HERO DEFENSE

62%
Game Brain Score Based on 406 reviews
  • graphics
  • story
  • gameplay
HERO DEFENSE Game Cover
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Hero Defense is a fantasy tower defense game where players summon heroes and build defenses to protect their kingdom from invading hordes. Players can upgrade heroes and towers, collect loot, and complete quests to unlock new content. With various game modes, including a story-driven campaign and survival mode, Hero Defense offers a challenging and engaging experience for strategy fans.

  • PC
  • Play​station 4
  • Play​station 5
  • Windows
  • Xbox One
  • Xbox Series X|S
  • Play​Station
  • Xbox
Genres & TagsPlay Modes

Reviews

62%
Audience ScoreBased on 406 reviews
graphics69 positive mentions
grinding78 negative mentions
  • The game features a unique twist on the tower defense genre by allowing players to control heroes instead of stationary towers, adding a dynamic element to gameplay.
  • The graphics and art style are visually appealing, creating an engaging atmosphere that enhances the overall experience.
  • The game includes a variety of heroes with distinct abilities and skill trees, allowing for customization and strategic gameplay.
  • The game suffers from significant grinding, requiring players to replay levels multiple times to unlock new content and upgrades, which can become tedious.
  • There are numerous bugs and performance issues, including freezing and unresponsive menus, which detract from the overall enjoyment of the game.
  • The story and character development are weak, with clichéd dialogue and a lack of depth that fails to engage players.
  • graphics120 mentions

    The graphics of the game receive mixed reviews, with many praising the unique art style and overall aesthetic, which is described as cartoony and visually appealing. However, several players report issues such as choppy animations, graphical glitches, and poor optimization that detract from the experience. While some find the visuals to be a strong point, others feel they fall short of current standards, particularly in terms of performance and polish.

    • “The graphics are quite nice for a tower defense game, which are usually kept pretty basic. It also had a surprisingly fleshed-out story, terrible voice acting aside.”
    • “The graphics are very good, and the effects emphasize the story of the game.”
    • “Beautiful graphics and a good storyline to accompany novel tower defense play.”
    • “It's far below the state-of-the-art visuals gamers expect as a result of their decisions.”
    • “The mobile-tier tutorial is asinine, the graphics look dirty and have no settings, the camera controls are pretty bad.”
    • “It has horrible graphics, and the game stutters on an RTX 2080 with i7-9700.”
  • story114 mentions

    The game's story is generally considered basic and cliched, with many reviewers noting that it lacks depth and emotional engagement, typical for the tower defense genre. However, some players appreciate the quirky and light-hearted narrative, as well as the unique backstories for each character, which add a bit of charm to the gameplay. Overall, while the story may not be the main draw, it provides a fun and memorable backdrop for the game's mechanics.

    • “The campaign mode is nicely polished, with a story that is a bit on the light and silly side, but is much meatier than tower defense games usually offer.”
    • “The game offers a reasonable amount of challenge, a quirkily entertaining story, plenty of replayability, and a progression system that is simple enough to understand, but offers enough complexity to make choices extremely relevant, especially in the tough (but optional) challenge maps.”
    • “Beautiful graphics and a good storyline to accompany novel tower defense play.”
    • “The story is lacking, but there aren't many tower defense games with an epic plot anyways.”
    • “It's a shame the game features such a boilerplate story with boring, frustrating, and grindy mechanics, as the aesthetic could have been made into something worthwhile.”
    • “I did not like the story, it was very predictable following cliché after cliché in its plot.”
  • gameplay114 mentions

    The gameplay of this tower defense game is characterized by a unique blend of hero management and strategic placement, shifting the focus from traditional tower selection to positioning heroes effectively on the map. While the mechanics are innovative and the graphics appealing, many players report issues with performance, grindy progression, and repetitive gameplay, which detracts from the overall experience. Despite these drawbacks, some find the gameplay enjoyable and addictive, particularly for fans of the genre looking for a fresh take.

