This is a sequel done right. There's enough content here to provide new challenges to players who have mastered the original Defense Grid, but at the same time, this is still very much the same kind of game in all the right ways.

At first glance, the new content seems only modest compared to what is familiar. Almost all the old tower types and enemies are back, but the handful of new types of each and subtle rebalancing of the existing towers mean that new strategies need to be developed.

DG2 offers a plethora of choices as to how you play the game. From separate leaderboards that either allow or forbid juggling, difficulty levels from casual to very challenging, and even more game modes for each map than the first game, this takes what was until now the definitive tower defense game and makes it even better.

There have been some substantial changes to the economy and scoring system which, while I feel personally make for a more challenging game, do substantially alter the challenge curve of the basic level type. Gone is the compound interest earned from penny pinching. Instead, score is accrued independently from income. Efficiency is still rewarded, as you score more for killing each alien while you have less invested in towers. But the income from killing each enemy is unaffected, and additional income is a steady tick rather than being dependent on the amount you have banked. All this means that you can't just develop an optimised strategy for the early waves, and then find yourself with a huge bankroll. Levels can be genuinely challenging from beginning to end, and not just for people looking for pure score optimisation. I know this may actually be a bit of a disappointment for some, as the old game could sometimes be great for some uncomplicated unwinding at the end of a rough day. That is still there, but you'll have to dial the game back to easy in order to find that kind of experience.

I will say that I have yet to try the multiplayer modes, so I can't yet speak to that experience. But with that caveat aside, I wholeheartedly recommend DG2 to fans of the original and anyone even vaguely interested in the tower defence genre. If you're going to give these kinds of games a go, why not start off with the very best there is on offer?

I enjoyed the game but am giving this a negative review. I played through the whole thing and had a good time, had to replay a couple levels to get the gold rating. Finished. Nice. Now, let me goto the steam workshop for this game and download some player made maps so I can enjoy this game for quite a bit longer (ala Civ5).

Wait? What? Player made maps are only available to be voted on WITHOUT PLAYING THEM? You cannot download them and can only vote on them and when they get enough votes then they will be made available via the Hidden Path Store for a couple of dollars. WTF is up with that?

I had no idea I was buying a microtransaction game, this is complete BS imho. If the community makes the map then the map should be available to the community for nothing, stop charging for what others create for your game.

I seriously doubt I will give this company any more of my money and I certainly will not be buying any expansion map packs.

The original is my favorite tower defense game of all time. I have access to the beta and can tell you it's every bit as fun, but they've also added new mechanics. Defense boards that can change during play, and they're adding customization of your loadouts to expand upon the original. Choose from new commanders with different abilities, and tool your towers to develop them to your preferences.

PS - Multiplayer co-op game modes too!

Defense Grid 2 Review beta:

IF you like tower defense games buy it
Defense Grid is a strategy game where you spend resources on building towers that destroy waves of incoming enemies. As you kill more enemies, your resources grow. It’s a combo of strategy and puzzle play, and because the game is balanced just right, there are a million different ways you can beat a level so your solution is truly your solution.
This game is awesome the graphics is nice you can upgrade towers and more...
The community is active and nice there are also lots of events and i like it.

I do recommend for you to play this game.

Defense Grid stands above all others in the crowded tower defense genre. It's the gold standard. DG2 is poised to surpass the achievements of the original. If you have even a passing interest in tower defense, you MUST own DG and now DG2.

How good is DG2? The beta currently only has two levels, and I've already played DG2 for 38 hours.

Its Defense Grid, so if you liked it before then you'll like it now. The towers look different and theres some new mechanics to spice things up, but its the same thing: a solid and professionally made tower defense game.

There are more characters than the previous game and their strengths lay in making humorous quips at each other. They're only mildly annoying, but I wish I could skip their dialog sometimes.

I have been putting off writing this review as I did really want to love DG2.
What I've seen from reading other reviews is too many(I'm not saying all just TOO many) are corrupting their reviews due to their love of the first one both positive and negative.
I will try to write this review without even mention DG1 or comparing them as I think it is best to review DG2 for it's own qualities.

Okay so firstly, some of the good things.
DG2 has a strong core (no pun intended).It does what TD's should do in a lot of ways. There is a large selection of tower types and a 'boost' tower which can be used for cheap maze creation. There is a selection of tower 'bonus' items that randomly drop after missions which can be applied to towers.
There is a large variety of enemy types, with unique abilities from shields to foes that can disable your defenses and alot in between.
The campaign is a decent length with a nice variety of levels and multiple gameplay types.


