A Massive PvZ Variant that needs so much more Refinement
Lane-based tower-defence games have been arriving like buses. We’ve barely had any for a few years, to the point that I’ve been playing ROMs of Plants vs Zombies. But the past year has changed all that. First, we got Plants vs Zombies: Replanted, then Heroes Battle Awakening and now we’ve got Defending Camelot – Tower Defense Action.
To be fair, there is an asterisk next to Defending Camelot – Tower Defense Action. It first released in 2018 on PC, and the Xbox is getting it belatedly. It even looks like a game from 2018, or perhaps earlier. It’s got that bobble-headed art style that I associate with old 360 and PS3 titles.
Sunflowers, Peashooters and Walnuts
Plants vs Zombie fans will feel immediately at home. Defending Camelot – Tower Defense Action hands you five lanes, with enemies attacking right-to-left. Your aim is to protect your left-hand side, so that means slotting in units. There are farmers that generate currency, knights who fire crossbow bolts, scarecrows that block for a bit, and magi who slow enemies down with a puff of ice.
Every one of these has a Plants vs Zombies corollary, so the opening moments feel derivative. Even the enemies are familiar: there are foes that vault over your units, others that are tanks, and yet more that explode your defenses. A charitable take is that there are only so many things a unit can do: of course it was going to feel like PvZ. A less charitable take is ‘why bother, then?’.
Defending Camelot – Tower Defense Action doesn’t help itself by being mired in issues. For a game that’s releasing now after eight years on PC, I can’t help thinking that matters could have been improved in that time. Cursor-placement of units on console is fiddly and inaccurate. Too often, I’ve tried to slot a unit into a specific square, only to find that I’ve accidentally dumped it in another lane. When a giant lich is heading to my base, that’s a pain in the arse.
Sacrificed to the Gods of RNG
Enemies arrive completely at random, which sucks. You can’t memorise the waves, using knowledge to your advantage like you can in virtually every other game of this type. It means that ten enemies could arrive in one, single lane if they chose to: there doesn’t seem to be anything in the algorithm that stops it from happening.
That’s a bummer on difficult levels, of which there are many in Defending Camelot – Tower Defense Action. The game likes to toss massive numbers of enemies almost immediately, which means you have to be ready from the start. But, in some cases, the level is impossible unless the gods of RNG are favourable. One level was only completable for me as long as the enemies stuck to one or two lanes: if they spread out further than that, I would have to Retry and hope for better luck next time.
The safety net, we suppose, is that you can buy power-ups in a shop, using a currency to give you a temporary lift in the matches. But the currency is stingily handed out. You’d be lucky to get one power-up every four levels. It means that, if you get stuck, your only recourse is to grind older levels. With the cash in hand, you can then buy the power-up that unclogs that rock-hard level.
I’m holding grudges against Defending Camelot – Tower Defense Action. It’s full-on, all the time, rarely allowing you to have a quiet moment to try out a new unit. I didn’t want to make baby steps one level to the next, barely surviving and grinding on the odd problematic level. Even the levels that feel breezy at the start can overwhelm you at the end. If you’re not carrying enough currency for a last-minute board-wipe, you can often be taken unawares by a big boy.
Be Prepared for a Subway Analogy
I feel bad digging into the bread and butter of Defending Camelot – Tower Defense Action, because all of the sauces and fillings are really rather good. There’s just so much here, it’s almost bewildering. 160 levels is more than anyone could possibly need. When the difficulty ranges from ‘hard’ to ‘you’ve been Tango’d’, there doesn’t feel like much demand for such a ridiculous number of stages.
There are 44 units, too. Sure, some are variants – firing two or three bolts when other units fire one – but that’s still a significant number. They range from traps to ranged units to melee units to walls to cards, and they all have their place. You can, of course, only bring a small selection of them to each level, so a proportion fall to the wayside. There are some units that we’ve used for one level and then noped them out of there.
Content-Rich, But Lacking Polish
I look at the breadth of stuff in Defending Camelot – Tower Defense Action and kind of marvel. There’s an unholy amount of content here. But I also wonder what it would be like if the emphasis was less on ‘more’ and instead shifted toward ‘polish’. Because my experience of playing it was verging on the negative. It’s an unwieldy behemoth of a game, finicky to control on console, unfair in its randomness, and brutal in its difficulty.
Sizing it up with Plants vs Zombies: Replanted and Heroes Battle Awakened, I am tempted to shunt Defending Camelot – Tower Defense Action to the end of the queue. It’s bigger than the other two but not better. Perhaps it’s more suited to the PC, because on Xbox it felt ungainly. The various control, usability and balance issues meant that I was starting on the losing side every time. Only luck and persistence ever led to a win.
Important Links
Prepare For Battle In Defending Camelot On Xbox, PlayStation, Switch And PC – https://www.thexboxhub.com/prepare-for-battle-in-defending-camelot-on-xbox-playstation-switch-and-pc/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/defending-camelot-tower-defense-action/9PN2NQBPGHRB/0010
