So Defender Chronicles 2 impressions.
1- Their UI is a complete freaking mess. There's no on-screen feedback to show which defender spot you have selected, which is crazy annoying. If you tap on a spot, then tap on another spot, there's NOTHING to show you which spot you have selected. That's only the first problem with their UI right now - the upgrade process is ridiculous (tap on a spot, tap on the upgrade button in the lower right corner, tap on the spot again) which is a lot of hand movement for a simple action. Probably would be served MUCH better if it was a tap spot -> tap again to upgrade type of deal, or with a little popup menu when you tapped on the spot for multiple actions.
There's a LOT more of these problems like when you drag an item from your inventory in the stash (where is there even this I don't know) - you get a MASSIVE popup that follows your finger, so when you want to drop an item into the slot, the popup is drawn over everything else, making the drop action much harder than it should be, the hero level up screen is hidden too far down and the costs to upgrade are really badly shown, etc.
These problems don't make the game unplayable or anything, but it's a real hassle.
2- Tons and tons and tons and tons of IAP. I understand why, and I respect their decision, but essentially after the first mission you open up an IAP-only store with a ton of stuff that down the line I fear will be a necessity to win. Some of these, like the Double XP + +30% tokens are cute, and I understand why someone would want those as they reduce grinding, but it's something that will deter some.
3- The visuals, while very beautiful, are... weird. The animations are non-existent (it's basically 2-frame deals, and it's funny as hell on the big flying bats since they seem to only have 2 states), and in the first level at least the color schemes are fucked and it's very difficult to make out defenders over the background. It's like they all mesh together and makes it kinda hard to make out.
4- Overall, so far it seems to be the same game as the first - the first hero you have is Melwen, the mage hero, and she's pretty powerful and such.
I'll have to play more, but I'm somewhat disappointed in the game. After Kingdom Rush, you *really* have to step up your game when you release a tower defense game, because these guys made an almost perfect game, with very few problems.
If they fix their UI (which I doubt, it's essentially the same as in the first one) a lot of the game's mistakes would be alleviated.