Some of the things that grate on my nerves.
The dialogue and voice acting unfortunately is terrible, it's actually annoying to the point where for the first time ever in a game I have disabled the voice audio.
The story isn't great. Now I will quickly say a TD does NOT need a story to be good, but when it does attempt a story it must not be bad otherwise it drags the feel of the campaign down.
The gameplay feels very repetitive, and it shouldn't but it's not holding my attention. I only finished the campaign to finish it. I was really trying to find something that made me say wow awesome I love this game, but I haven't yet.

Summary
This is a solid TD game, but unfortunately I cannot recommend it for what it does at it's current price.
I do not regret buying it but I couldn't recommend it for a friend to spend their money on.
This is not the definitive TD game as the store page claims. This is just another TD game though while it's good, it's not great enough to stick it's head above the pile.
I would say worth picking up in a sale as it does do a lot well but as I said before, I wouldn't recommend to a friend, so I cannot recommend it here at it's current value.

I will keep an eye on updates and occasionally jump back into the game. If I find something that changes my opinion I will update my review.

Did you like the original Defense Grid? Well, have more of the same, only tweaked and given a big ol' graphics overhaul (not that the original wasn't pretty) and a bunch of little features that at best are nothing but fun, and at worst can be ignored. The writing and voice acting is still there so plenty of delightful exposition about raspberries.

Perhaps the best new feature is that levels are no longer static. Almost every level can be "edited" in pre-determined ways by clicking on the command ship and paying a few resources to add sections to the map. Some sections add new areas to maze the aliens, others add new build locations to cover previously vulnerable areas. Of course, after adding this feature it is never really mentioned in the story line so you have to figure out the feature even exists on your own.

Air enemies/flight lanes were taken out, but they didn't really add anything to the game since a single level 3 missile tower would trivialize any flight path it could reach. So now the Missile Tower is a long-range single-target bombardment tower (with the Meteor adding AOE/DOT bombardment).

The only feature I don't wholly like is the tower upgrade system. You can slot upgrades into your towers, upgrades which have some interesting effects (scatter shot to give AOE on gun towers, slow lasers, etc.). The real problem is that the upgrades are randomly gifted after every completed mission (story or not) with no control over what you get. This is exacerbated by the fact that almost every upgrade has multiple levels. So you can be "find" level 1 shield busting concussion bombs, or you can find level 3 despite not having any previous versions of the item. the only redeeming feature of the "drop" system is that it won't give you items you already have, or have a higher level of.

Over all, and despite the brain-dead drop system, this game is over all a massive improvement and great sequal for the original Defnse Grid. Don't let my winging about the drop system turn you off of a great purchase.

Defence grid is the gold standard for tower defence. Period. As a kickstarter backer i've been playing with some DG2 content for a while, and this -once again- is a tower defence game not te be missed !

Overall, I REALLY like what I see so far in the beta.

Likes:
- The maps look so slick. Lot's of detail - visually stunning.
- The missle now hits bad guys on the ground!
- The Boost blocks.
- The hit/coverage area of selected weapons is more precise.
- Map editor/maker? Crap, are you kidding me? I can make my OWN levels? Giddy up....
- Lot's more!

Dislikes:
- CRASHES. It's beta - hope they fix it. Been providing my dump logs.
- I miss the ability to see the bad guys health bar like DG1. Trying to mouse over and click to see health is annoying and time consuming. (7/24/14 - found out the "/" key controls the health bar!)
- I'd like the ability to turn on/off certain graphic special affects instead of the "Fast Performance - High Quality" selection.

Looks like Hidden Path hit gold again with DG2 - just clean up the graphic options and stop the crashes.

Nice job guys!

Defense Grid 2 improves so much on the original, it's amazing.

I'll start off with the sole negative and that is the game sorely needs a "mute" button so you don't have to listen to the AI's. I'm OK with listening to them the 1st, 2nd or even 3rd time, but when I'm banging my head against the proverbial wall, I finally just gave up & put my headphones on my desk instead of listening to them while I'm trying Level 12 incursion for the 14th time.

Now that I have THAT out of the way, this game is just simply unbelievably awesome.

