Dairojo Samurai Defenders Review

Welcome to Tower Defense on the Nintendo DS. This game reminded me of a game mode that players made in Starcraft 2 of their version of Tower Defense and excelled on it in my opinion.

You have a castle or tower but who really cares all you need to know is that you need to defend it. Then you are started with some coins where you have to choose between spears,archers,gunners,cannons,and generals to place on the map. Each of them attack in specific ways and have strengths and weaknesses.

The catch though is that you can only place them in specific spots on the map. Now it isn’t incredibly specific its just that they have to be placed on brick squares that line the roads all over the place. Enemies come from all different directions on the roads so balancing your attack is crucial. For the most part after the first initial waves you will get a feel for placement and that will be the least of your troubles.

As the game continues though the waves start becoming incredibly difficult if you aren’t prepared. For example the very first mission I failed at least 4 times up until I had a good idea of how to defend my castle most successfully. I placed 2 archers immediately next to the castle to fight off these pink ninjas that flew over the trees and right at the castle and then I placed a cannon towards the center of the map so it could deal damage to infantry. I was out of money at this point but I relied on the 3 forces I set up to earn me some cash. It was successful but the battle was just beginning. I started placing spear infantry on the roads to dent the health of ground troops because they basically poke ground infantry that are in their radius very quickly but don’t deal a done of damage. It does slow them down enough to give my cannons time to kill them and keep my castle safe. So as the war wages on I have strategically placed spear infantry on the edges of the roads to poke away at their lives until the enemies are bombed.

About half way through though the aerial threat is the major concern and the cannons and spears literally do no damage to them. I then have to start placing archers everywhere to be prepared because the attack is much quicker and harder to combat. To give me an added boost though I set up Generals around them which give my soldiers a boost if they are in the radius of him. So as the enemies start flying in from everywhere I have such a great anti-air effort that I start taking them down like its nothing making me earn major coin and letting me upgrade my soldiers of all kind. Upgrading them makes them stronger and if you do not pay attention to it you will have more problems than you would typically.

So after roughly 20 minutes and 99 waves I managed to level everything on the battlefield to 5 and I am untouchable. It took a few times to get everything worked out but it was very satisfying experience knowing my strategy worked. It reminded me of the same excitement I got from successfully beating levels in Toy Soldiers. I also appreciated the classic Nintendo feel to the game with the Pokemon style graphics yet intense strategy that came along with it.

Now that was only one level in the game I described their are several more and even multiplayer which is obviously even better because you get to face off against a friend and try to match wits. That is a large amount of depth for a WiiWare title if you ask me.

A copy of Dairojo Samurai Defenders for the Nintendo DS was provided to us for this review from Abylight.