I didn’t find that to be true in either of those games. I always found them to be about finding the right ratio depending on the level. And defense Grid is much more about building the right path. Of course I may not be any good at those games and never realized there was one dominant tower type.
I agree! Maybe it depends on the difficulty level.
There wasn’t any path building in Defense Grid that I remember? You just placed towers along shelves next to the paths.
Machine gun towers dominated everything. You did much better as soon as you ditched everything else and just built machine gun towers. An occasional slow tower for long turns/corners, and an anti-air tower or two along a heavy air path.
Kingdom Rush there was very little reason to build anything but the arrow towers. They would upgrade into something that could tackle every enemy type, and even packed a root/slow.
I am not sure about DG1 , but I know in DG2 you could re-route enemies by blocking paths with your towers.
It depended on the level, but quite a few (the best ones, to my mind) allowed pathing control by blocking paths with towers.
The later levels in DG1 were mostly path finding missions if I remember right.
Also you would have been destroyed doing only MG in both the DGs. They can’t handle swarms and don’t do enough damage to the flyers and heavy stuff.
I can vouch for that directly, in that on several of those I tried going straight MG as an experiment and did indeed get completely wrecked.
What’s the best tower defense game available today? Not objectively of course, your own specific call. All of you.
Defense Grid 1. Not a ton of weapon types, but enough to make it interesting (I disagree with @Infested_terran comments above) . You have to find the right mix of weapons for each mission, and they gradually throw more complex enemies at you. Same with enemy types, not a ton of types, but enough to make it fun. Fast runners, hordes, shields, stealth, flyers, slow tanks, etc. Missions that are straight build along a path or make the longest path types (the latter being quite difficult at times because some of the maps are huge and open). A very light story to give you a little bit of purpose along with some great voice acting. A good interface that lets you pause and build and its in 3D so you can look around from different angles. Different game modes and a high score list with your Steam friends. It’s easily my all time favorite tower defense game.
DG2, less so, but still a fun game. I finished 1, but never did finish 2. It’s basically more of the same.
These are probably my favorites.
Easily Gemcraft. It’s pretty much the standard for any tower defense game. You just can’t be into it for fancy graphics or theming.
-Tom
Wow, I can’t believe I forgot GemCraft. I blame all the recent Defense Grid discussion above. Yeah, scratch my last post. GemCraft. Easily. One of my favorite games of all time. I would love to see an updated version with better graphics though.
Edit: Looks like a sequel is coming. Same graphics though.
Defender’s Quest really is so damn good, I wish that sequel would finally materialize. Gemcraft seems well done but is too damn abstract to hold my interest.
Wait, not yet! I still have so much more Gemcraft to play in the currently available version!
-Tom
I hate you all, I just reinstalled Gemcraft.
Same here!
Yep, great list.
Great list. I would probably add Orcs Must Die (1 & 2) but that’s a tight list.
I got to a certain point (Wiz level 68, Fields K/Q/N) in GemCraft and couldnt even get close to getting past the levels I was on despite what I was doing working perfectly fine on the previous levels.
Defence Grid and Dungeon Warfare are right at the top of the list though. I’ll put Defenders Quest on the list.
Does Creeper World count as a tower defence game? It’s one of the best games ever, so if it walls into the TD category then it’s also one of the best TD games :)
Dungeon Warfare is also really good. It doesn’t suffer from the critique above of ‘just use a single tower, lots’.