Defenders of Ardania

Doubt anyone would buy this expect in a bundle in 2024, but it's not worth you're time. I've played better tower defence/offence games for free on flash websites.
Campaign writing and voice acting is pretty dire. Only play if you've played literally every other tower defense game before and need more.

"Defenders of Ardania" is an older mobile app from 2012. It's a venerable 12 years old at the time of this review. Paradox have removed this from Steam after seeing that Steam isn't actually a dumping ground for mobile app garbage.

It's a badly designed fantasy themed tower/soldier defense/attack game made for iOS.

From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

The mobile app features lazy low-polygon "retro" assets, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the mid 2000s. It's unclear why the developers weren't able to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets for the mobile app, and also irrelevant... what matters is that this looks bad as a result of their decisions, a compromise PC gamers shouldn't have to put up with.

The developers didn't design the mobile app for modern gaming PCs, as such the display resolution caps out at 1080p, a very low resolution that became mainstream back in 2006 and became obsolete when 4K entered the mainstream in 2014. The mobile app simply won't look right on modern gaming displays due to this failure on the part of the developers.

Because this is a mobile app, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the iPhones that the mobile app was designed for. These are unfortunate handicaps and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was an afterthought for the iPhone developers who are to blame for this. The mobile app is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for mobile phones forces upon a game. Once more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. I didn't spend thousands on building a gaming rig just so I could pretend it's an iPhone.

This looks and feels like a mobile app, and I could see evidence it was on mobile phone app stores, but it seems to have been (understandably) removed from the app stores.

Regardless, for all intents and purposes "Defenders of Ardania" is effectively a mobile app, it has the same limitations and dumbed down qualities. It's impossible to recommend such a game to PC gamers. We don't spend all this money building gaming rigs so we can pretend they're iPhones and play games that might as well be mobile apps.

These technical defects push this mobile app below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

If you can get your hands on a key for this removed game, don't bother.

Sadly the game is really bad. Very low quality Tower Defense, good intentions but poor execution. It is just not fun to play. Art is alright, but graphics, music, gameplay... everything is simply terrible. Sorry for the devs.

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Ignore all the negative reviews. I don't know why it has so many. Perhaps they are upset it isn't a just like the RTS game Majesty... but Defenders of Ardania is a Tower Defense / Reverse Tower Defense game (means different game) within the world and feel of the Majesty game. The voice overs from your adviser is here from the Majesty game.

This was a fun little game. There IS A Tutorial. Although the Tutorial is fast pace and they throw you right into quick progression of tower/unit usage, you'll be fine. Play a few maps and you'll get the game. It's really quite simple.

So, buy the game while on sale, have some quick fun, achievement hunt, enjoy the vibe, and then uninstall.
Oh, and don't forget to give it a positive review to maybe help the Publisher/Devs out and poke the negative reviewer trolls that they are missing out.

Hello All, i thnk that this is a cool game, i am new to the computer gaming so not to sure how much my opinion
matters. its a good get to play fast type of game that you dont have to site around and wait for just turn on and go, go, go...

Bought this in 2012. Multiplayer never worked and i think by the time i did the game flopped so bad no one even cared.

This is probably the worst paradox published game and it's an embarassment to the studio that released this trash. Who knows what they rebranded to.

You can have better fun playing a mod of a TD in a game like WC or starcraft, even as a mod they're done way better.

I don't see how this game is bad. I've played it for 3 hours now and it doesn't fail to impress me. I like how I'm not just building defenses but also organising attacks, I like the comprehensive upgrade and experience systems and the story so far is interesting. I love the setting. Ardania as a satire of the fantasy genre never fails to give me a good laugh even while I'm in the throes of recovering from a triple-decker fever/cold/cough illness.

I noticed that a lot of the complaints are directed at what it isn't, rather than what it is supposed to be. Guys, it's a tower defense game - you seriously can't expect it to be a AAA product with billions of dollars of budget behind it! For what it is worth, it's great!

