Reviewing Humble Bundle 5: Dungeon Defenders Second Wave

Dungeon Defenders has been out on Android for some time now. The latest update, "Second Wave" is available in the Play Store but also as part of the Humble Bundle 5 as one of the two games received for donating over the average amount. It's a big download, but there's a lot of content in this game to warrant the size. If you purchase it through Humble Bundle, you'll be receiving all available DLC (downloadable content) included as well which adds even more gameplay.

Stick around after the break for a quick refresher on the Dungeon Defenders series with a look at the Second Wave update.

Dungeon Defenders is basically a mash-up of an RPG and a tower defense game, and Second Wave is building upon the same foundation as the initial release. In the "solo" single-player mode, you select a class -- Apprentice, Squire, Monk, Huntress -- and head into the levels. Your player will level up and gain upgrades throughout the game, as you'd expect in an RPG, with weapons and gear dropping as you kill enemies. You can apply level up points to enhance your skills and attributes as well.

Along with the RPG aspects, levels that you play through are themed as tower defense games. So instead of a top-down view of the usual tower defense game, you get a third-person view of your character managing the level. You use a setup period to position barriers and reinforcements, then activate the action to battle incoming waves of enemies. Your character will fight side-by-side with the inanimate reinforcements, and cooperation between your own skills and placement of barriers becomes essential to winning the round in later levels. The game looks great, and at the same time support some pretty low-end specs -- 512MB of RAM, 800MHz CPU and Android 2.1 -- thanks to a slider in the settings that lets you turn graphics quality up and down. When it's cranked up on our Nexus 4 everything looked crisp and colorful.

The controls are pretty basic, although it's hard to overcome the issues with touch screen gameplay in complex titles. Although there are no "joysticks" the left and right halves of the screen operate as such -- controlling walking and viewing, respectively. Attacks and spells wind up on the bottom right of the screen, and your tower defense actions end up on the far right side. Navigation, map and less-used actions are on the bottom left. The over HUD (Heads-up Display) is pretty standard for any other RPG.

Since it's initial release, Dungeon Defenders has moved to a free to play model that charges extra for DLC to expand the game. As we noted above, the Humble Bundle 5 purchase comes with all available DLC included, which is a great value considering the relatively low cost of the bundle right now. The bundle itself is going for about $6.75 at the moment to unlock the extra games, which is a steal considering you get five more games on top of Dungeon Defenders: Second Wave. One quick note for when you finally decide to download it -- the game is quite large, with a 700MB download required at first launch. The whole game ends up in the ~850MB range, which isn't the biggest we've seen but it's certainly not small.

Dungeon Defenders certainly won't appeal to everyone, but if you're a fan of both RPG and tower defense this may be one to check out. It has been one of the most popular RPG style games available on Android for some time now, and the Humble Bundle can be an excellent time to get into the game if this is your style. If you haven't caught them the last few days, we've been reviewing each of the games available this time around. You can see those right here, and keep your eyes on Android Central as we review the last game and give a quick overview of the entire bundle in the comoing days.