Chitown's game of the week: Protector:RtT

Another great game from Undefined, and a great sequel to the original Protector! Protector: Reclaiming the Throne while still running the same basic engine as the original protect manages to keep its self fresh by introducing a new skills tree and Mage & Warrior upgrade system. Protector: RtT keeps everything we loved about the original and manages to add on to it, you could almost call Protector: RtT, Protector 2.0; it really is the same basic game, just with a slight upgrade in most areas. Possibly the best improvement over the first is improved level balancing, and difficulty settings. Protector RtT has three difficulties, easy, the standard medium, and hard (which is only unlocked after you beat medium). One compliant of mine though is pretty much all the maps from the original Protector are reused; even though the levels are balanced differently it feels like a bit of a “cop-out”. I also would have liked to have seen more than 22 maps, although the different difficulty settings ease the pain a bit it still would have been nice to see 30 or 35 different maps. One more thing I would like to have been included would be an “auto send” feature having to confirm (Twice!) to send a wave quickly gets tiring. Don’t get me wrong here Protector is a truly awesome game, it really is, but in some ways it feels a bit rushed. One can just hope that the next Protector will be truly “new” (New maps, creatures, mages, ECT).



Graphics 9/10
The graphics in Protector are pretty good, and about as good as any other Flash tower defense game out there. In addition to the good graphics the backgrounds behind the “game-board” are really deep in most cases and add to the games atmosphere greatly. I would like to see some improvement on the game-board itself though. The water, grass, dirt, ECT could be much richer then they are. Overall nice graphics; they do more then they need to.

Gameplay 10/10
Ah gameplay, the bread and butter of any tower defense game. And Protector does not disappoint. The biggest difference in between the original Protector and Protector: RtT is the depth of the gameplay and the added strategy. The added upgrade options and a harder difficulty, and as I also mention above, the better map balance have made for a richer, better gaming experience. Protector also has so much in terms of lastabilty if you decide to go and beat “hardcore mode” you could get up to around 30+ hours of gameplay! And that is really good for any flash game.

Sound 9/10
Protector: RtT has all the sounds it needs to truly make you feel like you’re in a medieval battle field, more or less at least. Only one compliant in the sound department: there is only one song for the menus would be nice to have a couple options. And yes Protector has one of the most important features of any game; the sound button.

Bug Report 10/10
I have yet to find a bug!

Scoring 10/10
As most Kongregate-sponsored games Protector has a ton of stats, all of which report to Kongregate. No complaints here!

Overall 10/10
Protector was such a rich, deep, beautiful game, and Protector: RtT only adds to it. I’m not one to down-rate a game because it’s too much like the original, even more so when the original was so good. Yes it takes a while to “pick up and play” but all good games do. Now us Protector fans just have to wait until the third.