Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Just plain fun"

Good:
-Interesting combination of tower defense and RPG with level-ups.
-The story was written by an English major and while some of the dialogue gets a little too goofy for me at times I think they did a great job and it's good that the game doesn't take itself too seriously. There are also a few branching paths in the story that may compel you to replay it.
-Excellent map variety that keeps each battle fresh and unique.
-I felt that the end of the game came a bit soon (12 hours or so for me), but was happy to learn there is a NewGame+ mode with increased difficulty, more maps, and some neat extras.
-Quite a few things to unlock like equippable books that can greatly affect gameplay and more challenging battles (beware of sheep).
-Boss battles are a nice touch and a strong addition to the traditional tower defense formula.
-Excellent music.

Bad:
-I didn't feel all that attached to my characters and I think there are a couple of ways they could address this issue: 1) force the player to commit to one path on the skills tree per character, 2) make character death permanent, 3) add a few more appearance customization other than just (some) colors, 4) add "hero" classes where you can't have more than one of each.
-The game could have used a couple more classes.
-Could have really used a co-operative mode.

Defender's Quest is one of those gems that will probably go mostly unnoticed by the gaming community but if you're on the fence about buying it you should try out the demo on Steam. Chances are you'll enjoy it and end up sinking 20-30 hours into it.