Info about Dungeon Warfare 2: Official game description: Dungeon Warfare 2 is the definitive sequel to Dungeon Warfare, a challenging tower defense strategy game where you become a dungeon lord to defend your dungeons with the deadliest of traps and insidious contraptions against greedy adventurers and wannabe heroes. Game Features ------------- * Physics-enabled tower defense mayhem * 33 unique traps with 8 unique traits for each trap * More than 30 unique enemies, each with a special trait * More than 60 handcrafted levels + an infinite number of procedurally generated dungeons * 5+ boss battles * Progression with experience providing passive upgrades for the traps as well as skill points * Three skill trees with 11 skills on each tree * Equipment system with more than 30 unique items * Mix your own difficulty by combining difficulty mode runes for more challenge & reward * Endless mode * Environmental Hazards Release date: Jul 6, 2018 Categories: Tower Defense, Strategy, Resource Management, Character Progression, Endless Mode, Procedural Generation, Mod Support - Hardware Profile: No data Feature extractions: - Community Price: - Community fair range: $6.00 - $10.00 - Reasoning: The reviews show a split: some players consider the full price justified, while others recommend waiting for a sale (e.g., 33% discount). This indicates the fair price is likely below the full price but above the discounted price. The mention of 'visually primitive' and 'best bang for your buck' suggests a budget-friendly price. Therefore, a reasonable fair base-game price range is $6 to $10. - Playtime Metrics: - Game completion: 42.0h - Story completion: 50.0h - Session length: N/A - Endgame: N/A - Reasoning: The explicit 42-hour claim for 100% completion directly supports gameCompletion. The 50-hour estimate for completing all missions supports storyCompletion, and the 30-hour halfway report corroborates that story completion takes longer than 30 hours, aligning with the 50-hour estimate. No specific session length or endgame playtime was reported, so those metrics are null. - Time-to-fun: - Summary: Dungeon Warfare 2 starts fun with an engaging tutorial and diverse traps, but quickly devolves into a grindy XP meta-progression that many players find tedious and boring over time. - Stance: Fun then drops - Anchor: N/A - Time to anchor: N/A - Friction: Weak starting skills; Tedious item micro-management; Lack of base gem reward; Grindy XP progression - Unlock drivers: N/A - Conditions: If you liked the first game; If you don't mind a tedious grind; If you seek new challenges; If you want to max numbers; If you play for a long time; If you are far in the game - Player Archetypes: - Tactical Purist (no buy) - Motivation: To experience strategic depth and clever trap design without the need for excessive grinding. - Playstyle: Prefers to solve each level with careful planning and minimal grinding, focusing on trap synergies and map knowledge. - Experience: veteran - Purchase stance: no buy - Labels: N/A - Reference games: Dungeon Warfare - Progression Grinder (buy) - Motivation: To grind levels, collect runes, and become increasingly powerful to dominate levels. - Playstyle: Grinds levels, optimizes builds, and uses brute force to overcome challenges, enjoying the meta-progression. - Experience: familiar - Purchase stance: buy - Labels: N/A - Reference games: N/A - Series Veteran (sale) - Motivation: To compare the sequel to the original and decide if it lives up to expectations. - Playstyle: Plays with knowledge of the first game, evaluating changes and using familiar strategies. - Experience: veteran - Purchase stance: sale - Labels: N/A - Reference games: Dungeon Warfare - Genre Enthusiast (buy) - Motivation: To enjoy a solid tower defense game with deep customization and satisfying gameplay. - Playstyle: Plays casually, enjoying the early game strategy and customization options without heavy grinding. - Experience: newcomer - Purchase stance: buy - Labels: N/A - Reference games: N/A Below are summaries of things people say about the game per category. Each point is assigned a weight that represents how often it is mentioned across all reviews. What players like: - Excellent tower defense game (weight 0.72): Players consistently praise the game as one of the best tower defense titles available, highlighting its quality, distinctiveness, and satisfying gameplay. It is frequently described as a top-tier entry in the genre on Steam. - High replayability and content (weight 0.33): Players highlight the game's endless replayability, driven by a huge amount of content and a leveling system with over 60 levels. The variety of maps, enemies, and traps ensures a fresh experience each playthrough. Common complaints: - Balance issues with enemies (weight 0.69): Several enemies, especially battering rams, diggers, and flying units, are considered overpowered or annoying, disrupting maze-building strategies. This leads to unwinnable situations and forces specific countermeasures. - Item management is tedious (weight 0.51): Players find sorting, comparing, and managing items and runes to be a chore, often taking longer than actual gameplay. The inventory interface lacks filters and is difficult to navigate, leading to frustration. - Lacks innovation and polish (weight 0.49): The game is criticized for copying elements from other titles without adding new ideas, and for having rough graphics, sounds, and controls. It feels like a level pack rather than a true sequel. - Too much meta-progression (weight 0.45): The game relies heavily on meta-progression systems like runes, items, and ascension, which feel like a treadmill and detract from the core tower defense gameplay. This makes the game feel more like an RPG grind. - Grinding replaces strategic gameplay (weight 0.44): Multiple reviews indicate that progression heavily relies on grinding rather than