Due to its success on the iPad, Paradox Interactive have decided to bring their Tower Defense/Strategy game, Defenders of Ardania, to Xbox and PC (coming soon to PS3). Personally I think it’s pretty fun, but I can completely understand why not everyone may agree.

Defenders of Ardania is a Tower Defense game first and foremost, but it’s also fairly heavy with Real-Time Strategy elements as well. Set in the fantasy world of Majesty, DoA tells a fairly familiar tale where the humans must defeat the mysterious undead forces that are threatening their people. Since it’s mostly a tower defense game, I’ll let them get away with not having the greatest story ever told, but then again it’s not terrible either. It does what it needs to do to set up each level and help give you a reason to care about what you’re doing.

The single player campaign consists of battles against the undead, that will start out very slow. The game is a slow starter to say the least and I would recommend that you at least play the first 5-6 missions, as it takes that long for the game to really get going. During each battle you will build towers across a grid between your base and your enemy’s, along with being able to send units to attack their units, towers and base. The end goal on the majority of the missions is to just defeat your opponents base, although a few of them do mix things up with different objectives.

Each mission starts with an empty grid on the map and a few places where you can start to build your towers. With each tower built, you will open other spaces farther out in the grid, allowing you more room to build. Then you can begin to build units to send at your opponents base, and each one that makes it there, will knock off a few hits points. Towers and Units vary between the three races available; Human, Nature and Underworld. The Human race consists of Warriors, Clerics, Dwarves and more, the Nature race consists of Rats, Wolves, Bears and more, and the Underworld race consists of Zombies, Skeletons, Ghosts and more. You get the idea. Each unit type has different stats for Speed, Health, Armor and Damage, and they also attack different units so some are better against ground, some against air and some are better against towers. Later in the game, units will also gain EXP during battle and get stronger with each new level they reach. You aren’t just building towers and sitting back doing nothing, you are constantly watching the battlefield and making sure the right units are out there doing their job.

Towers are pretty similar to units, except they don’t earn EXP, but you can upgrade them later in the game. Each race has different types of towers, all of which are better against different types of units. For example the Human Spear Thrower tower is best used against ground units and the Spike Tower for the Nature race is better against air units. You can’t just build 10 towers and sit back and watch, you have to strategically place your towers and make sure you have the right types out there based on the type of units your enemy is sending your way.

Once you are done with the campaign mode, you can then replay each campaign mission but in a different way. You can play every level in either Survival or Limited Resources mode. In Survival mode, the enemy base is indestructible and the goal is to just defend against the enemy’s increasingly difficult assaults on your base. You still have towers and units like in the normal campaign levels, but it’s just a test to see how many waves you can survive. In Limited Resources, instead of regaining money during the battle, you start off with a bigger lump sum and must use that alone to defeat your opponent. Both modes are good to mix things up and help extend the life of the game.

I enjoy both tower defense and strategy games so I had a good time with Defenders of Ardania, but I did have a few complaints. First off, the battlefield can get pretty busy, really fast. On some of the 4 vs 4 maps, once everyone has all their towers built, and units are being sent left and right, it can be hard to tell what is going. All of the towers look-alike for anyone that is the same race, and even though you are all different colors, they don’t stand out enough. Which leads me to my second complaint; you can waste special attacks on your ally. During the game, each race will be granted certain special attacks such as the Human Thunderstorm that will crush an enemy tower in a single blow. The problem is, if you highlight one of your allies towers by mistake, because it looks exactly the same as the enemy’s, the game will let you waste your special attack. So then you have to wait for it to recharge and have enough money to use it again. It should just say "No you can’t do that” and not let you. It’s a minor issue, but it annoyed me the few times it happened.

With those grievances aside, the strategy of the game mixed with the twist of attacking units is what makes me like Defenders of Ardania over most of the other Tower Defense games I’ve played. In my opinion, Paradox have done a great job of combining the two genres, and fans of either will find something to like here.