Gameplay

EWTD2 follows a very standard tower defense design. You'll have to build your murder-towers along the fixed enemy paths and prevent them from exiting the map. Enemy units can't attack or destroy your towers. You only have 10 lives and each enemy that escapes the map, regardless of size/type, will deduct one life. Unlike other tower defense games, you don't have special abilities or special moves that you can use in case of emergencies; you'll have to rely on your towers for the entire battle. Defeating enemies will earn you cash that you can use to build more towers or upgrade them.

There are 25 maps per mode. Each map has three checkpoints, represented by stars. Each checkpoint has around 3-5 waves each. And the maps, though beautifully designed, are very limited. You'll find yourself fighting on recycled maps every so often. These maps doesn't have fixed spots where you can place towers. You can drag and drop the towers to allowed spaces. While this gives players freedom to move their towers around, it's pretty easy to miscalculate the spacing between the towers, wasting precious space. This is true when you're deploying the larger, mega towers. Towers don't change appearances when upgraded.

The entire game is pretty straightforward. "Linear" is the best word to describe the whole gameplay. You don't have that much freedom what towers to deploy and where to deploy them because of VERY limited funds. There are even missions where you can't win unless you follow very strict steps or sequences on what towers to buy first, when to sell them to get enough funds to buy a new one, when to upgrade one, etc. SPECIFIC tower placements and TIMING are important too. If you build a necessary tower too far or too late, it can ruin the flow of the mission. It can be quite annoying since your options will be very limited. You're technically forced to play how the developers designed the map / mission instead of letting you devise your own approach to a situation.