I even agree with not having an encyclopedia since we are no longer human kings fighting monsters but monsters fighting kings! but they could have put whatever! like a magic scroll of vez-nan that shows the enemies! to be without the encyclopedia is terrible!
@George Khoory Umm, have you played the Curse of Castle Blackburn mini-campaign? Pandaemonium *might* be harder than Castle Blackburn but Pit of Fire was easy by comparison. The Rising Tides mini-campaign is nowhere near as difficult as those two though. They might seem harder, but that's more because of an individual style of playing than actual difficulty. The are very hard, I agree, but especially if you have a list of future waves in front of you to prepare it can be much more balanced than the two hardest above. The Shrine of Regnos is a boon as well, using it to its fullest extent can save you. The sheer complexity and variability of the challenges make the Rising Tides enjoyable, instead of just overwhelming the player the way the hardest KR1 levels do. Bloodshells, Bluegales, Blacksurges, the water, even redspines nets are interesting little abilities that make that mini-campaign entertaining to try and puzzle out, and in the end it doesn't come down to micromanagement the way some others do.
I don't think Kingdom Rush Vengeance was a low-quality game but I just feel that had a certain shift of soul that disconnected it from the rest of the series
Who said its low-quality? Its still great but not as great as the others, the rest has 4.8 on review while vengeance has 4.7 which is incredibly rare to see such high score
True even I felt something offputting. Was it murdering your former allies? A fixation on the old format of the game? IDK what exactly but something was off.
Pretty much. There aren't as many of us as there are for other games, but we do love our Kingdom Rush. In the end, I think most of us stick around for the pure sweet nostalgia from back when KR was first released as a flash game. Ah, those were the days.
I'm glad I decided to just purchase frontiers now. I still haven't finish kr1, I can't just imagine how much more hours I'll sunk to play kr. These games are the best
one of my biggest complaint is the lack of endless level. They offer so many towers with totally different abilities and skills but no endless level to figure out the best combination is just dumb.
My favorite of the kingdom rush games has to be frontiers, I loved almost all of the towers and I also loved all the crazy shit they pulled with the level design in that game. It felt like the devs were like children playing with their new toy of randomly changing the map on you
I disagreed when he said Frontiers was lazy since they recycled the same tower designs which I disagree since it’s the sequel of course they are going to reuse them
They should make a version that combines the original, frontiers and maybe 2 other areas that are on the map that we havent played with lots of enemies, towers, upgrades and maybe some other things.
Lemme add to that. A KR game that adds new content and campaigns in the regions shown, but it also is combined with KR and KRF so you can play those levels, and use those heroes. Wouldn't it be awesome hunting Vez'nan down with Alric?
For me, Vengeance was too slow. There was almost no strategy, just use these specific towers and you're done, instead of having to use different towers for different gimmicks per stage. It falls flat with bosses, as they just aren't as scary as the previous games'
Unpopular opinion but Origins wasn't all that good either, in fact I'd say I prefer Vengeance over it, the dealbreaker reason being that Origins's postgame/mini-campaigns are overall crappy. It had a decent mini-campaign with three levels (Hulking Rage) but everything else is just bad. Bittering Rancor not only rehashes all the Twilight enemies we've already seen numerous times in the campaign, but it's only two levels long with no new music or refreshing scenery. The boss fight was the only good part of it. Forgotten Treasures is better but it's still only two levels long, not to mention Dwaraman Gates feels too similar to Blood Quarry. And Tainted Pit is too easy because it lets you stack all your towers in the same spot. The other big problem with Origins are the tower themselves. Almost none of the towers are significantly affected by enemy armor or magic resistance at all. Both level 4 Barracks deal mostly true damage, Wild Magus is mostly used for the instakill, Arcane Archers deal both physical and magic damage, Golden Longbow mostly instakills. And then there's artillery, with the star upgrade making it bypass physical armors even more than it did before. Even the heroes themselves pack true damage in most cases. High Elven Mages is the only level 4 tower in the game that actually gets affected by magic resistance, and as far as I'm concerned it's unviable and bad just because of that. Gameplay feels shallower because a layer of the gameplay (armor/resistances) is almost non existent in practice, which leads to spammy gameplay. Forest Keepers spam for example trivializes the main campaign because they kill literally everything with true damage spears. Back to Vengeance, can't speak for Impossible or the mini-campaign challenges, but I never really noticed the game becoming luck based at all on Veteran. But the way better mini-campaigns combined with armor/resistances actually affecting the gameplay significantly again makes me prefer Vengeance to Origins tbh.
