Crystal Defenders R1 does nothing to make people anxious for Crystal Defenders R2. It doesn't manage to do anything exciting or new or interesting or worthwhile or memorable or fun. It is better suited as a mobile phone game (its origins) wherein its ability to kill an hour can best be used (e.g. waiting for a bus, waiting in the doctor's office, sitting on a bench whilst your special lady shops).
Each level is just a single screen with a path running across it. Waves of enemies will enter the screen at the start of the path and you have to stop them reaching the end of the path by strategically placing your units wherever you see fit. If any enemies get through, they'll nab crystals from your stash. Lose all your crystals, lose the game, get really angry.
VGC writes: "As you may or may not know, a tower defense game places the player in charge of laying down a series of defense mechanisms called "towers" to stop an army of marauding bad guys. Usually the villains have a set path to march through your camp/castle/base, so you have to use quite a bit of strategy to keep the masses at bay. It was just a matter of time before home consoles got a version of Crystal Defenders, Square's foray into the "tower defense" genre that was originally released on mobile phones. Just a short time later, a complete version of Crystal Defenders was released on XBLA and PS3, but the Wii got something different: Crystal Defenders R1."
PALGN writes: "It has been a few months since our last WiiWare Review Round-up, but in that time a few gems have been released amongst some shovel ware which we've pointed out in this article. We've also taken the time to break up our WiiWare review archive across three pages (see links below), categorising them by name to make it easier to look for specific titles. Until our next round-up, happy gaming!"
I use to be a subscriber of their magazine until they went belly up. Anyway, this game looks and sounds medicore at best.