Personal rating: 8/10
DLC: Worth it. New, more challenging maps. A nice addition to a short core game.

Sanctum is a completely different take on the "Tower Defense" genre, it mixes up First Person Shooter elements in it and it does it well.

Here's the catch: If you have your mind set on "I'll only upgrade Towers!" or "I'll just shoot everything!", you're in for an embarrassing defeat. You cannot take everything head on here, you need to balance resources to deal with everything coming towards you: enemies that comes in large quantities, tough ones and tricky ones.

Do you want to do the heavy lifting and shoot most of what's coming or use your towers while you kill whatever is left by the end? Or maybe you want to do both of these things? No problem, all three options are possible in this game.

One of Sanctum's most known aspects is the maze building, you've got room and resources to create your personal enemy slaughtering course, it's far from putting one block here and another over there. If you want to survive the toughest levels of Sanctum you'll need to smart up and create mazes that will force enemies to walk as much as they can.

Unlike Sanctum 2, there is absolutely no grinding in Sanctum 1. You start with everything the game gives you and after a short, optional, Tutorial you're free to do whatever you feel like in the first map. Play and learn, no hand holding here aside from the absolutely necessary.

Balancing resources here can be tough, they are rather scarce early on and woe betide the unprepared. Do you upgrade your towers or your guns? A difficult choice that can be the difference between victory or defeat.

Towers and Weapons can be upgraded up to Level 6, and while they seem extremely cheap at first don't go thinking you can leave a bunch of Level 1 towers scattered and expect them to do heavy damage; enemies gets progressively stronger and soon you'll realize even your Level 3 towers are hardly doing any significant damage. And the same will apply to your guns if you ignore them.

Upgrades will considerably power up your towers and guns, however they'll also become incredibly expensive and on shorter Campaign maps (with 20 or less waves), chances are, you won't be having lots of Level 6 towers even by the end of the map unless you focus more on them.

If you are looking for a difficult game, Sanctum may be your cup of tea. The game is ruthless, but hardly unfair. It punishes poor planning and poor shooting accuracy and you'll probably be frustrated once you see that your carefully planned maze and towers did not work, but amazed when you beat that tough wave with your wits.

The greatest challenge at the start is to understand how to balance your resources between weapons and towers, and until you find your own balance point, you'll be hitting that "Load Checkpoint" button quite often.

The game is merciless and will not shy away from dropping tough enemies, although not without warning: the game provides a list for a number of incoming waves and what will be there.

However Sanctum fail in one crucial point: there is no indication on how resilient the enemies will be. In one wave you may face a single, but extremely resistant, enemy and at the other wave the same type of enemy in larger numbers, however with much less HP. This can and will catch you off guard and is one of the very few times the game will play "dirty".

For those wishing an even greater challenge there is the Insane difficulty with VERY resistant enemies and a core as fragile as cracked glass.

Every level can be VERY long. Even the first one can take anywhere between 30 minutes (if you are insanely fast) to 1 hours and a half and can last even longer. But don't worry: the Campaign has checkpoints between waves which you can also use to correct a mistake as long your have enough resources. It may sound cheap, but picking the "Load Checkpoint" will be something you'll do often here unless you feel there is no hope and click on the "Restart Level".

The multiplayer option ramps this up by letting you set the game to 30 waves on any map, which easily means games going past 1 hour.

The multiplayer in Sanctum is a bit different. Instead of a normal game with fixed waves every game on every map will have random enemies waves coming for you and your friends, that's right, no game will be quite the same and sometimes you'll be forced to change your tactics since the game can be downright mean sending airborne enemies and another wave of tricky enemies right away.

You can also change how long the game will last: from 10 to 20 or even 30 waves, or an endless Survival mode, with increasingly stronger enemies, but with MUCH more resources than the normal, single player only, Campaign. This means more towers, faster weapon upgrades and more towers.

Don't have friends that play Sanctum? Friends can't play right now? No problem. You can Host a game like this and play by yourself if you wish to, or leave open to friends (or other people) so they can join during it.

You can also opt to play with people from the world but be warned: the Sanctum multiplayer is fairly dead and even on weekends it may be hard to get a lasting game with someone.

Multiplayer has a few problems, though. Once you finish a map you are forced to create a new game and invite your friends again which doesn't sound bad, but gets annoying if you play with 2 or more people. It may be also a pet peeve mine, but you don't get levels achievements even if you do complete them with 30 waves setting, however you do keep progress from others like "Kill 4000 Runners"

Sanctum also has an amazing soundtrack, much more relaxing and soothing than what you'd expect for a game about killing hordes of enemies while hearing the heroine laughing and screaming in glee.

For some the music will feel strangely out of place and annoying, for others it will be a contribution to immerse the player.

The game came out in 2011, and even on 2014 it remains one of the most pleasant, satisfactory games to play.

Unfortunately Sanctum is often underrated and overlooked by people, sometimes because of its graphics and sometimes because it is a game that takes time to learn and it won't be afraid to slap you in the face quite often while you learn it.

Sanctum is a game created with care and you can notice it as you play. Coffee Stain Studios did a good job with this game and it is worth your money and time. Even if you are not a fan of Tower Defense or First Person Shooter genres, give Sanctum a try at least in the demo, you may be surprised.

If you like good strategy, intense challenge and epic music, this game might fit all your needs.

This game is a masterpiece in hybrid TD/FPS games, because it promotes the tower defense gameplay as priority over FPS gameplay. For which, in comparison to the 2nd game in the series, this one does a really good job at it with little things such as randomized enemies in survival mode, the ability to upgrade weapons and no overcharging towers.

All in all, i'd recommend getting both the original Sanctum and Sanctum 2, since both have completely different gameplay priorities over the other.

