Defender’s Quest: Valley of the Forgotten DX review for PS Vita

Tower defense games aren?t exactly known for their stories or their characters. Maybe you could try to argue for Plants vs. Zombies, but apart from that the genre tends towards tends towards plots and characters that are either interchangeable or non-existent. To be clear, that?s an observation, not a failing of the genre or anything, since tower defense games aren?t expected to have those characteristics.

Defender’s Quest: Valley of the Forgotten DX represents a concerted attempt to change that. It?s not only got a story told via cutscenes (a medieval fantasy that involves a half-dead woman fighting monsters and recruiting an army), it also wears its RPG influences on its sleeve, with character progression and a surprising amount of customization options.

Is this story interesting? Not really — at least not to me. The cutscenes aren?t great either, with the main characters looking like they stepped out of a generic webcomic. Still, given that graphics and story generally aren?t the reason why you play a tower defense game, Defender’s Quest deserves a very moderate amount of praise for at least making the effort.

What really matters, here and in any other games of this ilk, is the combat. And on that front…Defender’s Quest is exactly what you?d expect. The difference, I guess, is that you have characters in place of towers, but they fulfill the same general roles: berzerkers specialize in close-range attacks, while archers are better for ranged combat. That aforementioned half-dead woman replaces the traditional castle, and she also has magic you can use from time to time.

In other words, despite its RPG trappings, Defender’s Quest isn?t all that far from your typical tower defense game. Kudos to its developers for wanting to give it a little something extra, but in the end, the game is more or less what you?d expect.

Level Up Labs provided us with a Defender’s Quest: Valley of the Forgotten DX PS Vita code for review purposes.