Another week, another Tower Defense game on PSN. That’s how it’s starting to feel. So I didn’t plan to buy Crystal Defenders on PSN. But I grabbed the demo last week and wanted more of it. Blame my love for numbers and powering up, one thing Crystal Defenders, this time made by the people behind Final Fantasy Tactic Advance, a game I wasn’t really fond of, next to its PSone counterpart, did in a really fun, simple and addicting way.

This should be a pretty short review, as the game doesn’t offer that much content, so find out if i twas worth its price tag on PSN.

Developer: TOSE (for the XBLA and PSN ports)
Publisher: Square-Enix
Date of Release: August 6th, 2009 on PSN (so many others release dates, I won’t list them all)
Platform: Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Wii, iPod/iPhone OS, Mobile Phone

Genre: Tower Defense
Players: 1

Looks and Sounds

The music is one of the best perks of this game. Love Final Fantasy-ish music? You’re going to love the soundtrack of this game. If you’re a perfectionist, you’ll be repeating the same map over and over again, so it’s usually a good thing to have a pleasant background music. I’ve probably did the first few maps 30 or so times, and I’m still not getting bored of the music.
As for the graphics, they pretty much looks like high resolution versions of the Final Fantasy Tactics Advance sprites and backgrounds. The game also looks pretty much alright on an SDTV, compared to some other PSN games, like Bomberman Ultra, which was hardly playable on my friend’s TV. Though the SD version seemed to miss some part of the information on the screen. In HD, on the left part, you see at all time the next few rounds that are coming up, while on the right, you see your character classes you can have. Though I’m not too sure why, they have different stances, so maybe it affects the stats of your characters on the map, or it’s simply informative to let you know which classes are strong against the current wave of enemies.

Content

The game countains 3 versions of Crystal Defenders; W1, W2 and W3. Each of those has two versions of 2 different maps. The second version of each maps are called “advanced” and are harder versions of the maps, usually giving additional paths the monsters can take on their way to your crystals. So that gives you 12 different challenges, and each of the 3 “games” gives you a different set of characters and objects you can use in your fight for defending crystals!

Gameplay

The gameplay follows pretty much the tower defense standards. You put up characters, replacing the towers alongside the map, and you can upgrade them with the cash you get from killing waves after waves of enemies.
Each level puts you against 30 waves of monsters, each one getting stronger and stronger, with some flying, some immune or more resistant to physical or magical damage, requiring you to vary your defenses fairly enough. The last wave pits you against 4 summons that are harder to take down than all previous waves.

Now, the biggest difference here, is that you are more rewarded for being a scrooge than being a big spender. At the end of each rounds, you get some bonus cash depending on how much money you have left to spend. So the game is pretty much cookie-cutter, as you’ll want to get the best strategy with minimal resources spent.

To your disposal, there’s a soldier, which attacks one enemy at a time, but is stronger than his counterpart, the white monk which also attacks on ground only, but hits multiple targets. You get access other then that to archers, which attacks both ground and enemy targets and black mages who does the same, with magical powers, on a slower pace than the archers, but with added splash damage. There’s also a time mage, slowing down enemies and doing some low damage and a thief, which will double any gils obtained within his range of effects, but does no damage to enemies. There’s also a dragoon who’ll do a lot of damage by jumping in a long range from time to time, but he’s really slow without the help of crystals. There’s also Summons you can use to help you in desperate time, but they’ll cost you for each call 5 of your 20 crystals you must protect wave after wave. Those will do things like deal damage to every enemies on the map, and slow them down, or another one will double all your damage done and double its range. I particularly like this one, as it’s hilarious to see all your characters go crazy all over the place map.

There are 3 types of crystals you can use. One for strength, one for range and one for speed. Putting those on the field will affect all units in range and will add up its powers to other crystals in its range.

The W3 maps offer different units that pretty much do the same things as the W1/W2 units, but I might have miss some important details, as I haven’t put that much time into those maps yet.

One nice thing the game includes is the use of R1 to fast-forward the speed of everything so that you’ll get through the waves much faster. This comes back to haunt you when you realize you weren’t fully ready for that wave of monsters, and find yourself to slow to react and drop hold of R1, as going slower would let you handle a not too desperate situation in a much more effective manner.

Overall

I really love this game. I never tried the cellphone/Wii/360 versions, but I’m glad they took the time to port it over to PSN too.

Pros
• Addictive gameplay
• Awesome Final Fantasy style music
• Perfect for quick gaming sessions
• The inclusion of unlocking developers strategies for half the waves is a neat feature

Cons
• Only 12 maps, 6 being advanced versions of the other 6.
• No modes that let’s you go up beyond wave 30.
• The developers strategies makes it kind of easy to beat the other half of a map, though you’re always free to ignore them

The Save Factor

At the price-point of $9,99 the Save Factor for Crystal Defenders is $7. I would have wanted a few more maps options, even though I haven’t played all of them yet to completion, otherwise it’s a really fun Tower Defense game.

David A. Console, Games, ps3, Review, XBLA