Does REFACTOR need REFACTORING?
I believe that Refactor, although quite unique, just adds an unnecessary luck-based factor to the Tower Defense genre through it's new core gameplay and to be perfectly honest, I don't think that it is enough to compete with other leading titles of the same genre like Mindustry.
The new mechanic makes you strategize more on turret placements by adding randomness to the mix.
"At lower levels the randomization of modules may not pose a problem but at higher difficulties where gold might be scarce and positioning is vital every turn, Players will then be stuck restarting levels just to find the best starting modules they can get. Continuing down this path would limit the difficulty cap of this game very quickly, limit the devs options when considering higher levels/gold drops/enemies, and limit player creativity in later levels."
To understand a bit further of what I am trying to say, you gotta first understand the basics of the game.
The Main Gameplay goes a bit like this:
(At the start of every match you will see Enemy spawn points/Red portal and your Base/Blue portal.)
1.) On your turn, to place turrets/towers, you need gold.
If you have enough then you will be able to open a turret gacha system on the lower right side of the screen.
This will display 3 randomized blueprints of turrets placed along a randomized position on a randomized tetris tile.
As you can see above, there are blueprints/modules named C1, C1, and E1, each of those blueprint/modules consists of randomized turrets, positions, and tiles that you will be able to rotate and place.
2.) Once placed, the Turrets/Towers can serve as ROADBLOCKS for enemies and their Tetris tiles can serve as a ROAD for the enemies to walk on towards your base.
Your main goal now is to make a road and defend it.
(Take note that you will need to create a road way from the red portal to your base and this will become the main road for the enemies pathing, this is represented by small blue arrows on the floor.)
You can never block the main road using turret blueprints but you will be able to redirect it.
Now where does luck come in to play here?
Different turrets have different attack ranges and attack direction, their randomized positions along the tetris tiles may sometimes create a problem when you rotate them.
WATER TURRET RANGE (DIAMOND)
WOOD TURRET RANGE (STRAIGHT)
FIRE ELEMENT RANGE (TRIANGLE)
Don't worry though you can reposition any turret IF YOU HAVE ENOUGH GOLD.
3.) Last but not the least you will also be able to upgrade your turrets damage and range with gold and prepare your fight with the Big Bad Boss.
All in all, the graphics and gameplay are great but the new features are not that enticing for it to be worth it at this time.
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