Medieval Defenders

In Brief

A run of the mill Tower Defense game. I've listed far better ones at the end of this review.

Installation Issues:

Medieval Defenders downloads to a 116 MB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper the set-up file and a read me). The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed if you wish. The installed game is approximately 118 MB in size.

C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\Medieval Defenders

Four shortcuts are installed to the desktop; the Play Online Games, MyPlayCity Games and shortcuts to a free online game; the name of which may vary each week can be deleted once the game has been installed. The Themida wrapper may alert your security and even block the installation. There are details in the read me about this issue.

Introduction:

Defend your ancestral castle from the invaders! Build towers, save money, train your spells and your enemy will be defeated. The middle ages is a dark time. Every neighbor wants to conquer the lands you own. Don't give your enemies reasons to think that you're weaker than them! Defend your castle from your warlike neighbors! You have cannon towers, money, effective spells and your own strategy at your disposal! 40 levels of different difficulty, unique units and 12 types of towers are waiting for you. The outcome of the battle depends only on you!

Reference accessed HERE. 3rd March 2019

The Game:

Medieval Defenders is a tower defense game with a medieval art style. The base you are defending is a castle and your enemies are waves of various knights, wizards, and old timey contraptions. The game does not do a lot of unique things to make it completely stand out from other games in the genre, but what it does manage to do is be a competent game and a good starting entry to the genre.

Variety is the key to a tower defense game’s replayability and Medieval Defenders does an average job at that. The game does not have a lot of base towers because after you unlock all of them you are limited to four different types that have their own specific strengths for taking down specific enemies. The towers can be fully upgraded and then branched off into two different types. The enemies vary from run of the mill easy knights to slower harder to kill knights. The airborne enemies share the same characteristics as the ground enemies.

The way Medieval Defenders helps find its own identity is with its special spell attacks. These spell attacks are special weapons at your disposal like raining rocks from the sky down on your enemies or surrounding them by a cloud of poison. This element is important to the strategy of the game since the towers lack differences between them and these spells help in battle the harder the game gets. It took a while to get used to using them because most tower defense games rely on their towers for defeating foes, but here, learning which spells to call to help your tower setup becomes vital.

Waves of enemies travel on set paths and move at a various speeds. The maps are designed with a decent amount of variety. The path designs change up at a nice rate to keep things fresh, with a portion of the levels having multiple entry points for enemies. A nice feature is a pause and fast forward ability. Pausing helps you strategize when things become overwhelming and fast forwarding helps when the enemies are moving sluggish or you have complete confidence in your defense setup. Both are much appreciated features and are very useful.

To build towers you need gold which is found by killing the waves of foes attacking you. The gold drops come at reasonable rates, but gold levels are reset with each level so you are always starting from scratch. Enemies drop enough though so lack of gold never really became an issue for me.

What does carry from level to level is the “Elixir” currency which is earned by completing levels. Elixir is used to upgrade a tower’s efficiency, a spell’s efficiency and your castle’s HP level. Elixir earned per level is pretty low if you plan to upgrade everything to the max level because everything becomes more expensive the more you upgrade it. And to add some cheapness to the experience is the game blocking off tower building points unless you spend some Elixir. A couple levels can have one or two points blocked off meaning you are going to spend whatever you may earn for completing the level.

Medieval Defenders is a bright and colorful game. The character designs are in the cutesy realm and the the world follows suit. It’s a light-hearted affair and the artwork reflects that. One negative I will say is the camera’s viewpoint of the action due to it being set a little too far back.

The map designs are sort of big so it can be difficult to make out the tower upgrades because they are shown in tiny bubbles A problem that arises sometimes is that the bubbles can be hard to make out in the environment. This is an unfortunate problem and can on occasion be downright annoying when trying to build towers.

There is not much happening in the soundtrack of the game but the music fits the visual design. It’s light and cheerful and it never sounded repetitive. The audio complements the action nicely but does not stand on its own. Sometimes the best soundtrack is the one that you do not notice.

If you are a tower defense veteran then first three quarters of the game will be a breeze before there is some form of challenge so Medieval Defenders may be meant as a good introduction to newcomers of the genre. The micro transactions will be a temptation for newcomers though which is unfortunate due to the game always offering you the ability to buy a way out of a failure.

