Pockie Defense Review
by: Ojogo
Unless you’ve been living under a rock. There have been tons of movies that came out the past year or so that have been re-imagining the whole fairy tale landscape. These “re-imaginings” are Hollywood’s way of presenting the Fairy Tales we’ve grown up reading and transferring them into something far beyond what the original intentions of the writers were.
Who’s to say that game developers have not had the same idea? Pockie Defense is one great example of that fine line being encroached. Feel free to scream, “Nothing is sacred anymore!”
Starting off
Your primary mission is to protect the Fairy Tale world from the invading monsters that suddenly cropped out of nowhere. Using the various Fairy Tale characters as your “towers,” You have to fend off waves of monster attacks in the attempt to bring peace back into their world. You’re practically the “chosen one” in the game just like Michael Jordan was to Space Jam.
You start the game by being introduced to Little Red Riding Hood. She’s the game’s tutorial guide and will introduce you to game features one step at a time. You will then be introduced to the wolf in grandma’s clothing. And will be given units to use in the later stages of the tutorial.
Once that’s done, you’re left alone to continue on playing as you wish with your complete set towers that fall under the different categories described below.
It’s not about the tower, tower, tower.
Towers in the game are segregated into four categories:
- Warrior – single physical attack towers
- Gunner – physical area of effect attack towers
- Mage – fast, physical, wide-area attacking towers
- Sage – magic, area of effect towers
Each tower can be upgraded by either leveling it up or purchasing weapons and items through the store. Each tower has its own upgrade tree providing added attack patterns and increased attack strength for each successful upgrade.
Each tower has two separate upgrade trees, with each tree having its own special ability that allows the player to choose which strategy is best.
Also, each tower has an active special available during battles. Some of the abilities are instant damage dealing spells while some of them are status ailments that either slow or kill mobs for a certain time duration.
Getting more units
Pockie Defense uses two types of characters as your “towers’. The first are the Fairy Tale characters such as: Peter Pan, Sinbad, Aladdin, etc. On the other hand are normal grunts that can be recruited through the game’s bar. To recruit these units, you’re required to spend beer so that a new set of units come out. Depending on the beer you use (there are three types: Beer, Fine Beer and Rare Beer), you get a different rarity unit at the bar.
You can also send your characters out on missions that can reward you with items, experience points, or new usable characters.
The game also sets limits on the units you can acquire and use at the same time. Your level is tied to the level of units you can use. The higher your level is, the higher the levels of units you can use.
Another option in acquiring more units is through getting their “puzzle pieces”. The stronger the unit, the more pieces required to unlock them. These puzzle pieces can be acquired through successfully finishing maps, adventures, or buying them through the in-game shop.
PvP
The other feature worth checking out in Pockie Defense is the PvP. Fighting against other players is an asynchronous task that is very reliant on the tower’s current stat. PvP consists of randomized battles that are determined by the total attack number of the characters you have in place.
You can fight against opponents by choosing them in the scuffle area of the map. You will then be whisked away in an instance where you and your team of Fairy Tale characters will fight their defending units one by one.
Think of it as King of Fighters without control on your units and you have the PvP pegged down to a T.
Critique
Pockie Defense is a straight up game that doesn’t really require much in terms of strategy or tactics. Missions aren’t too challenging to hurdle over and you can just spam spells and get things done in a jiffy.
It’s nice that you can use Fairy Tale characters this way but in the long run, the novelty of it wears off. The BGM is irritating and grates on me with just a few minutes of it running. And graphics wise, it seems that the developers took a page from Maplestory on how they look.
Pockie Defense is not a game that looks, plays or feels-well polished. The grammar on both the in-game dialogue and the website is terrible. The interface needs working since there will be times that the game looks blocky, and I eve experienced moments when empty spaces existed where units are supposed to be seen.
Conclusion: Fair
With that said, Pockie Defense is not a game that I’ll spend time and money on. I’d rather go for the Warcraft III custom defense maps, or even those flash based defense maps that you can find either at Miniclip or Kongregate.
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