Defenders of Ardania

Poor AI; no solo play except for campaign; campaign levels have locked towers, units, upgrades and spells; campaign is fairly short and only one of the 3 races, so no chance to get aquainted with either of the others races before playing multiplayer; poor interface; poor response to input; poor unit pathing updates; maps are limited to the campaign maps.

Defenders of Ardania (DA) can be summarized as a tower defense / offense game set in the universe of Majesty game series. As such, it can get a bit frantic, esp. when you add in spells and possibly multiple factions. You defend your castle with towers, with the restriction that you are limited to 10/15/20 towers TOTAL, and each tower must be within 4 "squares" of at least one other tower (your first tower must be within 4 squares of your castle), subject to restrictions on the playing field (such as you must leave at least one path and so on). Some squares like mine, hill, and power, provides bonuses like extra income, better visibility, and more attack power. Some maps may provide additional bonus tricks. You attack your enemies by building units, from common guardsman (swarm) and rogue (very fast but weak), to much tougher but slower units like swordsman, mages, and priests. Later you also get flying units and super-tank units. They emerge from your castle and attack enemy castle. If there are more than one, you can choose which one to attack. If they make it into the enemy castle, appropriate amount of life is deducted from that castle. The objective is, of course, reduce the other castle(s) to zero, which also destroys all his units and towers. The resources you use, gold, is generated automatically, and you can spend them on towers, units, or buy some improvements for the economy like make all units 20% cheaper, make all towers 20% cheaper, and so on. Finally, there are some "spells" which lets you heal your castle (a little) or a spell such as a huge lightning bolt that strikes down an enemy tower. The main problem with this game is the interface. You'd think the logical way to build those units (and there aren't that many of them) would be to leave some onscreen buttons, but no. The only controls are a pop-up "remote" where you click on one of four buttons (or cancel), which takes you to upgrades (for economy), units, spells, and attack target. Towers are your typical shooter, artillery, slow, and later, energy. flame, sniper, and so on. There's a twist in that some advanced units CAN attack towers, and if one was knocked down, nearby units will change to shortest route if the tower's destruction opens up a new path. Graphics are quite decent and has no problem going all the way up to 1680x1050 on my dual monitor setup. Sound is nothing special. The campaign is a series of "missions" where the new King of Ardania must gather his closest allies and sail forth and solve the mystery of the rising tide of undead. There are also limited resource mode and survival mode if you need more of a challenge. All in all, DA is a bit of also-ran in the RTS / Tower offense-defense game. As I found Tower Wars to be better, DA with its bad UI issues just doesn't have much going for it other than the name and a bit of shared universe. While the game does offer some unique challenges, the overall effect is a bit of "meh". It's playable, and it BARELY makes me want to recommend it... just barely. UPDATE: Got to next to last mission, and all of a sudden the game dead-ended for me. You are up against THREE enemies, and once you destroy ONE enemy fort, that fort spawns a superchampion that will ANNIHILATE your fort... unless you can destroy it in time. The problem is you don't have enough room, and the only tower that seem to damage it is the ray (sniper) tower. According to the walkthrus I read, the only way to solve this is setup a stupid exploit... You setup two ray towers in his path, then you build and unbuild towers IN his path to force it back and forth, back and forth, past the two towers until it dies. WTF?! That's just stupid.

I should have read other reviews before purchasing. Limited resolution settings. No option for windowed mode. This means on my 2560x1440 monitor, it resizes all my windows to make them smaller, and repositions them onto my 2nd monitor. Ugh! The game itself is pretty lackluster, which is a shame because I really liked Majesty 2. The quality seems really poor and just shoddy all-around. The official forums have been pretty much abandoned for two years (and the game only came out two years ago). Honestly I feel kind of ripped off. :( Buy Defense Grid instead. Or try Tower Wars. Or just about any other TD game.

Picked this up since I am a fan of the original Majesty. Although Majesty 2 was fairly dissapointing, it wasn't totally terrible, and tower defense is a pretty easy genre to to reasonably well. I am not super-far through this yet, but so far it has been nothing but dissapointing, with boring non-interactive gameplay, sluggish lack of strategic decisions that matter, and even terrible voice acting (the advisor guy from Majesty 2 is all right, but some of the others are really cringe-worthy). Do not try this at home.

The tower defense genre is well known and well understood, with many good games to serve as examples on how to get it right. With all of the good material available for study it's hard to understand how Defenders of Ardania managed to fail so hard. You'd think that, at the very least, the company would have been able to manage a mediocre game but Defenders of Ardania fails in nearly every aspect. Although this game does require you to attack as well as defend, that isn't enough extra to save it from everything else. The voice acting is a crime against humanity; the tower selection isn't imaginative; the campaign is terribly easy - just spam cheap units as soon as the game starts and away you go. There's a lack of strategy and fun. Multiplayer isn't much different. It also plays rather poorly on slower connections, despite the minimal amount of data that a tower defense game needs to pass back and forth. What is it doing to choke my friend's pipe? I don't know, but it's unnecessary. I'd advise against a purchase even if it is deeply discounted and you're a tower defense fan.