strategic refinement, with many stating the game becomes a grind for XP and items. This shift undermines the tactical tower defense experience. - Map design is inferior (weight 0.43): The world map is bland, consisting of icons or squares, and lacks the charm of the first game. Many maps are gimmicky, with multiple paths and annoying elements, reducing strategic depth. - Trap variety and balance poor (weight 0.43): Many traps are weak or useless, and a single-trap strategy often dominates, making most traps irrelevant. This reduces tactical choice and encourages repetitive play. - Rune system is unsatisfactory (weight 0.43): The rune system is criticized for being random, consumable, and less interesting than the original static modifiers. It adds complexity without depth, often serving only as a grind for experience. - Difficulty scaling is erratic (weight 0.41): Difficulty varies wildly between maps, with sudden spikes and later decreases. Some levels are nearly impossible without grinding, while others become trivial with overleveling, leading to frustration. - Game crashes and bugs (weight 0.39): Frequent crashes, display bugs, and progress loss are reported, especially in endless mode. Some bugs reset player levels or cause negative values, severely impacting the experience. - Item system is random and unbalanced (weight 0.33): Item drops are completely random, with no way to target specific items, and many items are worthless or overpowered. This leads to frustration and forces reliance on RNG rather than strategy. - Progression requires replaying levels (weight 0.28): To progress, players often must replay earlier stages to farm XP and items, which is tedious and undermines the sense of achievement. This is especially problematic in the late game. - Graphics and audio are dated (weight 0.21): Graphics are minimalist and average, and the audio is identical to the first game, lacking polish. This makes the game feel outdated and less immersive. - Rush All Waves feature flawed (weight 0.18): The 'Rush All Waves' button is either missing or triggers a challenge mode that scales waves to be much harder, making it practically useless. This frustrates players who want to speed up gameplay. - Crafting and transmutation confusing (weight 0.13): The crafting system is convoluted, and transmutation can destroy items without giving anything, especially with invalid combos. This adds unnecessary complexity and frustration. - Lack of story and immersion (weight 0.11): The game has no story, quests, or lore, leaving players without motivation. The world map is bland, and there is no narrative to drive engagement. - No mid-level save system (weight 0.05): The game lacks a mid-level save, so crashes cause significant progress loss. This is particularly problematic given the frequency of crashes. Gameplay feedback: - Skill and item systems (weight 0.5): The game features a comprehensive skill tree and item system, allowing players to equip items, runes, and skill points to alter gameplay. Progression through leveling and objectives is central to the experience. - Rune system with modifiers (weight 0.43): The game includes a rune system where runes can be farmed, stacked, and combined, and they can also modify difficulty or add handicaps to enemies. Players select runes before matches to adjust challenge and rewards. - Trap variety and upgrades (weight 0.35): The game offers a wide variety of traps, including push, pull, flamer, spinning blade, barricade, slime, hellfire, freeze, shockwave, black hole, spin, bolt, springboard, harpoon, and battering ram. Traps have multiple upgrade options and unique types, with diamonds used for upgrades. - Dynamic wall mechanics (weight 0.22): Walls in the game can move or be destroyed, adding a dynamic layer to map strategy. This feature is frequently mentioned and appears to be a core gameplay element. - Endless mode available (weight 0.17): An endless mode is available for every map, providing infinite replayability. This mode is a notable feature for players seeking extended challenges. - Level grinding mechanics (weight 0.13): The game allows players to grind levels to become more powerful and brute-force through stages. Leveling is a key progression mechanic. Performance notes: - Late-game performance degradation (weight 0.15): The game becomes a slideshow and lags heavily in the late stages of endless mode, particularly from round 700-800 and beyond. This is a common complaint among players reaching high waves. - Performance varies by hardware (weight 0.08): Some players report smooth performance on a MacBook with 8 GB RAM and on a 'potato machine', while others experience severe lag. This indicates that performance issues may be hardware-dependent. Recommendations: - First game preferred (weight 0.37): A significant number of reviewers recommend playing the first game instead, citing a purer tower defense experience with more strategy. This suggests the sequel may deviate from genre expectations. - Recommended for tower defense fans (weight 0.33): Multiple reviewers strongly recommend the game to fans of the tower defense genre, citing it as a must-play or a very easy recommendation. This is the most common positive sentiment across the feedback. - Worth the money (weight 0.32): Several reviewers state the game is worth its price, with some saying full price is justified and others noting it's a bargain on sale. This indicates good value for money overall. - Suitable for casual play (weight 0.13): Some reviewers recommend the game for players who enjoy farming, grinding, or mindless wave clearing, indicating a more casual or action-oriented gameplay loop. - Wait for patches (weight 0.1): Some reviewers recommend waiting for balance adjustments or patches before purchasing, as the current state may require second-guessing after missions. This indicates potential balance issues. Other player