Sanctum is a great game, tough as nails, but good tough.
You lose, then you lose again, take some time to think about it,
come back to the game and beat the little *%$£&!
I have been known for rage-quitting a lot of games, but never this one.
And whether you win or lose, that little dance at the end of each level
really takes the edge off things.
Get all DLC too.

I enjoyed this one quite a bit. Many if not most games I've played that try to mix tower defense with a controllable character fall flat because the balance doesn't work. In this one, though, you can't only focus on one aspect. If you just level up your weapons a ton, you'll run up against cooldowns and ammo restrictions and never be able to gun down all the enemies yourself. If you only build towers and try to take a smoke break during the level, you'll be overrun during waves that have skill-dependent enemies.
The inclusion of enemies with a weak point that the player can aim for, but the towers won't, is an inspired choice. It forces you to build and act in concert with your defenses. Tough enemies can be slowed down, things that are only vulnerable in a single spot can be sniped, and swarms can be intelligently targeted with AOE attacks. The sole drawback is that you can only hold 3 guns, and the sniper rifle and cold gun seem, to me, indispensable.

The other complaint I can make is that the 3-D nature of the game isn't fully supported/exploited. So, unlike most TD games, a tower can't just shoot anything in its 'range'. It has to have line-of-sight (in most cases). This is good, as it forces you to think about where to put your blocks, which ones to make shot-transparent, and what obstacles in the level will affect your fields of fire. It's bad, though, because the game will show you a circle on the overhead view that denotes the tower's max range, but nothing else. If you want to learn what it can actually see, the only solutions are to put your character's perspective as close as you can to the tower's (usually impossible, since you can't stand inside it, and the towers are mostly a lot taller than your PC) or observe what it shoots at during the levels (which requires you to look carefully at the overview while the action's going on, and not participate in the defense). A feature that gave you the POV of the tower would make this so much easier.
Of note, this recommendation includes the free add-ons unlocking new towers and weapons, as well as the paid-for DLC granting new maps. This adds much-needed variety, and I would probably be less enthusiastic if I'd played it at release.

Got a coupon by crafting a badge, so I thought: Why not? After some time playing I have to say it's a really great game. Combining TD and FPS is what makes this game so enjoyable. In the setup phase you have time to build walls and towers, as well as upgrade them (and your own weapons). Once you hit enter, the wave starts and you don't have to watch your towers doing the work - you jump into the action yourself. The towers might be powerful but there's certain things they can't do which you can. Aiming for enemies weakness spots for instance. Overall a really enjoyable game.

A very inovative TD-FPS combination. Between the waves you can build / upgrade your towers, and during the waves, you actively defend your base in the FPS mode, so its like a shooter.

Story/Presentation: 8
Not much to say about this game's story, really. It's really just about a girl who defends a major core built from her allies from aliens invading. It's basic, but what I gotta give an above average score is it's presentation. First, the aliens. They look so cool! They're all very distinctive and unique in their own design and traits, and works perfectly with the game's tone. The soundtrack of the game's Really lovely and engaging as well. I loved and was happy buying it's soundtrack after trying out the game.

Gameplay: 10
This is the highlight of the game and what makes it SO good~! The game is one of the world's first First Person Shooter Tower of Defence. The design behind it and the strategy one has to make is perfect. The majority of the weapons are awesome, and it all plays good roles to strategize on how to defeat the aliens from reaching the core. Keep in mind that the game's Very hard, and takes a lot of practice to get it going, but still worth it. I feel like the combat was very balanced. With the constant reloads your own weapon has, it gives good opportunity for your towers to fight and cover for you.

Overall: 9
It's very obvious this game can't be for everyone, but it's still incredibly addicting. I am extremely happy I gave this game a try. It's super memorable, it's tons of fun, very challenging, and provides great replay value. It's a shame it's not that well played much since the release of it's sequel title, for I'd love to try out the Co-Op version of this at some point, but doesn't stop me from trying the game again in single player and play it more often. I would HIGHLY recommend this game for anybody.

Buy towers to kill monsters, so you earn money for buying more towers and killing even more monsters.

Really great game but no servers....noone plays mp

Good game/10. Simple concept, interesting execution, overall quite fun. I like that it doesn't just hold your hand- there is a bit of difficulty to be had in this game. Be prepared to feel your own way around the game, you get a basic tutorial and that's it, no story, no explanation of all the guns or turrets, nothing. The graphics are easy on the eyes and the mechanics feel very sturdy, not buggy at all, this was a very clean, polished game. It might be hit and miss for some people, but if you can wrap your head around tower defence in 3D, I think you'll enjoy it. Also try Orcs Must Die!

This is one of my favorite tower defense games ever its difficult but fun. And the fact that its a 3-D td game makes it even better.

Ye wot m8

super monkey tower defence force

Good game that can become boring unfortunatly without good company. The reality is I just don't have friends. Still a thumbs up :)

It is hard to make the transition from viewing from the sky (traditional tower defence games) to being a first person shooter but once you are used to it this is an AWESOME GAME!

This is the best Tower Defense game ever, unlike most of them you get to run and fight with your towners you build.

Fun game to play co-op!

Good game.

Just, wow. Coffee Stain Studios has created an amazing game by combining the popular First Person Shooter style with Tower Defence, as I'm sure you are aware. With an all-female cast this ought to please those without girlfriends, or girls who think that games need more girls. Anyway, there are plenty of easter eggs hidden around the place, sure you may think that the game is just about placing towers and shooting aliens, but hidden in the easter eggs is a very rich story, as is brought forward in Sanctum 2. I would personally have loved this as an open-world game. Amazing game for people who like Tower Defence or First Person Shooters, or maybe a bit of both!

Way better than the sequel. Can be reasonably completed single player. Lots of interesting weapons, maps, and enemies.