Radiant Defense Review

Posted in Free Win8 Games, Free WP8 Games, Paid WP7 Games, Paid WP8 Games | 0 comments

Description

If you are up for some Tower Defense action, Radiant Defense might be just the game you want to try. The best part? It’s available on all the platforms.

Supported Platforms

Windows Phone 8
Windows Phone 7
Windows 8
Windows RT (Surface)

Radiant Defense Trailer

Screenshots

Radiant Defense Video Review

TBA

Radiant Defense Review

Introduction

After the tower defense games become a thing to play as they invaded our phones and tablets, we saw a sharp increase in all kinds of games in this genre. Unfortunately, the majority of them are frustrating or just not that fun to play, either due to poor graphics, flawed mechanics or both. What about Radiant Defense?

Gameplay & Controls

If you ever played Hexage studios games, you will certainly recognize a familiar soundtrack and their deep focus on bold and vibrant colors, which we certainly welcome, especially when you play on a high resolution display. Everything just seems very well put although we found one minor flaw: you can’t zoom out, which makes it harder for you to see all your towers at once. Nothing major but it’s still worth mentioning.

The gameplay itself follows a well-known and well established tower defense games formula, although the developer tries to keep the franchise fresh by throwing a couple of new (or not yet widely implemented) ideas.

You start off like in every other tower defense game, with cheapest towers and a small amount of enemies, although rather than locking some of the more powerful towers or upgrades for later levels, the developer has decided to let players build whatever they feel like, in case they have saved up money, that is.

Once you start playing Radiant Defense, one thing becomes clear: you can’t just throw a bunch of same towers and hope for the best. Not only are you forced to build all kinds of crazy structures to combat enemies that are immune to a certain amount of attacks, but you also can’t just spend all your money and go for another round. Instead, the game will reward you for money that wasn’t spent, which creates an important dilemma: build a tower now or try to survive another wave of enemies with your current equipment. It’s certainly is a very welcome twist and we welcome more games of this kind.

Just when you get used to the basics, Radiant Defense will flip the tables and make you work for it. At first you are simply asked to place just a couple of building blocks and guide the direction of your enemies, however, soon you will find yourself building your own level from scratch, which not only is fun but also challenging, especially when there are two portals that spawn the monsters.

And then are towers and buildings, in fact, there are more upgrade options that the levels themselves, which, depending on your preference, can be either a good or bad thing although we would certainly welcome more of the later.

If you get a free version of Radiant Defense on a Surface tablet or Windows Phone 8, one thing becomes clear: casual fun quickly turns into frustration. You are reminded about various paid upgrade packs to help you through and while that certainly isn’t a bad thing, Radiant Defense feels like one of those games that can’t be beat unless you pay money. Not only that but upgrade packs themselves are ridiculously priced and there are more than one of the. During our review period, we managed to beat ~70% of the levels on Windows 8 and then just switched to a paid version, which (as of now) is only available only for the Windows Phone users and has all the features unlocked for a price of one pack upgrade.

Conclusion

Radiant Defense is definitely a high quality game that covers all bases very well, you will find yourself paying and enjoying it.

However, it’s only fun if you get a paid version on your phone and have all the features unlocked. Free Radiant Defense offerings (on both Win 8 and WP 8) will leave a taste of frustration in your mouth, forcing some people to “rage quit” after they reach the last few levels.

Pros

► Available on all the platforms
► Beautiful graphics and soundtrack
► Lots of different enemies with their strengths and weaknesses
► Constantly changing environments force you to change your strategy
► Paid: a huge amount of towers and upgrade options

Cons

► Free version can be frustrating if you don’t spend money on packs
Please note: Paid Windows Phone version ($2.99) has all upgrades unlocked
► Free version upgrade packs price is insane ($2.99 per one upgrade)
► No data synchronization between Windows Phone and Windows 8
► $2.99 seems slightly too much for this amount of levels

Rating

9/10 (Paid Windows Phone Version)
7.5/10 (Free Windows 8 / RT / Windows Phone version)

Price

$2.99 (Windows Phone)
Free (Windows Phone 8, Windows 8, Surface)

Download

Windows Phone (Paid)

Windows Phone 8 (Free)

Windows 8 / RT (Free)

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