock ones, so the only difference is their starting perk - and those are neither made equal nor have a significant impact. Things are a bit better with towers, as they usually have a different use, even though their upgrades are still the same. You can unlock new spells - but spells offered for your run are randomized, so you can buy an upgrade and not see it for a couple runs, or unlock a bad spell and now have it forever clogging your deck. The problem is that whatever you pick for your run - you will still build the exact same “one shot everything” hero so it will not feel that different. [/list] Overall: a rather shallow experience that offers no challenge and is only good for a few runs before it gets boring.

I've echoed this sentiment time and time again in previous reviews of Goblinz Studio published games. But I'll say it again for consistency. Goblinz Studio has a great eye for identifying interesting games, they're not necessarily well-polished games, nor are they big budget games, but they have a certain charm that always draws me in. Defend the Rook is in line with those expectations as well. I found myself intrigued by the theme of a powerful magician commanding his forces from a floating castle in the sky. It's a turn-based setting that's evocative of a great many classic fantasy tropes. And I will always welcome more additions to the turn-based strategy genre; there's never enough contenders! The overall game length is short, which does help it to not overstay its welcome. I 100%ed the game in about 25 hours and spent a few more hours testing things for my guide. That said, the gameplay experience is a bit shallow and heavily dependent on RNG at times. Although, for better or worse, the lack of replayability does let us end our experience on a high note. If you're able to get Defend the Rook on sale, I would highly recommend that you pick it up. It's an enjoyable little puzzler for a few afternoons. Additionally, if you do buy the game, please feel free to check out my guide to further enrich your playthrough: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3389181146

A roguelite tactical rpg that's not very fun to play multiple times. The levels themes and bosses are the same every time, and layout barely varies. Towers hardly matter due to low health and random enemy spawn positions, they're good for one round and after that it's pure luck if they do anything at all. The variance in unit upgrades are extremely minor. You can only upgrade 1 unit per level with only 1 option for each unit. You are oppressively punished for taking any unit taking any damage at all because instead of an actual upgrade you'll be offered healing. Pregame options unlock extremely slowly and are often barely different or notably worse than the base loadout. It was ok for the first 2-3 games. I kept playing hoping it would get better but walked away disappointed.

This has been one of the most fun Rogue-Lites I've played in a very long time. For the price, the amount of content and hours of play is so worth it. Rare I leave reviews, but I want to support where I can for such a lovely game.

This game is OK but not good enough for me to want to continue after about an hour or so. There's a few issues with this game that makes me already bored of it after an hour. First, the map is really small and never really has any variables. There's just some randomly placed stones you can place towers on and that's it. Even aesthetically, the levels all look the same. The difference between stages are strictly the enemies you will encounter. You can place towers on the rocks around the map but you don't know where the best place to put them is because enemies will spawn on random outer tiles. Sometimes they spawn all on two sides while other times they spawn everywhere. It makes placing towers early feel punishing even though it feels necessary. Furthermore, when you see where enemies will spawn, you have no idea what kind of enemies will spawn in each location. Some are much stronger than others so you can't adjust for the next wave accordingly. You can put characters near their spawn points but sometimes you have the wrong characters there because of what enemies spawn. There are three heroes and there are some others that you can unlock, they're always the same type, a warrior, rogue, and mage. You can't really mix and match characters like other tactics games to fit your play style, you're just always stuck feeling like you're doing the same thing over and over. There are some other really interesting tactics games and while this one isn't necessarily bad, I don't find it to be particularly good either.

戰鬥和角色設計太簡單，沒有戰鬥策略性，只有農農農，不如玩Trash of Titans

Great game!

muito bom, não joguei muito mas recomendo... melhor ainda com desconto very good, I haven't played it much but I recommend it... even better with a discount

Fun strategy game - not very chess like - played on a grid and the principal playable piece is a castle, otherwise a straight forward strat game. Level up your pieces rinse and repeat. Worth it, but better in a bundle |(how I got it) or on sale

Un roguelike (que no roguelite, no hay mejoras permanentes, sólo desbloqueos) entretenido sin muchas pretensiones. Manejamos a 3 personajes (guerrero, pícaro, hechicera), y la torre que hemos de proteger, en un tablero de 9x9 casillas, en el cual van entrando enemigos por oleadas que hemos de derrotar hasta llegar al jefe. En cada oleada conseguimos una nueva habilidad para nuestros personajes, y tras derrotar al jefe podemos adquirir más mejoras. No tiene mucha complicación y no es muy difícil (aunque he muerto un par de veces) o largo. Se van desbloqueando nuevos niveles de Ascensión tras cada victoria que hacen el juego un poco más difícil (aunque mezclado con las cosas que se van desbloqueando, no ha sido el caso hasta donde he llegado). Como pega, el juego no te premia por probar cosas nuevas ni tiene la variedad suficiente de perks para evitar hacer siempre la misma build, por lo que si encuentras una que está bastante rota, es probable que la puedas usar constantemente (en mi última run, el jefe final se murió ANTES siquiera de que me llegase el turno, del combo tan roto que tenía preparado). Aun así, es un juego bonito y más o menos original que entretiene durante un rato. A lo mejor intento llegar al nivel máximo de ascensión, no estoy seguro aún...