Edited reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by Michael Cwick 29th April 2015, re-posted by Whiterabbit-uk 3rd March 2019

Conclusion:

I found Medieval Defenders a run of the mill tower defense game, with nothing original to offer. If you've not played many Tower Defense (TD) games, then its definitely worth downloading as an introduction to the genre, but for those who are very familiar with TD games, you'll find this game gets boring really fast. I've seen many TD games similar to Medieval Defenders released over the last several years; all of which incorporate the same type of upgrades and similar layouts (apart from the theme), with nothing new included.

I've listed what I consider some of the best Tower Defense games available today (all via Steam) at the end of this review; of those I highly recommend Defense Grid: The Awakening (my all time favorite TD game with a demo available), Sanctum 2, Zotrix - Solar Division, Revenge of the Titans, Creeper World 3: Arc Eternal and Plants vs. Zombies (demo available).>

Videos of Medieval Defenders:

You can see several in-game videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE & HERE.

Suggestions:

After you've had an opportunity to play today's giveaway please take a few moments to give some positive or negative feedback; for example, what you liked or disliked about the game, or how it could be improved. If you don't like the genre at all, please explain why and if any, what improvements would change your mind? If you don't have time to post a comment today, please do so at your convenience, thank you. If you wish to post a review or comment about the game later, you can access the comments section by going to the game giveaways home page, then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Archives and select the date the giveaway was live (giveaway days are in bold type). This will open the appropriate page for you to post your comment or review. Alternatively, you can google the name of the game and include Gamegiveawayoftheday in the search. This should give you a list of links to whenever this game was given away.

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game via MyPlayCity HERE; or If you prefer to purchase the game you can get it HERE via Steam (reviews via the Steam forums say this is a pay to win game, and has garnered mainly negative reviews. The giveaway version has no cash transactions as far as I know.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting Medieval Defenders to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted, for example, a common issue seen since the Themida wrapper was introduced three years ago is that some community members installation of the game are blocked by their security because Themida code has been known to hide malware, (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not); so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though the files (i.e. the setup, read me and setup.gcd files are actually totally free from malware. This issue can be solved either by rebooting your computer in safe mode with networking or a quicker method is to temporarily turn off your security software to allow the installation. You could also try white-listing the setup.gcd file. In the almost 12 years this game giveaway site has been operating there has 'never' been a game given away that was infected with malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank MyPlayCity for giving away Medieval Defenders and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If Medieval Defenders doesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something new to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenns threads for details of other free games and offers HERE and elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (usually on the first page of the game discussion forums). The free game over at epic games is Thimbleweed Park until March 7th. worth £14.99/$19.99/€19.99.

The following Tower Defense games are among the best I've played over the years. It's not an exhaustive list with several titles I've not included (simply because I've forgotten their names). All of the following are available via Steam, and some have demos available. I highly recommend Defense Grid: The Awakening (demo available), Sanctum 2, Revenge of the Titans, Plants vs. Zombies (demo available), Orcs Must Die 1 (demo available), Orcs Must Die 2 (demo available), Bloons TD 5, DG2: Defense Grid 2, Sanctum (demo available), GemCraft - Chasing Shadows, Dungeon Defenders (DD2 is free to play), Kingdom Rush Frontiers, Evil Defenders, Iron Brigade, Tower Wars, Defense of Egypt, Roman Britain & Greece bundle, Super Sanctum TD, Deathtrap and Galactic Tower Defense, Zotrix - Solar Division, Towers of Altrac - Epic Defense Battles (I originally gave Towers of Altrac a bad review shortly after it was released as an early access two years ago, but changed my mind once it was officially released due to the improvements made by the developer). Here are some more TD games that I've enjoyed playing Last Hope - Tower Defense, Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten , Sol Survivor, Creeper World 3: Arc Eternal, Creeper World 2: Anniversary Edition (this would be my sixth choice if I was allowed one more on a desert island), Tumbleweed Express, Prime World: Defenders, Prime World: Defenders 2 free to play, Kittypocalypse, Anomaly Defenders, Fiery Disaster, AI War: Fleet Command and Battle Ranch: Pigs vs Plants. Finally, the following Creeper World 4 hasn't been released yet, but looks amazing.