When I first saw that Defenders of Ardania was nearing release I started looking into to it to see what it was all about and to see if I wanted to try to review it. The idea of a tower defense game in the Majesty universe that is also an offensive tower defense game was very intriguing, plus it had numerous multiplayer modes. Paradox Interactive was kind enough to let me have a review copy for Xbox Live Arcade and I've been working through it for a little over a week. My enthusiasm and excitement for Defenders of Ardania was fairly diminished by half way through the moderately lengthy campaign, but the game did not turn out to be as awful as many other reviewers have claimed it to be. Now for a quick overview before I delve headfirst into the review.

Basic Info
Publisher: Paradox Interactive
Developer: Most Wanted Entertainment
Platforms: PC and Xbox Live Arcade
Price Tag: $15


Like I said momentarily before Defenders of Ardania takes place in the Majesty universe, which is exciting if you are a fan of the RTS/town management series. Much of the game ties into that universe and you once again take the role of the great king that seems to be the same king from every single one of the Majesty games. Many of the units are also similar looking, but they have their own unique look to them. In the game you go through a campaign that has you looking for this great evil that has tried to usurp your throne, in doing so you battle through forests, swamps, deserts and hell like environments. While you do initially just build towers to defense your castle you also send out various types of troops to attack their castle, whoever manages to get past the towers and destroy each others castles first wins, but they make this basic idea far more complex by adding in a large amount of units, numerous towers, multiple enemies, large maps, specific unit routes, spells and upgrades.



For this review I will be breaking it down into several sections and doing likes/dislikes, each of which will have some extra explanation if needed. Skip all the way to the end if you want a final verdict and some last comments. To start with let's go over the most important part of a game for most people, gameplay.

-Unit and tower limits/restrictions
-Air units
-Lack of strategical options
-Overly comical and poor voice acting, except for the adviser. 
-Lifeless story that rarely is even slightly interesting
-Enemy A.I. 
-Very repetitive level design
-Difficulty is reliant on whether it's a stalemate


As you can see when it comes to gameplay it's pretty varied, but some of it definitely must be explained. I really liked how many multiplayer options there are and how they give you full use of all the races, races that you only fight against in the single player campaign and never get to use, but multiplayer was very very hard to play since there was never anyone playing it and when I went to the leaderboards there was generally less than two hundred people in each category, meaning very few people were even playing the game on XBLA. That isn't technically there fault, so they cannot be blamed for that, but it was hard to experience multiplayer to it's full capacity. Another thing I really liked was how many options you had in single player, you could use spells, you could upgrade your towers, upgrade your economy/troop cost/tower cost/spell cost, and each of your units levels up and grows stronger.



Unfortunately gameplay is really bogged down by many flaws. For one air units are poorly designed. They have to go on a limited route, your air units and the enemies, and they are very easily destroyed, plus when they do actually make it into an enemy castle they do some of the smallest amounts of damage in the game. They do attack enemy towers as they fly towards the enemies castle, but this is made useless by how they created enemy A.I. and behavior. If you manage to destroy an enemy tower, which you can do with spells or special units that are unique and attack enemy towers along the way to an enemy castle, you are immediately slapped in the face as you watch the A.I. instantly rebuild that tower as if it didn't affect them in the slightest. Sometimes you will get lucky and they will build a tower elsewhere instead of on that same spot, or you can build your own tower over that spot, but usually they disregard all that hard work.

The second to last thing I need to explain is the tower/unit limit. Each level has a limit for each of these and it really restricts gameplay. Each side will inevitably reach their tower cap within the first five minutes of the game, except on bigger maps, and your money is often made useless by these caps, especially on earlier levels when you cannot upgrade anything yet. These flaws in really hurt gameplay and make it less than pleasant most of the time, sometimes you can get some pleasure out of it, but most of the time you are just slugging through it in order to see what new units, new towers and new spells you might get in the future. Lastly I need to address difficulty. Each level has a difficulty attached to it, but that really doesn't matter. Many levels, especially 1vs1 levels, end up being a very slow and tiresome stalemate where each player is continually sending units at each other and hoping to god someone get's through the enemy defenses. There is little or no strategy in this, you can try to use strategy, like trying to get certain units to go with each other, but not until late in the campaign do you have the kind of variety in spells and units that will allow you to actually use real strategy. Many of these types of levels only end when you get some units with enough experience to become hero units, which are very powerful and cost a lot of money, and they will speed up the game a little bit, but they often take a long time to get.

Watch this video and see how the game looks in motion, especially since it will help you understand my next section that has to do with interface and graphics.