notes: - Comparisons to predecessor dominate (weight 0.91): Many reviews focus on how this game relates to Dungeon Warfare 1, with some seeing it as an evolution and others as a downgrade. The game is often described as similar yet different, with mixed opinions on whether it improves or worsens the formula. - Mixed sequel reception (weight 0.53): Reviewers are split on whether this sequel is better or worse than the first game. Some prefer the original's tactical depth, while others appreciate the new systems and content, leading to a polarized reception. - Inspired by other games (weight 0.45): The game draws comparisons to titles like Orcs Must Die, GemCraft, and others, with some saying it copies elements from them. This is seen as both a positive and negative, depending on the reviewer's perspective. - Workshop and custom maps (weight 0.24): The game supports Steam Workshop and player-created maps, which is a significant feature for many players. However, some note that the workshop support is poor and map creation is not possible in-game, only via text editor. - Technical and language support (weight 0.12): The game includes Portuguese and Japanese language support, but there are some translation quirks in Japanese. This is a minor point but relevant for non-English speakers. Emotions: - Frustration (weight 0.22): Players are frustrated by overwhelming enemy types like flying monsters and battering rams that bypass defenses, combined with frequent crashes and progress-losing bugs. The difficulty spikes are sudden and unfair, and the complex systems (runes, crafting, equipment) feel like chores rather than engaging mechanics. - Disappointment (weight 0.19): Fans of the first game are disappointed that the sequel trades tactical tower defense for grinding and meta-progression, with too many systems and poor balancing. The game lacks the charm and strategic depth of the original, and many quality-of-life issues remain unaddressed. - Satisfaction (weight 0.14): Players feel satisfied with the game's deep mechanics, satisfying physics-based traps, and the ability to customize builds. The game offers a large amount of content and improves upon the first in many ways, providing a rewarding and polished tower defense experience. - Enjoyment (weight 0.09): The game is widely enjoyed for its fun core gameplay, variety of traps and enemies, and satisfying moments of mowing down hordes. The addition of new systems and quality-of-life features makes it more engaging and replayable than the original. - Excitement (weight 0.06): Players are excited about the upcoming third game and the new content in this sequel, such as new traps, enemies, and engineering teams. The game's variety and features, along with the developer's hard work, generate anticipation and enthusiasm. - Annoyance (weight 0.03): Annoyance stems from tedious mechanics like high-health pickaxe enemies, laughable mission rewards, and the need to grind or reset stats. Inventory management and invalid item transmutations also waste time and add to the frustration. - Boredom (weight 0.03): The game becomes boring in the later stages due to repetitive grinding and long, tedious levels. The lack of tactical variety and the ease of killing enemies with traps lead to a monotonous experience. - Appreciation (weight 0.02): Players appreciate the game's unique mechanics, such as terrain kills and grappling enemies, which set it apart from other tower defense games. The game is considered one of the best on Steam, and both games are highly regarded. - Fun (weight 0.02): The game is a lot of fun due to the variety of traps and ways to defend, offering high replay value at a reasonable price. Playing through the maps is an enjoyable experience. - Confusion (weight 0.01): Players are confused about the game's progression systems, such as whether grinding is necessary and how stage progression works. Items and skills are easy to forget, adding to the confusion. - Dislike (weight 0.01): Dislike is driven by the infinite scaling of levels and skills, destructible walls, and the game not being as fun as the first. These elements detract from the overall experience. - Amusement (weight 0.01): Players find amusement in the game's absurd moments, such as releasing all waves and being overwhelmed by enraged monsters, or experiencing level resets with negative gems. The quirky Japanese translation also adds to the humor. - Enthusiasm (weight 0.01): Enthusiasm is high because the game is considered one of the best tower defense titles, and the loot hunting aspect is exciting. Players are enthusiastic about finding legendary items. - Amazement (weight 0.01): Players are amazed by the game's unique tower defense experience and how it surpasses the original. The improvements are so significant that some players no longer want to play the first game. - Anger (weight 0.01): Anger is caused by persistent bugs that survive reinstalls and by large balance patches that seem to annoy rather than improve. These issues frustrate players and undermine their trust in the developer. - Addiction (weight 0.01): The game is highly addictive due to its loot system and the desire to obtain the most powerful unique items. Players are drawn to keep playing to upgrade their gear. - Admiration (weight 0.01): Players admire the game for being even more successful than the first and for being a 'returning god game'. The sequel's quality and improvements earn high praise. - Interest (weight 0): The game remains interesting even though it differs from the first, offering new mechanics and content that keep players engaged. - Gratitude (weight 0): Players express gratitude towards the developers for creating the game, showing appreciation for their work. - Dissatisfaction (weight 0): Dissatisfaction arises from the disappointing later progression and endgame content, which fail to maintain the game's initial appeal.}