Old review

TL;DR at the bottom.

I backed this game on Kickstarter. I paid $17, got a copy of this game, access to its beta, a free giraffe on a treadmill, a copy of DD1 and all its DLC, and a free hero and skin for her in DD2. I may even be given the $60 preorder version of the game, I'm not too sure on that one. All of that for $17? Sign me up. But you want people to pay $40 for nothing but this game, which is essentially just a dumbed-down version of DD1? Absolutely not.

"But Nelots, this game must have something that makes it worth the $40 price point, right?", you may ask. The short answer is no. This game has 12 maps as of right now, 6 of which are remakes of DD1 maps, 6 of which are entirely new. Those 6 new maps are about the ONLY new thing in this game. DD1 has 3x as many heroes, like 5x the number of maps, tons of challenges, steam workshop with loads of awesome maps, and no game-breaking bugs, ALL of that for $12 during a sale.

Edit: I'd like to add that this is to be expected. Of course it's going to have less content, you're buying a game that is still in early access so comparing it to a completed game with years of updates and DLC normally wouldn't be entirely fair. HOWEVER, this game is a remake that costs over twice as much and adds very little that could be considered new, so I'd say it's a fair comparison.

But enough about the price and comparing it to DD1. There is another huge, glaring issue. There are huge, game-breaking bugs EVERYWHERE. Ogres raining down on your crystal, towers not even aiming at enemies, enemies walking into your blockades and doing nothing as they're being killed, enemies getting stuck in their spawn and soft-locking your game, pressing enter to chat, then suddenly not being able to do anything and hard-locking your game. Private matches always being public, ogres spawning outside the map, survival pets (which require lots of grinding to get) spawning with 0 stats. Game crashes constantly, audio causing huge lag and even crashes, progress not being saved at all, ALL YOUR CHARACTERS AND INVENTORY BEING DELETED. So. Many. Bugs. And these aren't bugs that are so rare you can't reproduce them. No no no, these are bugs happening to everyone. I'll post a couple of clips of bugs in the comments of this review if you're curious to see some.

"Of course it's going to have bugs, it's an Early Access game. AAA games are completely broken when they get released", someone said to me in the feedback channel of the discord server. And that point is f*cking stupid. This is not a beta. This is an Early Access game, a game that should be more or less functional. A game that is deleting your characters regularly and spawning ogres on your crystal is not Early Access material. Did anybody even playtest this game before releasing it to thousands? I can't even tell at this point.

Now, that's not to say this game will never be worth it. If they fix up the bugs, cut the price in half because it's EA (which would hard to do because they charged pre-orderers $40+ already), and keep the game in working condition throughout updates, I'd recommend it. Despite the bugs, I've had fun playing and all the maps, new and old, are pretty as hell. One day this could be a successor to DD1, but today is not the day.

TL;DR: The game is a broken, buggy mess that is inferior to DD1 is almost every way. It has potential, if they iron out the bugs and lower the price this may just be a great game. It's fun, but there isn't enough here to justify playing this over DD1 at over double the price. I've got some videos of bugs in the comments if you're interested.