Tyrant of the Tower Defense Game

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The old saying says to not judge a book by it's cover. This manhwa has more content to it then just a tower defense game as the title suggests.

The MC is the first player who managed to finish the difficult game 'Empire Defence' on the highest difficulty after a decade of release. Immediately a prompt shows up on the screen where the director of the game congratulates him for this rather extraordinary achievement. The director also request the MC to come over there & help them out, the MC accepts the offer, but didn't realise he would be sucked into the gameworld as the NPC, ... Ash "Bornhater" Everblack, the 3th Prince of the Empire Everblack. In all his runs playing this game over a decade this NPC always died in the extremely difficult tutorial stage where everyone was supposed to die.

Despite having an extensive prior knowledge on the monsters & game mechanics, the MC realises this isn't a game anymore, it is his new reality where he must survive. He managed to beat the game with 1 character standing, all the rest perished along the way. Ash vows to do his best to save as many people as he can this time.

You'll see how Ash manages to tackle all the difficulties during the wave stages on the Southern Monsterfront. Despite having cleared the game on the highest difficulty, it is being even more difficult this time with extra challenges. Despite this, the real way to finish this dangerous predicament is to do dungeon exploring in the Lake Kingdom during the downtime between monsterstages. Lake Kingdom is the place where all the wave monsters spawn from to attack the Southern Monsterfront after a set period of time.

The exploration of Lake Kingdom is a very interesting part of this manhwa since it has a certain resemblance with Dark Souls. The story of the manhwa always follows the perspective of Ash, so you'll see how Ash needs to manage his limited time between preparing the Southern Monsterfront for the next stage & explore Lake Kingdom to unravel the secrets and ultimately beat this challenge.

Later in the story our MC even gets summoned by the Emperor of Everblack. In the capital city of the Empire you get to meet some key figures which brings a breeze of fresh air into the story since the MC never met all these characters ingame.

The cast of characters around our MC grows & shrinks over time since characters can actually die. Despite the prior extensive game knowledge of our MC, he's certainly not overpowered in any way, nor are his fellow comrades. They must all be carefully nurtured by granting them better gear, setting a different job & leveling them up in the dungeon exploration of Lake Kingdom.

The art is fairly predictable and consistent so it's good to see. The character designs are also distinct

Actually I really like the plot that MC doesn't get op at the onset and has to actually use his wits to survive. The tower defence game elements are well done as well and I enjoyed that this story showed not only the wins but the actual cost of war as well. We get incredible characters whom we get attached to and they also don't have a guarantee of survival and many die. People get life altering injuries and trauma from the war and die and Ash ... has to bear the burden as the leader of their deaths. I like how Ash wrestles with his guilty of having to send people to their deaths to prevent even more death and destruction and causing everyone to die. It's nice to see that inner conflict as well.

Another part I like is how Ash deals with his identity and navigate interactions with his family etc because he doesn't have any other info other than what he knew from the game. Og Ash is a mystery to current Ash so it's interesting to see how he deals with that.

The world building is standard and it fits in with the action game genre 

Overall though it's enjoyable especially because of the diverse cast and them not revolving around MC all the time. The characters have their own limitations etc separate from MC. 

I recommend it

I don't know what everyone else here are on about. The plot is uninspired and predictable, and the art and characters are extremely generic. In fact, the characters don't seem to have any semblance of a life. There is no drama or interpersonal conflicts, and they barely ever talk to anyone but the MC. It truly is a world of NPCs.

I'm almost a hundred chapters in at the time of writing this review, and I have been bored for most of that time. If you really like the tower defense genre and you're bored out of your mind, go ahead. But otherwise I wouldn't recommend ... it.