Dairojo! Samurai Defenders

Genre: Tower Defense

Players: 1

.

Review:

Dairojo! Samurai Defenders (Not to be confused with Samurai Defender on Nintendo 3DS, which is an entirely different game) is a Tower Defense game released on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2010 and then grandfathered into the Nintendo 3DS eShop when that system was released. This game features a Edo-era Japanese setting and has you defending Japanese castles by placing different troop types.

The presentation here is mostly pretty good, featuring some good pixel art visuals with a slightly cutesy cartoony look, backed by a dramatic soundtrack that works well enough for the game’s topic matter. My only real complaint with the presentation is that the unit types tend to look a bit too much like one another after being placed, and the jumble of information on the top screen isn’t exactly clear.

On that note, a lack of clarity overall is Dairojo! Samurai Defenders’ biggest problem, with the game throwing you right into battle without any sort of tutorial or explanation and expecting you to learn to swim quickly or drown. Thankfully, the unit types are all pretty standard for the genre, and the mechanics are mostly also pretty standard, so anyone familiar with the Tower Defense genre should pick things up without too much trouble.

And to this game’s credit, it occasionally does some interesting things for the Tower Defense genre, like having airborne attackers who don’t have to follow the usual paths, or having enemies open up new paths mid-battle.

Overall, while Dairojo! Samurai Defenders is jarring to start and has a few other issues, this is overall a pretty solid Tower Defense game, and fans of the genre should definitely consider adding it to their collection.

tl;dr – Dairojo! Samurai Defenders is a Tower Defense game set in Edo-era Japan. This game doesn’t really explain anything at the start, and there are some visual details that are a bit difficult to parse, but overall this is a pretty solid Tower Defense game despite these flaws.

Grade: B-

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