If you're new to tower defense, you may have a different reaction to Crystal Defenders R1 than many others who have long been fans of this sub-genre. Square-Enix's offering has limited variety in its units, enemies and battlefield environments, but there are enough options to give players new to the gameplay style a chance to hone their skills. Tower defense veterans, however, may find the limited choices off-putting and too easy. And veteran or novice, levels are seldom overwhelming in challenge, at least until the latter portion of the game.
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!"