    • “What we have here is a tower defense game mixed with some other elements and mechanics, blended together beautifully to deliver us a fresh new variant of tower defense game.”
    • “Hero defense has nice graphics, smooth gameplay, and sets itself apart by allowing you to customize your hero 'towers' with runes, as well as the skill tree.”
    • “The gameplay is fun, the characters are fun, and so is the idea of rebuilding the town.”
    • “Gameplay is pretty simple; towers are now people with predictable storylines and tropes.”
    • “The game is mired down by poor optimization, bad dialogues, repetitive gameplay, poor user interface, bland characters, and a ton of loading screens (which have FPS drops due to the optimization).”
    • “After an hour of play, I have yet to be given an opportunity to make an actual decision during gameplay; this barely even qualifies as a game.”
  • grinding79 mentions

    The reviews indicate that the game features excessive grinding, often described as tedious and repetitive, particularly as players progress beyond the initial stages. While some players find the grinding manageable or even enjoyable, many express frustration with the need to repeatedly farm earlier levels for resources and upgrades, which detracts from the overall experience. Overall, the grinding aspect is a significant point of contention, with many reviewers suggesting it feels more suited to a mobile game than a premium title.

    • “At this point, I'm not farming the increasingly insane amounts of gold it takes to upgrade this building, because who knows how many levels it has.”
    • “A very buggy and poorly optimized game, and one that is horribly grindy once you're past the initial stages.”
    • “The repetitive grinding wasn't any fun, and that's what finally caused me to stop playing.”
    • “It's limited in player agency, overly chance-based, inconsistent in difficulty, requires excessive grinding and currency gating, and features very little of substance in the end.”
  • optimization36 mentions

    The optimization of the game has been widely criticized, with numerous users reporting severe performance issues such as constant stuttering, crashes during loading screens, and low CPU/GPU usage despite having capable hardware. Many reviewers describe the game as poorly optimized, likening it to a mobile port with excessive grinding and frustrating gameplay interruptions. While a few users noted smooth performance, the overwhelming consensus is that the game is plagued by optimization problems that significantly detract from the overall experience.

    • “Overall this feels like a well balanced, well optimized game.”
    • “Even though this game is in early access, gameplay is addictive, graphics are good, and performance is smooth.”
    • “The game runs smoothly and I only had one crash shortly after my first boot of the game.”
    • “Performance is extremely poor; at times it crashes when loading.”
    • “There are some performance issues that are annoying (transition screens get stuck and there are little freezes here and there), and I have too many other good games in the backlog.”
    • “Unfortunately, the game is let down by catastrophically bad performance.”
  • music34 mentions

    The music in the game is generally well-received, with many players appreciating its atmospheric quality and ability to enhance the overall theme. While some find it repetitive and uninspired, others highlight its catchy nature and effective integration with the game's visuals and sound effects. Overall, the soundtrack contributes positively to the gaming experience, creating a fitting ambiance that resonates with players.

    • “The background music has been implemented quite well, adding to the theme of the game and enhancing it quite beautifully.”
    • “The soundtrack will get stuck in your head.”
    • “The sounds and music are super spooky but also a little campy and kid-friendly.”
    • “It's basically just the same taunting haunted music the whole game.”
    • “Music fits the mood but is uninspired.”
    • “The music is overall ok, but some of the character voices are simply horrible.”
  • stability23 mentions

    The game's stability is widely criticized, with numerous reports of frequent freezes, graphical glitches, and performance issues, even on high-end systems. While some players found the main campaign to be relatively polished, the additional levels are plagued by bugs, making the overall experience frustrating and often unplayable. Many users recommend avoiding the game until significant stability improvements are made.

    • “A very buggy and poorly optimized game, and one that is horribly grindy once you're past the initial stages.”
    • “At this point in time, the game hangs/freezes for a short time regularly on very good PCs.”
    • “This is not about occasional lag or seldom freezes, it's a constant in the game and you can expect a crash every half hour.”
  • replayability20 mentions

    Overall, the game's replayability is mixed; while some players appreciate the multiple difficulty levels and extra challenges that enhance replay value, others find the grind and removal of certain features detrimental to long-term enjoyment. The presence of a progression system and additional maps can provide replay opportunities, but issues like lag and steep difficulty spikes may hinder the experience for some. Ultimately, the game offers a decent amount of replayability, but it may not satisfy everyone due to its grindy nature and design choices.

