Protector

By: Derek Yu

On: February 14th, 2008

Damn it, it’s another “tower defense” game, albeit a pretty good one. In Protector your “towers” are various mages, and knights (called “dexers”). As you can probably guess, your opponents have various strengths and weaknesses that can be exploited by strategic placement of your troops, who level up during battle. Unlike most TD games, this one lets you see what kind of enemies you’re going to go up against in a given scenario, letting you plan ahead a bit more.

This game’s strengths lie in its polish – the graphics are really nice and even though each scenario is tuned toward a certain strategy, there’s definitely enough flexibility to keep it fun. Unlockable skills that grant bonuses during battle and give you access to new troops add some incentive to keep going.

If you dig these types of games, you should get some enjoyment out of Protector. Otherwise, it doesn’t add that much new to the genre.

(Source: Sensible Erection [NSFW])

Posted in Browser Games, Casual, Strategy

Calanctus

Aww, I thought it was a tactical RPG from the screenshot, and I got all excited. :(
Trotim

What? It lets you plan AHEAD? Only if you have played the levels before, seriously. In other TDs in WC3 you had a list of ALL waves you could see from the get-go =/

@Calanctus: Try Tactics 100 Live
AmnEn

The game does have a list of what you can expect from the enemies. Try clicking on the numbers and you get full information on the mobs.
It’s a nice game but for some reason the graphics in the game that came before that were a lot better and there were features which were canned for Protector. I guess it has to do with Copyrights or something.

What really sucks about Protector is the Level Design. You’ll have 20 Levels of Mobs you can positively only kill with one type of elemental damage and then suddenly, the next 10 levels are all off the opposite element which is suddenly immune to the color you were required to build earlier :X

And “Absorb” is a Gamebreaker. You build a fine and nice mixed defense only to have half of them heal the enemy up.
Trotim

“The game does have a list of what you can expect from the enemies. Try clicking on the numbers and you get full information on the mobs.”? Eh?
But only of the CURRENT wave, or what do you mean?
Derek

See the row of numbers at the bottom of the screen? Each one represents a wave. Click a number and it shows you information about that wave.

The current wave is the number at the very far left.
MisterX

As a Tower Defense game it seems to be alright, although I guess most of the mentioned problems make it more of a “decent” iteration. But I especially like the graphical style, reminds me of those classic RPGs :) Though some of the graphics look like they don’t really belong to the game, as most are apparently 2D drawn ones while others look rather 3D.
Also, does anyone know where most the sounds were taken from? I think I remember them from my “old” days playing on an Ultima Online freeshard (which also shares this pseudo-3D look in parts).
PHeMoX

*”I thought it was a tactical RPG”*

Yeah, it’s not really that, eventhough you cÃ¡n level up your characters. Pretty neat game, I like it.
MisterX

yeah, he traced some UO assets, i’m pretty sure of that… Still a fun game but a ‘beta’ version that was on kongregate had art straight from UO… which brought back good memories
mots

oops, my dumb self posted as misterx when my message was a reply to his..
MisterX

Hehe :)
Okay, thanks for clarifying it, so it’s just as expected. For me it’s been about 4-5 years since I played Ultima Online on a freeshard, so it hasn’t been _that_ long, but still gives some nice nostalgic feelings :D
Trotim

“See the row of numbers at the bottom of the screen? Each one represents a wave. Click a number and it shows you information about that wave.

The current wave is the number at the very far left.”

Ooooohh. Right, I’m not stupid, I just didn’t notice these numbers at all. THAT’S THE GAME’S FAULT BECAUSE IT DIDN’T TELL ME ABOUT THEM HAHHAH
Zeno

YATD, amirite?
DrRetard

The game takes FOREVER to play. I too thought it was a tactical RPG on first glance… decent time waster(as displayed in the world overview)
PHeMoX

*What really sucks about Protector is the Level Design. Youâ€™ll have 20 Levels of Mobs you can positively only kill with one type of elemental damage and then suddenly, the next 10 levels are all off the opposite element which is suddenly immune to the color you were required to build earlier*

In this game a rel. good balanced team is better than just an overkill of one type for sure, because even if you’re facing waves that are immune to a certain type, you’ll always do enough damage with the remaining part of your team if you balance it enough. Downside of this all is that it’s pretty useless to even try winning in a different way.

I usually add some specific monster killers each time a new wave requires a different kind of defender. Sometimes this will mean I’m screwed with flying enemies that have certain immunities, but so far it works quite well.

I guess Derek is right, there’s usually sort of only one way of winning a certain level.