Realm Defense vs Summoners Greed
Summoners Greed offers a more engaging and less restrictive free-to-play experience despite some recent balancing issues, making it the better choice for most players over Realm Defense's aggressive paywalls.
Summoners Greed generally provides a fun and grindable tower defense experience with optional purchases, though recent updates have frustrated some players with nerfs and progression roadblocks. Realm Defense, while praised for its core gameplay, is heavily criticized for aggressive paywalls and difficulty spikes that hinder free-to-play progression.
Head to head
You enjoy classic tower defense gameplay reminiscent of Kingdom Rush and don't mind a significant grind or making in-app purchases to progress .
You prefer an idle tower defense game with a strong grinding component, cute monsters, and a variety of game modes, and are willing to tolerate occasional ad issues or recent balancing changes .
Evidence note: Realm Defense reviews are more polarized, with many recent negative reviews focusing on aggressive monetization and progression issues, while positive reviews are often older or less detailed. Summoners Greed has a higher volume of reviews and a higher lifetime rating, but recent negative reviews highlight significant issues with ads, IAP, and game balancing.
Frequently asked
Is Realm Defense truly free-to-play?
Are there issues with ads in Summoners Greed?
What reviewers actually said
Built only from these 120 real reviews (foreign ones translated). Superscripts jump to the quote here. Apple has no per-review links, so [ref] opens that app's reviews on the App Store.
- [R1] Realm Defense 180 Nearly Impossible: Really fun game until level 180, even using YouTube strategy guides this level is nearly impossible to beat, even with special items and leveled up heroes.
- [R10] Realm Defense Love this game!: The best to pass the time. Levels get increasingly challenging, perfect to stimulate the brain.
- [R16] Realm Defense Super Addicting: Only issue is some levels can be quite difficult which isn’t bad but leveling up is slow. All in all though it’s very fun and can’t wait for more additions.
- [R32] Realm Defense Great game: Progression fun heroes… well done
- [R3] Realm Defense Game used to be good: I really used to enjoy playing this game as a mostly f2p player and i was willing to have to grind a little bit longer to level my heroes up but now they’ve drastically increased how long that will take by replacing the free daily materials you need to rank your heroes up with another less valuable material. this also means that you cannot easily acquire new heroes without sp
- [R7] Realm Defense Love this game… but: Game is absolutely amazing, everything you love about tower defense. But… you get engulfed in it, then you’re about to get to world 3 but you can’t. It says you need to spend 50 tournament tokens to unlock it. So I’m like “okay how hard can that be?” Well it’s only possible to make 20 tournament tokens every week and that’s if you’re first in your league. On top of that, the c
- [R9] Realm Defense Expensive freemium: This started well if a little easy. Now I’ve done the first two maps and it seems like you have to pay to continue. I actually don’t mind this. However, it looks very much like I’ll hit blocks like this over and over again, and have to pay over and over again. I’d consider paying for the whole game but I just don’t trust it as it is, looks like it’s designed to bleed you dry.
- [R11] Realm Defense Great potential spoiled by difficulty: The early stages of this game are great however to progress you need to spend a significant amount of money. Once you get to gold tournament there is no chance of progressing without expensive purchases Come on developers I don’t mind paying but not the amounts you need for this game.
- [R19] Realm Defense Restore broken: Lost all progress and won’t restore. So much for returning
- [R23] Realm Defense Nice game, payments broken, no customer service: I like this game, I really do. I would be happily ranking it 4 or 5 star. Great game buuutttttt a purchase hasn’t been appeared in game. Day 3 no response from customer service which isn’t acceptable, I am gonna to contact apple for a refund. I’m summary great game to play, but don’t spend.
- [R61] Summoners Greed Years go by, more issues somehow: Played this game when the makers made you watch videos or pay to play even in early game. Now double speed videos got nerfed (trash). The videos are straight up FRAUD on a regular basis; the videos will say that they give u coins but it crashes halfway through and gives you NOTHING. Straight up FRAUD. Level gaps are outrageous. Literally just slows down to a crawl
- [R63] Summoners Greed Second ad black out: Can’t finish the ads. The second one is always just black.
- [R6] Realm Defense Good but difficult to progress staying FTP: Have to grind to progress while staying FTP
- [R64] Summoners Greed Xem quảng cáo nhưng ko nhận được reward: Nó dụ mình xem nhiều quảng cáo tích gần đủ nguyên liệu để đổi thưởng. Đến khi gần đủ thì nó cho lỗi quảng cáo ko thể nhận phần thưởng nữa nhưng vẫn chạy quảng cáo. Loại tởm lợm
- [R66] Summoners Greed Second 15 second ad not showing: Just trying to get mythical gems and I can’t watch the ads due to it going to a black screen with a red x in the top right corner. Other than that, this game is pretty okay. Fun thing to have in the background or just while you’re chilling
- [R79] Summoners Greed Devs make it harder instead of more fun: I finally got through some tough maps, thinking was finally among progress only for them to nerf the monsters and make the maps harder than they were. Why am I failing on maps I easily defeated before? And on wave 1 to make matters worse
- [R91] Summoners Greed Developers Greed: They periodically change things to make the game more difficult instead of adding content. The content that they DO add makes the game more difficult and hardly any more exciting. For example, they add more “special” monsters that take so money gold to level up that I can set up an autoclicker on the map that gives the most coins for 2 weeks straight and it won’t be enough to max
- [R100] Summoners Greed Most recent balance change killed so much.: I have no clue what they did to this game but dear lord. They nerfed everything into the ground so heavily. My monsters feel like they do not damage. The newer special monsters take so much to upgrade despite not needing as much beforehand. Grinding summon stones is practically impossible due to the nerfs to all monsters while not changing anything hp wi
- [R106] Summoners Greed Recent “balancing” update: I’ve always loved this game, played for quite a while, until this recent 1.100.3 “balancing” update, first of all this is a single player game, why is a balancing needed? Also why is this balancing only nerfed all of my monsters to oblivion? I went from barely clearing insane joint revenge to struggling to clear it. I’ve noticed the nerf a little too hard. Pls don’t nerf
Synthesized from 120 recent App Store reviews · updated July 2026 · View on the App Store