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FORTIFIED....but lacking some essential ingredients

Now I loves me some "Tower-Defense". Classic, Actions, FIrst-Person, Third-Person, Tactical, I love them all. So this game was an easy sell. Buuut I quickly realized that I was probably a little above the skill grade for this game. Fortified, if you hadn't figured it out, is a Third-Person Action Tower Defense Game with multiple characters, a leveling system, and a strong Co-op focus and has the added bonus of being of rocking a 1950's- 60's retro Sci-Fi aesthetic which I personally think is a criminally under-utilized design ethos. So you'd think that'd make this game a must have....you'd be wrong. Let me break it down
The setup is rather basic. Aliens are invading. Earth needs to launch rockets to destroy their mother ships, hordes of robots would rather the earth didn't and it's your job to stop them. You have 4 playable characters, each with their own specializations. and you are awarded XP for completing missions, with each level granting you points to unlock and upgrade weapons, and more loadout options as you progress.


The Good


Retro 60's Sci-Fi Aesthetic.
Four(4), distinct* player characters to choose from.
Simple Mechanics make for easy pick up and play.

Yeah, I'll admit it. The Golden-Age comic art-style and the retro 50's sci-fi look were instant likes for me. The Captain specializing in troops, The Rocket-Scientist and her explosive AOE, The Spaceman's crowd control, and the Agent's Jack-Of-All-Trades. Combined with their unique weapons, traps, and the ability to upgrade each, things can get pretty interesting. The mechanics are streamlined so that the traps are more there to assist you is blasting the invaders to scrap than to do the work for you.

The Bad


Simple mechanics limit how one deals with any given map.
Poorly designed maps.
Poorly balanced characters.
The Grind.
Dead Multi-Player
Too many useless items.
Lacking content.

Those same simplified mechanics that makes the game accessible sadly also makes things rather shallow. Open-ended problem solving is a core aspect of any good tower defense game, the ability to experiment and apply linear and lateral thought to the challenges presented keeps players coming back to try old missions with new tricks and stratagems. But in Fortified, this engagement is nigh-non-existent. There's really only 1-2 ways to approach a mission regardless of which character you choose. On paper each character gives you a new way to play but sadly they only amount to a difficulty setting. Spaceman Spiff is Easy, while Ms. Rocket Scientist is Hard.
Then there's the leveling system. Because you will need certain upgrades and gear to actually pass certain maps (especially the boss maps) you will have to go back and grind earlier missions for for XP so you can unlock the needed upgrades, and since there's very little variation in how one can approach a mission you will feel the grind.
As for content. There are 16 maps; 12 Campaign, and 4 Invasion and let me tell you the campaign maps are depressingly small and cramped for tower-defense map. The invasion maps are even worse giving you next to no room to place any defenses even with just one player. Honestly, I almost wonder if the map makers knew they were designing for a Tower Defense which only makes the aforementioned grind worse.
And the multiplayer...Good luck finding a match or getting anyone to join yours.

The Missed Opportunities

For all the work the developers put into giving creating a unique look, the setting and characters are more 2-dimensional than the comic book cutscenes. The heroes, the robots, the sparse voice lines, they all just feel a little wooden. There was a real missed opportunity here to sell the setting, but as is, there's nothing apart from the announce cutscene announcer, that says "Retro 1960's". Compared against games like "Orcs Must Die",or "Dungeon Defenders" there's just no soul to compliment the visual style.
Even something as simple as giving the shared loadout items a different look for each character would have gone a long way in making this game feel more polished.
Workshop and Mod functionality would have also gone a long way.


Conclusion

Fortified is good for what it is; a developer's first tower defense, for people who've never played tower defense. Good for Genre newbies, and at the very least an interesting aesthetic twist for veterans.
If you're already into the genre, you've already played better games, and if you're new to the genre you will likely have a fair deal of fun before the boredom kicks in. To the former I say: "The retro sci-fi aesthetic is pretty unique and it won't require much of a time investment, (unless you're a completionist)", and to the latter I offer these words, "This is the kiddie-pool of the genre -- it only gets deeper and more interesting from here.".