Several months ago, when the iPad 2 was released, I inherited my wife’s old iPad 1.

This is a pretty normal way for me to get hardware, by the way, through the hand-me-down process.  It’s a beautiful thing.

Anyway, I immediately loaded up all sorts of network management software on it and it’s made a great portable VNC device.

I bought some games for it, as well, but I really haven’t given any of them more than a cursory glance.  After all, when I have the iPad with me, I’m usually at home and have other things to do.  I have not yet, therefore, flung any birds or cut any ropes.

I did, however, stumble across a recommendation to try a tower defense game called “Fantasy Defense”, and this has become the first iPad game that I’ve put more than about 10 minutes into.  It’s only my third foray into the Tower Defense genre, mind you – I’ve played through Defense Grid: The Awakening and Plants Vs Zombies before, and quite enjoyed both, but not to the point where I felt the need to go looking for more games in the same mien.

Fantasy Defense is a Korean game and is, at least for the moment, available free of charge from the iTunes store.  There is, of course, a facility in the game where you can buy stuff, so that is presumably where they hope to make their fortune.

Specifically, they hope to make their fortune from impatient players, as the stuff you can buy from the in-app store all seems to be, at best, slightly more effective versions of stuff you can earn by playing the game.  Like, if you can buy a thingy that makes your hero 40% more effective with in-game currency, you can buy a thingy to make your hero 50% more effective with real money.  So far, anyway.

The gameplay isn’t anything too groundbreaking.  Monsters come out of portals and follow paths towards your base.  If enough of them reach your base, you die.  You get a limited supply of resources to start, these resources are used to place units and upgrade units, your units kill the monsters walking towards your base and you get more resources every time they kill a monster.

You can also place a single “hero” unit on every map, quite powerful and best placed at a choke-point.

I’ve only gotten through 5 of 50 maps, but so far it is wonderfully addictive and I foresee a fair bit of this game in my immediate future.

I do have one tiny quibble with the game, and that is that the characters are depicted as, err, heroic fantasy tropes turned up to eleven, and then turned up a couple more notches.

Take, for example, the “champion” hero.

I’m not sure what’s worse – the massive bejeweled codpiece or the take-your-own-eyes-out shoulderpads.

As bad as he is, the Archmage hero is, well…

I’m all FOR being pandered to, but this poor woman looks to have a medical condition.

The final hero, the bowmaster, is a little less over-the-top, in that her breasts are ONLY about the size of her head:

And sadly, even the grunt units suffer from a certain top-heaviness that could really stand to be dialed back a cup size or ten:

The monster design is a little more sensible, and I’m a fan:

Normally, when I see this sort of thing, I just have to kind of sigh, shrug, and say “oh, Japan, what are we going to do with you?”

I guess I’m going to have to extend that sentiment a little further west from now on.