Tower Defense games usually revolve around swift tactics and abrupt placement but Crystal Defenders puts your brain to the test. Different unit(job) types are placed along a path in order to defeat the hoards that walk it. It may sound easy, and it is, but the correct placement of these units means the difference between a perfect score or the loss of crystals. For every monster that is not defended against you will lose a crystal(out of twenty) and some monsters even take more than just one!

Based on the Final Fantasy Tactics A2 set of job characters and monsters, Crystal Defenders will have you placed in a pseudo-Final Fantasy world. It is just a Tower Defense game using FF staples and having Square-Enix's blessings. Though it is SE so it will be more than just a copy.

The first level of Crystal Defenders is easy and straightforward but you will find yourself having trouble getting complete. Overtime you will find yourself learning the different units and winning more and more waves until you complete the map. It will grow on you but the learning curve is there.
When you have learned the units and their uses it will become more apparent where to place them to prevent losing crystals and to win the maps.

Not all maps are built alike, many have junctions, splits, walls and barriers to prevent your units from defending correctly. This being so you will need to plan ahead and prepare well to make sure you are able to defeat a sneaky monster type who might trump your entire defense. But this is part of the fun, you never know what the next wave will be(although each map does have a set monster per wave so replaying a map will be easier than playing it the first time).

Using gil to purchase units is easy to do and encouraged but you gain bonuses for the gil you have after every wave. This makes you have to decide when to level and buy units instead of just spending randomly. Your overall gil at the end of the map is even added to your score so keeping gil is important.

A lot of strategy will be used to complete the maps in Crystal Defenders and your patience will be tested when you restart a map after losing a wave. Trial and error does work in Crystal Defenders but you never know how well something will work until you try it. The same goes with playing the game itself, it seems cheesy and quirky but it is a lot of fun and is something fun to do when passing the time.