This game really grew on me. Defender's Quest 1 is an all-time great, ten-outta-ten game for me, and like many others, I was disappointed by the sequel at first. It's easy to put it against DQ1 and say, "well, this simply isn't as good or as deep. I expected more after 10+ years in development." But I don't think that's fair. The game releasing at all is a miracle thanks to the heroic efforts of others who stepped in after the original creator was forced to step away due to personal tragedy. It's actually pretty surprising that its story and systems are coherent and pretty dang good!

Instead of seeing DQ2 as missing features from DQ1, I see DQ2 as focusing on the best parts of DQ1 while leaving the door open for the possibility of future enhancements. Gone is recruiting faceless mercenaries, which is replaced by something similar to Hero Mode from DQ1 where you work solely with the story-based soldiers you're given. There aren't unique weapons or armor with special abilities in DQ2, but those weren't implemented in DQ1 until the deluxe version that released 2 years after launch, along with NewGame+.

The lowest part of DQ2 is the first 2-3 hours due to the unlikable characters and higher difficulty of playing with a small, under-leveled army that hasn't been able to utilize their skill trees. I failed one early stage where you have just one character 7 times in a row before I reluctantly flipped the difficulty to Casual Mode. I then flipped it back to a higher difficulty for the rest of the game and thought the difficulty was well balanced from that point forward.

Surprisingly, the best part of DQ2 is the last half when the game switches and then blends armies together in interesting ways that create fun new challenges and the story gets interesting. At this point, it feels like DQ1 again where you're having fun replaying previous levels at higher difficulties, leveling up your characters, and unlocking cool abilities from their skill trees that change how they work in fun ways. You can also re-spec the skills at any time for free, which encourages experimentation or level-specific load-out strategies. Conversely, DQ1's lowest part was the back half once there were no more additions to the army or game-changing abilities to unlock.

Overall, I ended up really enjoying my time with DQ2, and I'm really thankful that it finally released. I can see how people think it's not as good as DQ1, but DQ2 doesn't deserve all the hate it's getting. It's still a fun character-building tower defense that's really unlike anything else out there, well, except for that one previous game that you probably loved. Give this a fair chance to stand on its own, and you might enjoy it like I did.

I really wanted to love this, after sinking tons of hours into the first one, but it's barely enough to even call it a sequel. They lost all the magic from the first one.

A lot of people are disappointed that this game isn't as good as the first Defenders Quest and I agree with that sentiment completely. However, I don't think this is a bad game deserving of all these negative reviews. DQ1 is one of my favorite indy games ever and even though DQ2 is nowhere close to as good, it is still a decent game worth its price. If you like tower defense this game is worth a purchase and who knows maybe one day the game can be patched or expanded upon to bring it a little close to the quality of DQ1.