Variables 2

Let me preface this by saying that this is one of the best TD games I've played and I've played a few. I really like the large open map to create your own maze. The turret upgrade system is pretty good and creative. The item descriptions are pretty bad and you're forced to figure out the function for many of them. There really isn't a community hub for this game so you can't get it from there. It's a Chinese game so I can understand some of that. It really draws hard from your cpu and gpu for such a simple game and I feel like maybe it isn't optimized for the Unity engine. For as much resources as it uses the game should have some great graphics (it doesn't). The primary reason I'm giving it a thumbs down is it's just so buggy and when you spend lots of time designing a field, that can be a real killer. If that could be resolved I would definitely change my recommendation. It's a great concept but weak in the implementation. Also I picked this up for almost nothing on sale so I don't feel too bad. Had some great fun with it so far.

I've had a blast trying to understand and beat this game. The English translation needs some play testing and bugfixes. There are some missing translations and more critically, truncated english text. I think the boss fights mechanics and health bar graphics are really cool and innovative. It is quite fun to try to get the longest maze possible while getting the most coverage of the towers. I haven't unlocked many of the extra towers, but the higher level ones seem like they are needed and start to do 90%+ of your damage. Keep going. You have some fun ideas here.

买1送2 刚收到的时候，感觉系统有点复杂，放了好久都没敢开坑。 后来没游戏玩的时候，才想起翻出来试试。实际上手后发现没有想象中那么难，道路规划确实挺复杂的，不过毕竟是个肉鸽，发牌才是最重要的。 局外成长也比一代丰富不少。难度的话，感觉和我印象中的一代差不多？或者还更简单一点？

This really is a good innovative tower defence game. The mechanisms of being able to create the attackers route using tiles you lay down and being able to combine turrets into more powerful ones make it challenging and very replayable. The random events and bosses work well too. Some of the English translations need a bit of work but it's easy to figure out what to do after a game or two. Also the turrets do a dance during the battles when they do a lot of damage, so overall it's totally worth buying.

Really all they had to do with this game was incrementally improve on the original (in the spirit of dungeon warfare II vs I) and they would have had a beautiful thing on their hands; instead, it seems to try to reinvent the original with 'updated' graphics and UI which end up unnecessarily complicating things. The hud tries to hide too many pieces of essential information inside of menu selections which ironically creates a bigger logistical mess than the original game's UI where just about everything (equipment, turrets, tiles, tickets, recipes, etc) can be displayed all at the same time. The multi-elevation thing is a heinous, poorly implemented PITA that nobody asked for and nobody wanted. The graphics are more smoothed over and soulless than the original and, astonishingly, the soundtrack pales in comparison to the original as well (yes - the ONE SONG that drills itself into your head hour after hour in Variables 1 - is actually better than any of the soulless crap on offer here). Just play the original and skip this sorry mess.

This is a nice sequel to the first Variables... it still has the same issues of the 1st in regards to translations, but it's nothing too annoying, you'll get the gist of everything when playing. It's a small indie TD that does its job well, it's entertaining and very much worth the price if you're into TDs. I got a good 150+ hours out of it and I bought it on sale, so it was very much worth it. In terms of gameplay, it's just better than the first in every respect... there's still a RNG element to it, which can be fun/annoying depending on whether you like that sort of thing, and there's a new vertical mechanic where you can build mazes in 3 different levels, that's not as huge as it might look, tbh, but it can be fun to build multi-leveled mazes. Other than that it's a fun TD game with some interesting "twists" to it, you can do a lot of degen stuff in endless once you understand better the mechanics of the game and how to use the items, so that's always fun too. Recommended.

I usually only write reviews for truly discerning patrician games as Cuckold Simulator or Takedown: Red Sabre, but I felt I should make one of the rare exceptions for Variables 2. I love tower defense games, and this one has a lot of high level, important ideas. An improvement over the (still very good) original in every way. My brain is still in recovery mode from taking all of them in. There are some rogue-lite elements mixed throughout with unlockables, gacha games (using in-game currency), as well being able to choose mod packs that you can earn in a match (which you'll acquire through the gacha game.) And you may not always have access to every turret, so there are some elements of RNG that mix up every run. The translation can be a bit rough in places, but nothing so bad that it proved to be an obstacle to understanding how things worked. Mainly just some odd wording here & there. I'm sure there are much more detailed reviews, but put simply, if you like tower defense games, you'll like this one. If not, rethink the life choices that lead you to read reviews for tower defense games. Praying for you. 🙏🙏🙏 The dev also gave this to owners of the original for free. That's a sigma move.

V2 is a top tier tower defense game. The flow is that you start with a couple of 3x3 grids and elevator and a random raised 5 piece block. Arrange those and put your core at one end and the creep gate at the other. Place your choice of tower and then after each round you get more basic tower options. After a set number of waves you must place an additional creep gate. The gates are movable, but the core and towers are not. On advanced levels you can trade in 2 or 3 specific base towers for an advanced tower that should help you progress. Mods are random and can transform the right tower into a beast.

A hardcore TD made by the hardcore for the hardcore but expect some seriously annoying issues going in. If you are not hardcore ist krieg (ist ****ing krieg if I'm being dishonest-ish) then STAY AWAY. If you love TD but are bad at them STAY FAR AWAY as this is basically a Nightmare Simulator. But it's hardcore, weird, and very special, and there's no way I could possibly give it a negative review. Even with all the bugs. Even translated poorly from Chinese. ... Especially translated poorly from Chinese.

English language is playable, but rough. Some things take a few reads through and a bit of experimentation. Game looks very complicated and has a lot of rules / recipes, reminds me of dota or tft fishing for combinations of items. Although there are a lot of higher elevations most of the towers can shoot through walls / floors etc. so you can maze as complicated as you want without impacting your ability to kill the waves. Game balance seems very off, you can 1-2 shot enemies with waves only being a 1-5 mobs. You very quickly get the recipe towers which do at least 5x as much damage as the regular towers. The building the map i started to dislike very quickly as the game forces you to do it before you start the next level and I was attempting to speed through the waves to get to a reasonable difficulty, but you cant even do that without being interrupted to place down more tiles.