Some people will say "why on earth would I want to pay $24 for a TD game?"

This game has so much variety, it extends the gameplay 20x over a simple playthrough. While it does this through game variants like frozen core, or grinder and a handful of others, it has several different difficulties ranging from easy, normal, hard & elite. Then compound that with competitive, or competitive sell and I don't even want to do the math to say how many different ways you can play this game.

Then you have the entirely new tower upgrade system which will give you another 10-30 different powers PER TOWER to enhance tower abilities. These tower upgrades drop every time you complete a round and really change the landscape, literally. Where gun towers are uniformly weak on the first few levels, after you've completed the game, you're going to have some unreal deadly gun towers with abilities like ignore shields, or shield busters. Likewise with laser, target strongest enemy is a huge boost to not only survival but score as well.

Each of these tower upgrades come in levels, so the first level might not seem that big but when you've got an Inferno that lights everything on fire & anything they in turn touch will cause others to get lit with 20% damage, you know you've got something special.

This skill enhancement can make a level that was really tough the first time around, something really enjoyable the 2nd time around as you're able to contemplate entirely new strategies for how to employ an array of towers.

As you get the score boost ability, thinking of how to soften everything up so that they fall into your kill zone (where you want 2 or even 3 score boost towers as their sphere of influence is rather small) to maximize your score can change with every iteration as you get new gun upgrades or obtain new special AI abilities. Because score is tied to resources, if you can avoid using one of the special weapons to kill things, you can employ the resource generator to give you even more resources to maximize score.

Yes, you heard me, special weapons. Where before in DG1 you had the laser that you could employ, in DG2 you have about 8 special weapons (one for each AI in the campaign) so you can pick and choose and see which one fits your play-style.

The ability to use your WASD keys to move around & look at things from different angles is a nice touch. As is the toggle "F" to fast forward (in DG1, you had to hold that sucker down all the time).

I'm really looking forward to the creativity of people who create & sell levels using the free DG Architect. This will extend the game for a long time. Want some new variety? Visit the store! While I think the current pricing is a bit steep at $1.99 per level (I think $0.99 would be better), remember, you're not just buying one new level, you're buying about 20 with all the variants listed above.

This game is phenomenal. I'll be putting a lot more hours into this! Highly and I mean Highly recommended.

If you haven't played the original Defense Grid, then I strongly suggest you buy that game to see if you like the format, before purchasing the more expensive DG2.

For the first time in a long time, I’m delighted to say that a developer has managed to bring out a sequel to an excellent game that is actually better than the original! They have improved just about everything, yet kept all the great aspects of the original. The graphics are noticeably better, they have added lots of nice statistics and data, there is even a running display showing how you are performing against your friends! Buy it now! It's great! Worth every penny! Very highly recommended.

If you buy now and register the game here - CLICK ME! ( requires your email ) , then you also recieve a key for a bonus DLC!!

This second outing for the Defense Grid series is simple amazing. New engine, new tactics, changing maps, more aliens, more AIs and a more significant story. The best tower defense game gets better. The only complaint i have is the in game menus are rather ugly and not intuitive at all but you get use to them.

One of the best tower defense games around! DG is pretty much my faveroute TDG next to Sol Survivor and the sequel bulldozes what the orginal had in terms of content, new features such as MP/Co-op and soundtrack and user-created content! The voice acting sounds a little over-done but it's still quite good quality.

If you're a tower defense fan, you need this game!

If you have never played Defense Grid 1 this game is not bad. If you have then you will be dissapointed.
The scoring in the new game just doesn't let you get involved with the game, when I say scoring I mean resource generation as that is different from the score.
The game is far too easy to beat, and I'm affraid it leaves me flat. If I could get new maps for DG1 I would rather go back and play that again.
I have worked through every level and option on hard and found myself getting bored for the level to be over. Hard should be hard!
Keeps crashing my Nvidia graphics card, and feels like you are playing the beta rather than the final game.

As a tower defense fan, but not necessarily a person who goes out of their way looking for a specific game, I was rather surprised when I stumbled across DG2. Having said that, I'm glad I have. This review is taking a look at the game as it is, since I hadn't heard of Defense Grid until now and I have spent approximately 40 minutes in game at the time of writing.

