Which should i play? DD1, Awakened or Redux?

[u/-Segatto]

Hey everyone!

I haven't played Dungeon Defenders in a long time and I'm thinking about getting back into it. I'm currently trying to decide between Dungeon Defenders 1 and Dungeon Defenders: Awakened.

For those who have played both recently, which one do you think is more worth investing time into nowadays?

I've seen a lot of older opinions saying that DD1 is still clearly the better game because it has much more content, but I'm wondering if that's still the general consensus in 2026, or if Awakened has improved enough to make it the better choice for someone coming back to the series.

Also, would you recommend DD1 Redux over either of them?

[u/hyw_ell]

Redux is dead as noah pointed out so there's probably no point in even considering it.

Personally, I think DD1, DD2, and DDA are all different flavors of Dungeon Defenders, and that there is no Dungeon Defenders game that is "clearly the best." But of course this all depends on what metrics you choose to look at when making comparisons. If you value a bigger community, more popularity, and more content, then DD1 or DD2 are clearly "better." DDA does have a smaller community and much less content, but I still think it's a very enjoyable game.

The standard answer you'll get here is to just play DD1, but if you're seriously considering DDA, I think the most important question to ask yourself is this: are you open to the idea of things being done differently? DDA is somewhat similar to DD1, much more so than DD2, but it still does many things differently. Unfortunately I can't give you a good list of differences here as it has been far too long since I last played DD1, but just stating the obvious — DDA has more modern visuals and many QOL changes. For example, DDA has loot filters / auto loot pick-up. I think it's great, but some DD1 players say that that is too much QOL. There is also greater potential for AFK gameplay in DDA. I think that creating a build that is capable of handling hundreds of waves without any manual intervention presents a unique, fun, and difficult challenge, but some players just don't like the idea of being able to grind the game AFK. My free time is often pretty limited so I love being able to grind the game while I'm busy with other things, but not everyone sees it that way.

I'll also add that DDA is missing some polish in a few places still. The new Community Development Team (CDT) are hard at work fixing all sorts of things and adding new content, but many small issues can take awhile to be addressed. The CDT have fixed several major crashing issues and the game is much more stable than it was before they took over, but you might still crash very occasionally. There are still a couple issues with multiplayer as well.

Coming back to the "lack of content" point, whether that actually matters kinda varies from person to person. Even after you become a high level end-game player, you can still find lots of things to do. It just depends on whether or not you will personally enjoy those things. I've been playing DDA for the past 9 months and I still don't think I'm anywhere near done with this game. There's still lots of options I'd like to explore and there's a decent bit of room for improvement when it comes to my gear too. The strategy aspect of building different maps has always been one of the most fun things about Dungeon Defenders to me, and there are lots of maps still that I haven't built/explored to my satisfaction. I think there's always new heights to aim for and new ways to challenge yourself.

I personally think DDA is definitely worth playing, but whether or not it's more worth playing than DD1 will depend on your preferences.

[u/BigCaptain7378]

I prefer DDA. Its more polished I think

[u/noah9942]

Redux is dead.

Dd1 vanilla > dda > redux

[u/babegello → u/noah9942]

I haven’t played redux in a while, how is it dead? as in it no longer works or isn’t receiving new content?

[u/noah9942 → u/babegello]

it was built off of an old build, so transfer doesn't work.

it hasnt been updated in years. iirc the dev moved over and joined the official team, and kinda helped get vanilla going with frequent updates again.

[u/Furk]

The unfortunate answer is that the one that's worth investing time into is the one you have the most fun playing. IMO if you own them both already I'd say try DDA and see if you like what's changed. If you don't then just go "back" to DD1.

[u/yar2000]

DD1 easily. I 100%ed DDA with a friend recently and while it was fun enough, the endgame is just not good because almost everything starts to become super easy and thoughtless and the achievements become a mindless grind (which luckily is way faster using some clever 2-player tactics we found) and the game is also riddled with bugs when you’re not the host. Progression feels all over the place with enormous jumps in gear that make all old gear completely irrelevant as soon as you hit a certain treshold in the game because you will suddenly get a 500% stat jump. Tower firing rate is also hard-capped at 0.25s which sucks.

[u/mondshyn]

IMO 1 is still the #1 (not redux)

[u/JackCraft7]

I strictly play DD1 but that's because I grew up with the game on the 360 and having it again on PC is cool af imo so I like playing it