Good Tower Defense game?

[Dr Unne]

I'm looking for a good tower defense game. Games I've already completed: Sanctum 2, Super Sanctum TD, Defender's Quest, Kingdom Rush. Suggestions?

[krissy]

An oxymoron IMO
But I managed to enjoy field runners a bit its simple
Protect the jewels is also free

[Vyk]

I'm trying to think of the Square-Enix one. Crystal Defenders? It was pretty charming

The South Park one on XBLA/PSN was surprisingly good

Plants Vs Zombies seems to kinda break the mold

And then there's that 3D action one I can't remember the name of that everyone loves. Dungeon Defender or some such

[Rez09]

Dungeon Defender or some such

I love Dungeon Defenders.
It's a lot different than most Tower Defense games, though, as your character is almost as important to the defense as the towers you put up, and you fight alongside your defenses as you run around collecting loot and mana for upgrades during the matches. It's a great experience if you can find people to play with, since each character contributes different things to your defenses and *most* are worth having around, allowing your team to delve into higher difficulties earlier and hunt for better equipment without having to level and gear multiple characters yourself as you go along.

Orcs Must Die! is a comparable experience, though there isn't any emphasis on randomly generated loot and much more on your character to uphold your defenses. It also has a combo system that rewards the player more coins for better, more elaborate trap setups, something a bit more important to rely on in harder stages and difficulties.

For standard tower defense, well . . . I admit I'm not too familiar with the genre, but I did own Ninja Town on the DS, which a fun, albeit fairly easy, tower defense game that you might be interested in.

EDIT: Now that I think about it, and these titles are way off base from tower defense, but you might enjoy the Deception series of games as well. Instead of placing towers that defend a goal line, you place down traps in a mansion to kill enemies that are (usually) attempting to chase you down, and between stages you can research and upgrade new traps. There's a bit of devilish humor as well as that same 'lead the enemies through your defenses' mindset I associate with Tower Defense games, so I thought it might be worth mentioning. If you are interested, there are five games in the series, 3 on the Ps1, 1 on the PS2, and 1 on the PS3/Vita, though I'd recommend against the first game, as it is a vastly different experience from the rest of the series, and the most recent one is FAR too fanservicy for my appreciation. The middle three titles are all rather good, though.

[Bolivar]

Oh man Unne you gotta play PixelJunk Monsters. It can be hard to adjust to but once you do it's a very delightful yet thoroughly challenging game. It's on PS3 but I strongly recommend the Vita version. Should only be a few bucks on PSN (it was free with PS+ a few months back).

[NeoCracker]

If you can get a copy, Lockes Quest on DS is a personal favorite of the genre.

[Spuuky]

Plants vs Zombies is pretty great.

Defense Grid is really pretty great in my opinion. This is my recommendation.

One of my TD-loving friends likes Prime World: Defenders.

Anomaly: Warzone Earth is one I'm sure you own from Bundles, it's a reverse tower-defense which is briefly kind of entertaining, but not actually executed all that well.

Dungeon Defenders is only marginally a TD and is poorly balanced, but it's still fun if you want multiplayer.

[Dr Unne]

Thanks for your suggestions. My wishlist is now saturated. I've played PvZ already; I think 98% of the human population has played that by now.

Apparently I already had Pixeljunk Monsters from PS+. I tried it awhile ago and dismissed it because I automatically reject games with that certain iOS aesthetic, but I gave it another shot on Vita. It's OK, but the game really needs a fast-forward button. 15+ minutes in, my base takes 1 damage and then I have to start the whole thing over because the game expects you to get perfect on every level to unlock things. Targeting feels loose because of the weird map perspective; I can never tell whether my towers are going to reach the bad guys or not because of how the targeting circles are drawn. I can see the appeal regardless. I've played 5 or 6 levels so far. I like how running your avatar around collecting money and stuff adds tension to the gameplay.

TD games are great, guys. There's planning and resource management and just a little bit of reflexes. I enjoy how little tweaks in your initial strategy cascade into huge benefits or detriments later. I view them as really elaborate puzzle games, where every puzzle has a large number of solutions. And the games are naturally broken up into 15-20 minute chunks, so you can play them whenever you need a quick gaming fix.

[Pike]

I absolutely love tower defense games for basically all the same reasons that Unne said. Desktop Tower Defense remains my favorite after all these years; I actually bought it on Nintendo DS despite the fact that I can play it for free in browser because I just love it that much.

Does anyone else remember the progenitors of tower defense games in custom-made maps for StarCraft and WarCraft 3? Because those were also fantastic. I played a ton of those.

[Rez09]

I used to play some of the WC3 Tower Defense maps while everyone else was playing DotA.

[Dr Unne]

I think I played some of the Starcraft ones. Starcraft 2 has some cool tower defense mods too. In the original Warcraft and to some extent Warcraft 2, the AI was so predictable that you could play the campaign like tower defense. You could build corridors of archers and catapults that the AI would always walk down in a set path, and make your base unassailable.