It's actually a really fun game. My biggest gripe, in single player you can't pick your race. There should be at least 3 seperate campaign modes. One for each race. The controls are no different than any other tower defence game. The concept is no different than any other tower defence. Campaign mode is short and multiplayer is hit or miss. Goes on sale and you like tower defense games, it's worth the sale price. I got my fun out of it.

Poor tower building interface made this game unplayable - after that I couldn't care less about the rest of the game

Rating: 5/10 -- ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆
Valve: Please change recommendation/review system to use a 10 point star system. Much more accurate than "yes/no".

Ok, I see a lot of bad reviews about the game and wanted to clarify some things some people have said, as well as provide my own views. This review may contain spoilers, so don't hover over spoiler areas if you don't want the game to be spoiled. I hope the devs are reading this, because this game could be great if they'd just make a few changes.

First thing I want to say, some people claim that there is terrible voice acting. I hear nothing wrong with the voices you twit! Stop coming up with things to whine about.

As for someone saying "The game runs like shit"? Maybe you should check your machine specs because it runs 60FPS or better at 1080p on my machine, no issues whatsoever, everything's smooth and fast. The controls are a little odd though but it doesn't "run like shit".

I think the game has too few levels in it to be worth $10. Maybe if multiplayer and skirmish had some different maps, but this game does not. It limits you on the amount of towers you are allowed to place even so it isn't worth replaying the same old maps over and over again. The best you can do is place 20 towers, and that's in the final mission. Also in the final mission, tower placement seems to be bugged because I can't place them in some places if it might block where the enemy castle MIGHT appear even if I've blocked his ability to go to those places. What the game SHOULD do in this case, is have the enemy walk through the tower with the shortest path to your base, until you unblock the path, if his castle should teleport to one of those places that you already towered up.

If the game devs had released some DLC with new maps, that might have been nice. But this doesn't appear to be happening, and the DLC is too costly to be worth it for what they give you. $3 for a new tower, spell, and unit for each race? Really? Come on. We don't even play as any other race because replaying the game sucks and as far as I saw, I couldn't even change my race. $2 for 1 new spell for all races, and 1 new spell for each race? That's just plain greedy. From what I read, the spells aren't even that great.

Really though, it's a tower defense game. It can't be that hard making a new map every once in a while for it. Hell, to make the game really worth it, you could release a map editor/creator, and add workshop support, and let players add their own maps in. This would be well worth the time then because I'd be playing this game all the time with custom maps and the such like that. Right now, Defense Grid is so much more better because of the large large volume of maps you get.

Spoiler related to two missions:
In the last two missions, you find out that you need to use an exploit of removing a tower and placing one to change the entire wave path forcing the end game bosses to go back and forth infinitely just so you have time to kill them.

In the last mission, you can't even kill him with spells. He has 1000 HP according to the info. I hit him with lightning 8 times, and he didn't die, and I lost to the onslaught of enemies. So the third time I played, I rushed him, placed towers at the entrance once I stopped the castle from moving, high level mirror towers (not their name but it's how they work, just can't quite recall the name off the top of my head :P), then hit him with lightning and kept placing new mirror towers all around him trying to change up the path as much as I could to keep the enemies and him at bay. It eventually successfully worked, even though he destroys all towers in one hit, or two hits and your repair can't stop him so repairing a tower he hit is useless because he'll attack it again very soon.

The game lacks a pause feature from what I am seeing. Sure, you can hit the escape button, but it isn't an in game pause, so that you can look at the map, and find a suitible pathing setup for your towers and plan ahead. It would also be nice to be able to build towers while the starting game talking is being done, maybe even with gold income disabled during that time just so you can have the towers built and ready, not that it is that big of a deal though.

