Dungeon Defenders: Awakened

Not worth the price of $20 in my opinion. And it's not as fun to play by yourself. You definitely need friends for this game. I don't recommend it. Go with the free one instead. 4.5/10.

[quote][b]Note: Low Population Multiplayer[/b] This game is multiplayer focused but has a low player population. Finding active matches may be difficult, and the player pool is too small to guarantee you'll be able to play the game as intended.[/quote] Dungeon Defenders: Awakened was designed for Nintendo Switch handhelds, and the reality is that regardless of the platform order it was released on, it was fundamentally built for the lowest-spec hardware available... a portable gaming appliance. And this is quite a trainwreck... to understand what this is, you need to understand where it came from. This is a (badly done) remake of the 2011 (15 year old!!!) Dungeon Defenders... and you might think "Remake means it's better!" and you'd be wrong, because the remake was to make it for the Nintendo Switch. The game itself had an interesting concept... you and the other three players (you can play solo but the game isn't balanced around that so it sucks.. more) go through two phases each round. First phase is placing towers, and second phase is third person shooting/brawling to kill the stuff the towers doesn't. Okay. Not the worst idea, but this still comes across as dumbed down and the remake is a lot worse because of the Nintendo Switch. See, the Switch is no gaming PC, and so to make the game work, they had to lower tick rates, reduce capabilities... this is a cut down, dumbed down version of Dungeon Defenders that costs more and is infested with high cost DLC because the developers want to squeeze a 15 year old game for even more cash. My advice? Don't give it to them. On to the regular flaws and defects that many games suffer from, this one included. On the upside, the game does feature customisable controls and resolution, so at least some of the basic, minimum requirements have been met. Unfortunately there's a number of other technical defects and shortcomings which contribute to the game being difficult to recommend to gamers. Because this is designed for handheld/portable gaming appliances, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the low power handheld gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the mobile game developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for low power handhelds forces upon a game. While this might run well on a Steam Deck, we must remember the vast majority of gamers here are gaming on PC. The graphics aren't great. Sure, they reskinned this from the original 2011 game... badly. The game assets are all designed to work properly on the rather ancient Nintendo Switch handheld... I can't stress this enough, this isn't a PC game, and it doesn't look like one, either. That will understandably a turn off for a lot of gamers, and it's a big contributor to the failure of the game to attract gamers. Gaming is a primarily visual medium, and if developers want to succeed, they must understand that it's not an area for compromise. You deserve better than compromises. These flaws make this game fall far short of the professional standards we expect from a modern PC game. You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality game this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me. Let's look at the price and what kind of value this actually offers gamers. Should you buy this game? Is it one of the best of the 140,000+ games on Steam? Dungeon Defenders: Awakened has the cash grab price of $15 USD, for which you could easily get any number of older AAA games. There's additional money in cosmetic DLC on top of the $15 USD purchase price that you're expected to buy. MTX/DLC cosmetics are the kind of thing that was invented for consoles and mobile phones, but here it is on Steam, too, the appalling microtransaction economy that gamers despise. It's not P2W, but I think it's important when developers are needlessly greedy. That DLC costs an eye watering $56 USD, bringing the total price of this Nintendo Switch reject over AAA pricing... a whopping $71 USD to buy the whole game. Disgusting. For comparison, the $15 asking price for this game could get you games like "Divinity: Original Sin 2", "Phantasmophobia" or "Hunt: Showdown". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. The quality problems and defects with this game makes the asking price totally unrealistic. It's impossible to recommend this to gamers here on Steam.