Defenders of Ardania is Paradox's new take on the Tower Defense genre. Although set in the same universe as the majesty games you probably won't notice as the majority of the lore, units and locations is of much the same generic fantasy staple as 99% of the rest out there. Defenders of Ardania takes on the genre in a way we mostly see from PvP focused Tower Defense games by letting you not only manage the defense of your own keep through Tower placement and ability use but instead of making victory based on the simple passage of time you have to send units yourself towards the enemy keep and past his towers to secure victory. This a great mechanic for multi-player but unfortunately it hamstrings the AI in the single-player campaign quite badly as it simply does not build fast enough or responds fast enough making most of the maps a breeze to win by simply rushing fast units with little concern for your own defenses. A rather weird income system that never lets you run out of money for more than a few seconds at a time and hard limits on both towers and units only compounds this problem, making the first 5 minutes of any map the only minutes that really matter and any game that progresses beyond that because a rather dull slugfest where you sit around with an impenetrable defense, spamming the same units over and over waiting for their experience to go up enough so that you can unlock a more powerful hero version. Defenders of Ardania is not a very inspired game, the gameplay mechanics do not lend themselves to single-player very well and although some entertainment can be found in the game's multi-player component the lack of anyone actually playing it online means this is only viable if you do it with friends. There are many better Tower Defense games out there, Sol Survivor even has a multi-player mode with pretty much the same mechanics as this, only not quite as broken.

Picked this up as part of the majesty collection. as much as i want to love this game for it being in such a great universe as well as one of my favorite genre...i hate it. the controls are awful. design is crap and it crashes unforgivingly with little regaurd to threats of death from yours trully. bottom line unless this is recives an overhaul update its not playable. Bottom Line. STAY AWAY, EVEN IF ITS FREE STAY AWAY!!!

★★★★★

[h1]Ардания уже не та[/h1] Насколько мне не нравится вторая часть Majesty, настолько же мне не нравится DoA. В оригинальной и одной из любимейших игр моего детства можно было просто остаться жить, настолько атмосферна и красива она была. За это плюсануть может тот момент, что я, как человек пишущий, часто ухожу в первую часть не просто для самой игры, но и для создания удачных ситуаций, которые можно использовать в произведении фентезийной направленности, причем Маджести и правда помогает в развитии фантазии. Другое дело часть вторая. Cyberlore в начале нулевых создали истинный шедевр, который Парадоксы (точнее, 1C: Ino-Co) переделали второй частью на свой манер, хоть и развив лор мира, но сделав ставку на большую карикатурность, превратив порой очень серьезную и мрачную игру в подобие сказки а-ля Андрей Белянин (но у того это хотя бы интересно и приятно). Лор первой части мне сердцу милей, потому изменения я встретил в штыки. Ну как можно было заменить мрачных и готичных сестёр Крипты вот... этими господо-служанками с косами? Это для меня стало просто невероятным разочарованием. Про кинутых воров и изменения серьезных и крутых следопытов в местных Робин Гудов в зеленых кепочках я уж молчу. В общем и целом, убиение прекрасной атмосферы оригинала хоть и смягчившейся графической составляющей и новыми техническими возможностями триДэ (где вручную отрисованные здания и персонажи? Эх...) дало нам хоть и занятный продукт, но ни в какую не близкий той самой душевности первой Маджести, в которую возвращаться как минимум приятно. Спрашивается, к чему сказано было про всё это в обзоре на побочный продукт создания второй Маджести, представленный в виде TD? Просто невозможно проникнуться ею, посылая на смерть толпы своих героев и строя башни, служащие тут основной линией обороны (да ладно, единственной, чего уж там), помня две важные вещи: башни в оригинале хорошей защитой были только при условии, что они гномьи, а второе - что герои сами решали, идти им или нет в логово врага, сражаться им храбро или трусливо прятаться за спинами товарищей, убегая куда-нибудь в таверну, то есть, попрана основополагающая оригинала, которую даже решили соблюсти во второй части. Уход к TD серии не пошёл на пользу (об этом говорят хотя бы сугубо отрицательные отзывы на сей продукт) и оценивать его с точки зрения даже второй части - ну, тут и говорить нечего. Как я уже писал в начале, насколько мне не нравится вторая часть по сравнению с гениальным оригиналом, настолько же мне не нравится DoA по сравнению со второй частью. Улавливаете, насколько всё плохо? [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32313063/] Я тут вам обзорчик накатал[/url] Ставьте лайк, подписывайтесь на кураторскую страничку и ищите новое в играх!)