Enemy AI needs to be able to destroy their own towers in order to rebuild or move them. I've noticed that the only way an enemy can build new towers is if you lightning them. And this is an advantage because I noticed he had no anti-air in one level so I sent nothing but air units because he couldn't rebuild towers. The enemy also isn't very good at planning ahead. If you start sending lots of air units, he still only keeps one air tower, nor does he do much upgrading. he's more focused on sending units. There should be a harder AI here that is better at predicting your attacks and able to hit you harder. The last two maps, weren't even as difficult as some of the others. The only thing difficult about them was their nearly invulnerable bosses. Otherwise, they'd have been easy.

I like the Majesty lore, I played Majesty Gold way back when it first came out even and still have the disk and the HD version on steam. They did well enough on the lore of this game to make it worth it, it would be nice if they would add more maps. That's really the only thing I can see right now making it worth the $10 it is currently costing. I think it's current worth would be more closer to $7.50, and the DLC would be $0.10 per added spell, $0.15 per added unit, $0.20 per added tower. Global spells count as one spell. This is just my opinion. If they were to make DLC to add new maps, I think it would be grand, much more worth it and a map editor? Hell yea that'd be way more worth it. Especially with workshop integration for ease of DLing and sharing maps.

New game modes could be fun too but alas, I'm not sure this game will change. If you see it on 50% sale, or better, then you might like it. It is beatable without cheating, I consider it an exploit to delete a tower and place one elsewhere to change the path but it is kind of part of the tower defense genre in some games so I guess it isn't that bad using this method if you want. :P It just doesn't offer you anything other than campaign maps. Skirmish re-uses these maps, and so does multiplayer.

Should you get this game full price? No.
Will I re-review if anything changes, or the game is updated, or such? Yes.

Awful game. Lacks any character or sense of achievement from playing it. So many better tower defense games around! Don't bother with this one.

Fun game but the multiplayer servers seem very dead. The main campaign is quite short and the story line is not very exciting. Only buy it if you enjoy tower defence games. Seems almost Identical to the tower defence matchs in Warcraft Frozen Throne if anyone ever played that online. The guy that talks before every match takes a million years to finsh since he talks super slow and i couldnt work out how to skip it so get ready for a bore before your match.

Picked this up as part of the majesty collection. as much as i want to love this game for it being in such a great universe as well as one of my favorite genre...i hate it. the controls are awful. design is crap and it crashes unforgivingly with little regaurd to threats of death from yours trully. bottom line unless this is recives an overhaul update its not playable.

Bottom Line. STAY AWAY, EVEN IF ITS FREE STAY AWAY!!!

At first this seems like a nice game, and it is playable.

But it is no fun, mainly because the controls aren't good, and often I seem very limited by some unseen rules in the game, they forgot to tell about, which gives frustrations. I like tower defense games, but not this one. It seems kind of unfinished.

Buy "Defense Grid" and "Orc Must Die 2", they are much better, fun and intuitive, and much more professional.

Avoid this one. You will not enjoy it.

The tower defense genre is well known and well understood, with many good games to serve as examples on how to get it right. With all of the good material available for study it's hard to understand how Defenders of Ardania managed to fail so hard. You'd think that, at the very least, the company would have been able to manage a mediocre game but Defenders of Ardania fails in nearly every aspect.

Although this game does require you to attack as well as defend, that isn't enough extra to save it from everything else. The voice acting is a crime against humanity; the tower selection isn't imaginative; the campaign is terribly easy - just spam cheap units as soon as the game starts and away you go. There's a lack of strategy and fun.

Multiplayer isn't much different. It also plays rather poorly on slower connections, despite the minimal amount of data that a tower defense game needs to pass back and forth. What is it doing to choke my friend's pipe? I don't know, but it's unnecessary.

I'd advise against a purchase even if it is deeply discounted and you're a tower defense fan.

I should have read other reviews before purchasing.

Limited resolution settings. No option for windowed mode. This means on my 2560x1440 monitor, it resizes all my windows to make them smaller, and repositions them onto my 2nd monitor. Ugh!

The game itself is pretty lackluster, which is a shame because I really liked Majesty 2. The quality seems really poor and just shoddy all-around.

