Review of Defender Chronicles for the iPhone & iPod Touch

I caught some flak on my critical review of Star Wars Trench Run the other week. Apparently I am in the minority thinking that the gameplay was somewhat shallow and repetitive for the $4.99 price tag. This week, I want to give a prime example of why I stand by that belief by showing a game that is, in my opinion, amazingly fun and addictive with countless hours ofgameplay for the current price of only $2.99. Defender Chronicles mixes some RPG elements into a classic Castle/Tower defense type game to create a game that is often hard to put down but doesn't require hours of dedication (a la Civilization Revolution).

The game has a classic RPG/LOTR type storyline with a war between Orcs and other evil creatures attacking the land of humans, elves and the forces of good. There's actually some depth to the storyline but I have to admit I didn't pay close attention. You start out with one "hero," a General and can later unlock another, aMelwen . When you start a mission, this character is (generally) always included among your defense and you can upgrade his/her skills along the way and purchase items and other upgrades as you earn money by completing missions.

Each mission will send different waves of enemies of a growing variety of types and you job is to prevent them from getting through by placing your defenses at preset points on the board. Depending on what difficulty level you choose for the mission, you are given an allotment of enemies that are allowed to get through (obviously, you lose when more than that number get through). The trick here is that each type of defense you have, be it infantry, bowmen,mage and more, have different strengths and weaknesses against different enemies. The strategy is in choosing which units to put where and which to upgrade appropriately as you gain money from defeating enemy waves. I am certain that my explanation makes this sound far more complicated than it is (for what its worth, my 7 year old can play this game, so its not *that* complicated).

While the basics of the game are easy to comprehend, the levels can get very complex as you try to determine the right combination of units to put where and when to upgrade. It takes a while to learn which defenses work against the constantly expanding variety of enemies the game will throw at you too. You'll have to be willing to fail a number of times once you reach the more difficult levels since knowing what's coming at you in different waves drastically changes your strategies. With 9 missions and 4 levels of difficulty each that can be completed by bothheros and the ability to create custom missions, this is a game you won't likely finish anytime soon. There are also online integration for high scores and more viaOpenFeint.

As I think you can see, this really is a fabulous game (my favorite on the iPod/iPhone so far...and I own too many games) and well worth the $2.99 asking price. In fact, the only downside to this game is that you may spend too much time playing it once you are hooked!