    • “The game offers a reasonable amount of challenge, a quirkily entertaining story, plenty of replayability, and a progression system that is simple enough to understand, but offers enough complexity to make choices extremely relevant, especially in the tough (but optional) challenge maps.”
    • “There's a great deal of replayability here, as each map can be repeated more than once at a higher difficulty level, and beyond that, extra challenges can be added to the maps that place your crew at a disadvantage of sorts and result in higher rewards for you.”
    • “I enjoyed the art style and story of the game and there's a good amount of replayability and challenge to be had.”
    • “Obviously I felt compelled to purchase it at 90% off, but I would have skipped the game knowing important replayability/endgame features are disabled.”
    • “Gameplay is very 'mobile designed'; each map has to be completed 5 times for maximum usage, each one getting harder. I guess that adds replayability, but it just increases my annoyance levels because I dislike grindy work.”
    • “[*] Bonus map (after defeating 'Count') rewards way too much gold, decreasing the replay value of other maps and massively reducing the time needed to level up buildings and heroes.”
  • monetization10 mentions

    The monetization aspect of the game has received mixed reviews, with some players appreciating the absence of traditional microtransactions, while others criticize the presence of paywalls and gear-enhancing purchases that undermine the experience. Many feel that charging for the game upfront, only to introduce monetization that affects gameplay balance, is unethical and detracts from the overall enjoyment. Overall, while some players find the game enjoyable despite these issues, the monetization strategy has raised significant concerns among the community.

    • “I am rescinding the bit about the microtransactions, because of this I would highly recommend the game. Aside from the gems aspect, everything else (while maybe being a tad unbalanced and encountering some quirks with the tutorial) the game wasn't bad and I could see myself enjoying this.”
    • “To add to this, there are no microtransactions in this game whatsoever, but perhaps gems wasn't the best choice.”
    • “I've come to expect gear enhancing microtransactions from free games, or even cosmetic microtransactions from purchased games; however, when a game that you purchased supports gear enhancing microtransactions, it raises concerns.”
    • “Thankfully, none of that free-to-play or monetization is actually in the game, but with it removed you can see how shallow this game really is.”
    • “I've come to expect gear-enhancing microtransactions from free games, or even cosmetic microtransactions from purchased games; however, when a game that you purchased supports gear-enhancing microtransactions, it feels exploitative.”
    • “I'm not some guy who doesn't support developers at all; I understand there are costs for server maintenance, etc. But there are better types of microtransactions to add to your game to generate revenue. Allowing players to gain an advantage over one another based on who has the bigger pocketbook is, in my eyes, extremely unethical.”
  • humor7 mentions

    The humor in the game is characterized by its effective voice acting, funny dialogues, and a quirky storyline that adds charm to the gameplay. Players appreciate the balance between cliche and sardonic humor, which enhances the overall experience without overshadowing the addictive gameplay. While the campaigns may be short, the humor contributes significantly to the enjoyment of each map.

    • “Has some funny dialogues and catch phrases.”
    • “The storyline is quite funny and quirky at times, but sadly the campaigns didn't last me more than around 11 hours of game time; however, I still thoroughly enjoyed playing each map!”
    • “Hero defense - haunted island manages to draw the fine line with humor that can only be described as somewhere between cliche and sardonic, while introducing a wonderfully streamlined combat system that makes the entire experience welcoming to learn, but difficult to master.”
  • atmosphere5 mentions

    The game's atmosphere is highly praised for its dark and immersive qualities, enhanced by excellent graphics, voice acting, and a well-crafted soundtrack. Reviewers note the attention to detail and the effective use of sound effects, which collectively create a uniquely themed experience that stands out among other tower defense games.

    • “I enjoyed the dark and gloomy atmosphere and the fact that they included voice acting.”
    • “The atmosphere is awesome, and so are the graphics!”
    • “Great attention to detail and a very atmospheric experience.”
  • character development4 mentions

    Character development in the game is viewed as inconsistent, with some players noting that while the campaign features interesting moments, overall, many characters are forgettable and lack depth. Critics feel that resources were allocated more towards voice acting and mechanics rather than meaningful character growth, leading to a less engaging experience.

    • “The character designs are great.”
    • “The campaign of this game has interesting character development, especially at the end when you defend Jack's father on the insane difficulty in the castle map.”
    • “I felt the budget went less for character development and more into the voice acting and game mechanics.”
    • “Pretty poorly made; the characters are totally forgettable. I barely remember their problems and what happened to them. There was no character development, and it was pretty boring for me. I'm not sure if it's my chemistry or not.”
  • emotional1 mentions

    The emotional aspect of the game is primarily highlighted through the characters Barrows and Jane, who are noted for their significant emotional range in both dialogue and voice acting, setting them apart from other characters.

    • “The only two that stand out are Barrows and Jane, who seem to be the only ones capable of any emotional range in their dialogue and voice acting.”
Positive mentions (%)Positive
Neutral mentions (%)Neutral
Negative mentions (%)Negative

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Play time

16hMedian play time
19hAverage play time
11-32hSpent by most gamers
*Based on 5 analyzed playthroughs

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