Now, this might be a complaint to nobody, but if it should go anywhere, it's here.

I played Dungeon Defenders 1 and Dungeon Defenders Eternity to continuously experience one satisfying feeling: watching my defenses work flawlessly. My personal favorite moments in both previous installments of the series was putting down a plethora of defenses and watching them do my work for me, and looking at shiny loot afterwards. That's all I wanted, and I found it. Come Dungeon Defenders 2, you can understand my frustration with one of the core aspects being "You NEED to participate with your defenses". I actually played the game for a fair amount of time and found that it wasn't unbearable to play and defend alongside your defenses, and work was clearly done in order to make this experience one that would be enticing for the player. However, that was during the beta. The game came out, something happened along the line that I'm not entirely sure what was, and the entire system changed. I think, okay, I can adapt to this, it's what you're meant to do, and here's the creation that the game developers want you to experience. I tried playing for a little bit after loot was changed and it just FELT like the same. I felt angry at not understanding why anything needed to be changed, it's probably beyond my understanding and invalidates my opinion as a reviewer. I didn't really feel like playing the game after that, it just didn't feel like I was finding the same satisfaction of just making a strategy that worked and getting shiny new loot afterwards. I'm pretty sure after that somewhere along the line they changed the items system AGAIN, putting the nail in the coffin for maximum unfriendliness for people who are returning. Do I want to relearn a system that worked perfectly fine in the first game? No, I don't. I really want to like this game because the previous two installments were a lot of fun for me and let me make a lot of memories with my friends playing them. But it just isn't the same. While I shouldn't be expecting the SAME thing from a NEW game, I can confidently say that in my current state, I don't recommend this game.

Now, this might be a complaint to nobody, but if it should go anywhere, it's here. I played Dungeon Defenders 1 and Dungeon Defenders Eternity to continuously experience one satisfying feeling: watching my defenses work flawlessly. My personal favorite moments in both previous installments of the series was putting down a plethora of defenses and watching them do my work for me, and looking at shiny loot afterwards. That's all I wanted, and I found it. Come Dungeon Defenders 2, you can understand my frustration with one of the core aspects being "You NEED to participate with your defenses". I actually played the game for a fair amount of time and found that it wasn't unbearable to play and defend alongside your defenses, and work was clearly done in order to make this experience one that would be enticing for the player. However, that was during the beta. The game came out, something happened along the line that I'm not entirely sure what was, and the entire system changed. I think, okay, I can adapt to this, it's what you're meant to do, and here's the creation that the game developers want you to experience. I tried playing for a little bit after loot was changed and it just FELT like the same. I felt angry at not understanding why anything needed to be changed, it's probably beyond my understanding and invalidates my opinion as a reviewer. I didn't really feel like playing the game after that, it just didn't feel like I was finding the same satisfaction of just making a strategy that worked and getting shiny new loot afterwards. I'm pretty sure after that somewhere along the line they changed the items system AGAIN, putting the nail in the coffin for maximum unfriendliness for people who are returning. Do I want to relearn a system that worked perfectly fine in the first game? No, I don't. I really want to like this game because the previous two installments were a lot of fun for me and let me make a lot of memories with my friends playing them. But it just isn't the same. While I shouldn't be expecting the SAME thing from a NEW game, I can confidently say that in my current state, I don't recommend this game.