Defender's Quest 2: Mists of Ruin

Avoid this turd.

"Defender's Quest 2: Mists of Ruin" is a handheld (Nintendo Switch)/console game that's also been put on Steam as a bit of an afterthought, as it's very much designed for the handheld/console gaming audience. It's a very weak Tower Defense game, apparently the sequel to an even older game. It's published by Armor, who are infamous for trying to scam PC gamers into paying real cash money for absolutely FREE Adobe Flash browser games. Just so we know where this is coming from... my advice is never to buy games from unethical developers. Now the whole thing here looks like a mobile app or an Adobe Flash game, but it was designed instead for the Nintendo Switch... I mean... nothing about this says it's a PC game. Just because it runs on PC doesn't mean it's as good as a PC game. I can stick my head in a bucket of water, doesn't make me a fish. Gameplay wise this is lame... it's a standard grid TD where you plonk down "heroes" instead of your usual archery/machine gun towers, and then the usual march of enemies progresses past you trying to get to your castle. Yawn. It's poorly made, lacks decent balance... now, I deplore mobile apps but at least the mobile devs behind Kingdom Rush worked out a good sense of game balance, challenge and progression. From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. Because this is designed for handheld/portable gaming appliances, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the low power handheld gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the mobile game developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for low power handhelds forces upon a game. While this might run well on a Steam Deck, we must remember the vast majority of gamers here are gaming on PC. The game is comprised of somewhat mediocre hand drawn 2D illustrations instead of professional looking 3D game assets. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget to arrange someone who can create graphical assets properly, or lack of talent. Regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is very low, beneath what PC gamers have come to expect in this era of cutting edge photorealistic 3D graphics. At least it's not pixel "art", but if you're looking for contemporary, immersive visuals, this game is a fail. While there are options to change the resolution for the game, all this does is scale up the simplistic 2D art assets used to make the game, which makes little or no difference to the graphics quality. Without any other substantial graphics tweaks, it's not possible for gamers to improve the lacklustre 2D visuals. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 140,000+ games on Steam? "Defender's Quest 2: Mists of Ruin" has the cash grab price of $20 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend. For comparison, the $20 asking price for this game could get you games like "The Outer Wilds", "Age of Empires IV" or "Stray". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. It's important to note that, despite this being such a low quality product, there's a number of positive reviews that all appeared immediately after the game launched, from suspiciously inactive Steam accounts that have reviewed almost no other games apart from this. On a purely unrelated note, recent US FTC rulings mean that review manipulation and fake reviews are now federal crimes. Interesting, isn't it? Regardless... take the review score of this game with a grain of salt.