Here are a few things I picked up on which I are of reasonable quality for tower defense games:
- Pathing. Yes I know that most tower defense games include pathing for strategy but this always ticks a huge box for me. Something else which was a pleasant surprise was that one of the beta levels initially started with a smaller map and it grew. I'm not sure whether or not this is new but it certainly changed the way I could think (as the initial area was tiny).

- Towers. Look, with tower defense games you're always going to be seeing the same things, but that's okay. There's always going to be how each game balances towers in terms of cost and effectiveness. I like the towers presented in DG2, however I do believe they seem a little bit stale in regards to how similar they all appear.

- Buff towers (I already forgot what they're called so I'm going to call them this). I'm sure most/all tower defense games have a tower that perform some sort of powerup to towers around it, but the way DG2 does this actually adds yet more strategy. The way DG2 does it, is that your buff tower is the cheapest tower you can build. Why might you ask? Well that's because initially it acts as an obstructor, something that can help you build your path. After you have enough resource for the tower you want to powerup, you place it on top of the buff tower and you can pay an extra 200 resource to improve the tower that's on top. Personally speaking, it's a nice touch and allows you to build more natural paths, rather than a cluster of towers next to eachother.

- Health (Cores). Nice touch with how the enemies have to take all your cores, however the fact they also have to walk back makes this relatively easy (at least on story/open/normal. I haven't had time to look at other modes yet which I'm sure are going to be a blast. Then again this is probably just me nitpicking at stuff I haven't had a proper look at), but I digress. I like how different enemies can carry a certain amount of cores (although so far without paying too much attention only the big guys carry more than 1). I certainly think this is an interesting thing and hopefully there's the possibility of an enemy that can carry a lot of cores!

- Enemies. I thought the enemies at the start were fairly standard (fast enemies, grouped enemies, large/slow/painintheass), however upon right clicking upon one (that's how you view their stats) I noticed the abstract text went more into detail about their movement, with one type of enemy being slower around corners. I found this interesting because again it makes you think about optimal pathing.

So my conclusion is this. It's a great game for what's already available and it has the potential to be something amazing for the tower defense genre. Whilst graphics aren't necessarily important for tower defense games, DG2 looks pretty, although I do wish it had anti-aliasing support. For a beta it works well, and if you go in expecting something more polished than a beta release, then you'll be disappointed, however if you can look past that and see the potential then this one is certainly a keeper and one you'll enjoy when the full release comes around.

The first one was already the bestest tower defense game ever made
This one raises the bar by adding PvP and Co-Op making it even better
Epic game value considering the hundreds of hours you will be playing

(I have 579 hrs on record for the first one and keep going back to it to get all achievements)

Any fan of Defense Grid will enjoy this version Twice as much. DG2 with the Boost Towers are a fun addon, three different versions of the tower. Story mode was fun. Lots of snarky comments from the AI. The game is so large you could spend over a hundred hours playing, and still not reach all of the games.
This game is so worth the price. I recommend a buy. Plus there are plenty of achievements that are easy to get.

Only 2 levels to play in the pre-release beta at the moment, but they are very good, the new layouts give the ability to change pathing of the enemy and do some mazing, much better than the original. You will get a nice surprise part way through playing the first beta level in campaign mode.

Graphics are good and the core gameplay of the original is back - whats not to like?

If you enjoyed the first game you cannot go wrong with this one.

Definite thumbs up. Destined to become the new king of PC tower defence games.

I was a huge fan of the first Defence Grid, and for a while I worked hard to maintain my position as one of the top players on the ranking tables. Unfortunately, the guys who made it did such a shoddy job that the rankings were rendered worthless almost instantly as it was so brazenly easy to cheat, thus undoing everyone's hard work.
Unfortunately, the same level of bad design and poor decisions is apparent in the sequel, though this time, what rankles is the interface and "the feel" of the game. Controls are far more clunky than first time round, with far too much consideration being given to controllers over mouse and keyboard, and the graphics, whilst more detailed, somehow manage to look worse than the first game. A few additions have been made to the game, including boost blocks for your towers to stand on and alternative commanders that can loan additional powers to either you or your towers, but it all feels tacked on and lacklustre, while the main game seems forgotten.
Maps are poorly designed and only really have one way of being handled, so the entire system of repetitive play to discover the optimal mazes and paths is rendered moot.
All in all, I just cannot recommend it. You might find some fun here, but if you were hoping for a fixed version of Defence Grid, look elsewhere.