Gotta Protectors

Genre: Action / Tower Defense

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local Wireless, Download Play Supported)

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Review:

Gotta Protectors, released on the Nintendo 3DS in 2016, is a sequel to the 2010 Xbox 360 Xbox Live Indie Game release Protect Me Knight. This is a Tower Defense game that de-emphasizes the “tower” part of that formula and places a greater emphasis on action. The result is a game that’s refreshingly unique and original, all while wearing a very retro-styled presentation.

That presentation is clearly designed to mimic the look and style of classic 8-bit pixel art games of the Nintendo Entertainment System era, complete with a decent chiptune soundtrack, barely-intelligible digitized speech clips, and a virtual cartridge players have to blow into (using the Nintendo 3DS microphone) to start the game off. The game is full of these fun little irreverent and fourth wall-breaking touches, with writing throughout the game such at one point in the game’s intro being stopped by a character shouting, “Wait, Princess! Before we go, there are things you already know that I need to explain to you in a wordy fashion for the sake of exposition.”

The rambunctious princess in question, Princess Lola, is the centerpiece of the game’s story. With most of her kingdom’s heroes either defeated or otherwise occupied by the latest world-ending threat, Lola volunteers her own cadre of personal bodyguards to the cause of defending the castle, a recommendation the king only grudgingly accepts, noting that Lola seems to have assembled her “Gotta Protectors” based on the criteria of filling a bunch of disparate medieval fantasy archetypes rather than anything so passe and boring as “being effective”. This wonderful tongue-in-cheek sense of humor really adds a lot to this game, and makes it clear that while it’s designed to appear old-fashioned, it has modern sensibilities just under the surface.

For the gameplay, each of the game’s stages has Lola herself standing at a central location surrounded by barricades. Players take the role of one of the aforementioned archetypal characters (Warrior, Amazon, Ninja, Wizard, Archer… “Old Guy”…) and fighting hordes of enemies while also ensuring the battlements hold and the princess remains protected.

So right from the start, this game sets itself apart from other games in the Tower Defense genre by making the barricades you build defensive only. If anything, you’re the closest analog to a tower you build up to take down enemies. Players have a close-range melee attack, a more powerful long-range special attack, and additional abilities they gain as the game progresses. In addition, they can create or upgrade barricades in any space, and can repair damaged barricades simply by attacking through them.

The game finds ways to challenge the player strategically using this setup. It can be tempting to just stay near the princess to defend her, but if the level contains monster generators and you don’t hunt them down and destroy them, you could soon find yourself swamped. Likewise, you might find it preferable to build up a decent amount of barricades and then go exploring while leaving the princess to her own devices for a little while, but not only do enemies sometimes spawn within your territory, but your character gets weaker further away from the princess, and you can only upgrade your character when standing near her. There is one other option players have available to themselves – they can shove the princess around, in effect moving the level’s epicenter. However, the princess moves very slowly, and displacing her from placed defensive structures can be risky.

It’s up to players to decide how to go about these options, and also where to spend the cash they earn during battle – should they use it to upgrade their fighter? Build new barricades? Or repair existing barricades? Or perhaps they should refrain from spending it at all, in hopes of finishing the level with a bunch of extra funds to spend on more permanent upgrades.

Another great element of this game is that players can not only permanently upgrade their castle facilities, enabling bonuses in battle, but they can independently upgrade each of their units, all of which have their own unique skills and bonuses. It does a great job giving players a sense of progressively building up their forces’ potential, and if players ever feel underleveled they can always head back to a prior fight to grind a bit.

Another excellent feature this game offers (which I was sadly unable to test) is that it supports up to four players in co-op, with download play supported so only one player needs to own a copy of the game. I can only imagine this should make it easier for players to delegate tasks between players.

My biggest issue with this game is a byproduct of the otherwise excellent retro-style presentation. Sticking with this classic style makes it harder to fit more information on one screen, meaning that it’s harder to compare and contrast potential upgrades, forcing players to go back and forth between multiple screens. Also, while I appreciate that this game gives players different upgrades for each of the playable characters, I kinda’ wish it went even further with this, pushing the game to be even more like an RPG in this regard.

However, while there’s certainly room for improvement here, overall I think that Gotta Protectors is one of the hidden gems on the Nintendo 3DS eShop. This is a wonderful, original take on the Tower Defense genre with a delightful retro presentation and a fantastic fourth wall-breaking tongue-in-cheek sense of humor. Do not miss out on this game before the closing of the Nintendo 3DS eShop in March 2023.

tl;dr – Gotta Protectors is a game that takes typical Tower Defense elements and combines them with a more action-focused style of gameplay, all within a delightful retro-style presentation and a fantastic sense of humor. This is unquestionably one of the hidden gems of the Nintendo 3DS eShop.

Grade: B+

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