The official forums have been pretty much abandoned for two years (and the game only came out two years ago). Honestly I feel kind of ripped off. :(

Buy Defense Grid instead. Or try Tower Wars. Or just about any other TD game.

Picked this up since I am a fan of the original Majesty. Although Majesty 2 was fairly dissapointing, it wasn't totally terrible, and tower defense is a pretty easy genre to to reasonably well. I am not super-far through this yet, but so far it has been nothing but dissapointing, with boring non-interactive gameplay, sluggish lack of strategic decisions that matter, and even terrible voice acting (the advisor guy from Majesty 2 is all right, but some of the others are really cringe-worthy).

Do not try this at home.

Set in the world made famous by Majesty, in Ardania, you are the king. Some arrogant noble causes trouble by sending militia to attack you, so you slash back by building towers to defend your castle and sending various troops to counter-attack. Campaign takes you through Ardania to find the culprit of the attacks on your cities. Sounds cool enough, but unfortunately, you probably shouldn't get too excited.

Defenders of Ardania is a mix between Tower Defense (TD) and Reverse TD. You can protect yourself by building towers, but ultimately, you win by destroying the enemy castle(s) by sending out troops. Troops are quite strong: a single tower can hardly destroy a wave of enemies, so you either need to build more towers in clever spots or, which is usually easier against AI, destroy the enemy castle quickly.

There are about 5 different types of units and towers, none too different from other games of the genre. Some units can attack other units (rather weakly) and others can attack enemy towers. There's some strategy involved in placing the towers, as you are limited in the number of towers depending on the level. You may also direct your troops using a waypoint (yep, a single one) or place bounties (akin to Majesty but costs nothing) to focus fire on certain enemy. What is interesting is that your troops gain experience: using certain type of troops makes them stronger.

Later on, this feels indifferent though: it was always easiest just to either (following is a couple of killer strategies for campaign) zerg-rush the enemy with cheap or fast troops or use a reverse scorched earth tactic building a couple of waves of turret-destroying magicians followed by bomb carts that insta-kill castles. This worked in almost every map: While AI can build towers to counter your troops, it's not up to these kinds of attacks.

Also, while there are three races, you can only play humans in the campaign, the rest restricted for AI and multiplayer (which I've yet to try: servers are empty though). Every race has its own towers, troops and spells, which is cool, but with mere single campaign, the game feels unfinished: there really should be a campaign for each race.

Story is quirky and and full of nerdy jokes, puns and references, so at least it does not take itself too seriously. You do have to endure some quite bad voice acting along the way (I'm looking at you, Kilia the Elf!). Playing it through lasts about 5-10 hours, probably less if you can come up with winning strategies faster. I guess it might be worth it for the amusing ending. :P

While not entirely bad, there are many better TDs out there: this one fails to fill its niche in the reverse TD. So if you just kind of like TD genre, stay away. If TD is your hot chocolate, by all means do get this one but do yourself a favour and do so when it's on sale or bundled.

Poor AI; no solo play except for campaign; campaign levels have locked towers, units, upgrades and spells; campaign is fairly short and only one of the 3 races, so no chance to get aquainted with either of the others races before playing multiplayer; poor interface; poor response to input; poor unit pathing updates; maps are limited to the campaign maps.

This game is a lot of fun if your into tower defense games. This one is a little different than any I have ever played before. The thing about DOA that makes it unique is the goal is to destroy your opponents castle so you have to raise multiple types of troops etc. There are 3 diferent races you can play as each with there own tower types etc. I have had a great time playing this game and will have plenty more time to get better and get all the achievements. Its replayability is high, graphics are good, sound effects are good, story is meh, but the gameplay is fun. It does get repetative at times and some levels are extremely easy because some of the units are over powered. For instance: Bomb carts do 300 damage to the base, manage to squeeze 2 of them past there defenses or rush them early and you win.

I rate Defenders of Ardania 7.5 out of 10. Try to get this one while its on sale!