Sanctum 2 is a great tower defense game developed and published by Coffee Stain Studios. If you played the first Sanctum game and enjoyed yourself, you'll definitely want to play the sequel. Everything feels familiar, and yet I can also say everything has been changed. All aspects have been improved and polished, and new features have been added.
The game plays like any other tower defense game with a few small twists. You place down blocks to make walls, and they double as a stand for your towers to mount on. Waves of enemies come at you, and you've got to defend your core from these destructive lumes. The biggest difference is that you'll find yourself blasting away at the beastly creatures with your very own weapons, jumping around and fighting alongside your towers.
This tower defense game really gets you thinking about your maze creation, tower placement, and tower upgrades. You have a limited amount of money and blocks given to you each round, and you have to do your best to create a fully functioning defense that will protect the core for that wave. What I'm really glad this game does is that it doesn't punish you for making a mistake. If you've placed a block or tower done, and you decide you don't want it there anymore, it'll allow you to recycle it for the full amount you paid. This opens up a whole new world of strategy for each wave.
This amount of planning that is required really keeps you involved in the game, constantly thinking and planning what to do next. It is in this way that Sanctum 2 shines above other kinds of tower defense games. Usually, you place your towers done, maybe upgrade or replace them with stronger towers, and then leave them there because that's all you need. With Sanctum 2, you can continuously rethink and improve your defenses as you gain more resources to get creative with.
While the towers portion of Sanctum 2 is a lot of fun when you have a lot of material to play with, the first few waves of a level feel restricted. You have very limited resources when you first start off, and while I don't mind starting off small, having a mere 1 or 2 towers with a few walls spread over multiple entrances is not enjoyable. This restricted feeling does get alleviated a bit with the levels further along the campaign, but not as much as I would have liked. I understand the need for a challenge, but there must have been a better way to give us a challenge while allowing us the fun of an epic maze and awesome towers.
But the tower aspect of Sanctum 2 is not the only thing that has been changed since the original, but the shooter aspect as well. The shooting feels better, and the result of the small, not really noticeable tweaks is that we get smooth and exhilarating gun firing. The fun of having 2 weapons is the constant action. Not having to hold the gun to "reload", or in Sanctum rather it's cooling down, keeps the gun blazing going. The weak spot targets from the original Sanctum also show up in the sequel, rewarding players for precise aiming. With the new enemies, a mix of the appropriate towers and precise shooting is necessary for a great defense.
A new feature of Sanctum 2 is ranks, where you gain new abilities, guns, towers and various other unlocks as you increase in rank. I'm mixed on my feelings with this one. While it's fun to gain ranks and get unlocks, I couldn't help but feel like I was limited in my creativity and wasn't able to enjoy myself as much in the earlier levels. It's perfect for a beginner to tower defense games, but as a gamer who has played many in my past, this limited feeling wasn't good. I don't mind so much that I was limited at the beginning so much as how limited I was. The ability to only use 1 type of tower put me off a little. Of course, it quickly opened up, but I still couldn't get my mind off how the game started off.
Sanctum 2 has got a lot of replayability, and it's even more fun to play with friends. And if you've gone through it all, go through the levels again with increased difficulty. You can set "feats of strength" to up the difficulty, making it more of a pain for you to get through a level. With all the ranks you've gained, you'll stand a better chance with tougher waves of enemies.
While playing with friends is a lot of fun, the main problem with co-op in Sanctum 2 is the sharing of resources. Money and blocks are droppped once per round, and only 1 player can pick them up. The others are stuck waiting until the maze master is done his work, or the wave delay timer ends. While this aspect emphasizes co-op and makes teamwork very important, it's just not as fun. And anybody could just go and mess up your work, destroying all the effort you've put into it.
Overall, Sanctum 2 is a great package, beautiful visuals and exciting gameplay all in one. There is plenty to do, and it's a blast to do it all over again! A lot of aspects from Sanctum have been worked on and improved, although some portions need a little rethinking.
7/10
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