Thanks for explaning this to me, I have seen other people who disliked origins, but never really understood why. I think the reason why resistances was made less influencual in Origins, is beacuse the game was much faster in nature, and they tried to overwhelm you with numbers, which I like, evendough I can see why you dislike it. However the Impossible difficulty kinda fixed it, when the difficulty also gave enemies a resistence buff, aswell as a health increase. I think the main reason we disagree here, is that we play Kingdom Rush for different reasons, I play it for the challenge, which is why I liked Origins, it brought me more of a challenge than the other 3 games, hence also why I don't dislike the mini campaigns in it, beacuse they were tough with hard boss fights(The beheader kinda got easy over time tho). The only mini campaign that reused to many enemies, for my taste, was the one with the twilight elves, which was a little disappointing, but hey they were fun enemies with good designs, and the difficulty made it up to me. In Vengeance the game became a little luckbased on Impossible without premium content, on a few stages, mainly 19 & 21 for me, and I think it has to do with my playstyle, now that I have thought about it, I normaly quickly jump to a strategy that could work, and rely a lot on playing well with my hero and abilities. Either way it's not a good adition to a strategy game, and I would not like to see it return, in future games. Oh yeah something I forgot to mention is that the mini campaigns have some good enemy designs, for example the Anurian Chaser, or the one who switches immunity. The boss battles in post game Vengeance did not really live up to that quality, and ended the mini campaigns on a low note for me.
Baj'nimen is a completely trivial bossfight once you know one thing - the enemy spawns are not based on time, but on how far he has passed through the stage. You can stall him at the front with two Bladesingers and he dies in a few minutes without spawning any troops. I don't know how recently you have played KR1 on Steam, but it has received a few bugfix updates in the last year or so that also make the balance a bit better. I would only day Barbarians and Bertha are underpowered, with all other six towers being very viable. Frontiers also has better tower balance than Origins. Although Mechas are a bit too powerful in numbers and Templars are basically garbage, the towers are pretty balanced. The mages are underused thanks to poor enemy design, since almost no enemy in the second and third bit of the main campaign has armour. The barracks are also underused mostly thanks to poor enemy design, since almost no enemy necessitates, and way too many enemies have some ability that's anti barracks. It doesn't help that you have Waste Disposal and the Necromancer to stall, both of which aren't as affected by enemy abilities. Origins completely guts artillery by focusing more on single enemies (see Twilight Elves) and by making other options actually better at crowd control (see Bladesingers, they both provide area damage with Perfect Parry and stall the enemy in place so they'll take damage over a large time period). It also suffers slightly from poor enemy design, where there is only a single enemy in the Hulking Rage mini campaign with armour. High Elven Mage just does not deal enough DPS for a tier 4 mage. I believe it's 43 for a basic mage (compare that to the 55+ that Sorcerer, Arcane and Archmage get, where I take the Sorcerer curse damage over time effect into account). The Sentinels help that somewhat, but they make the tower even more expensive and at that point, you're better off just getting a Wild Magus with instakill. Golden Longbows sound nice in theory, but when prediction of enemy movement sucks in curves and does not account for enemies being blocked, and the projectile takes ages to hit, you're just missing a significant portion of the shots. Hunter's Mark is its saving grace, but even that misses sometimes, since it's also just a normal projectile. Crimson Sentence is some of the worst RNG bullshit in the series. Forest Keepers, especially in mini-campaigns and on Impossible mode, die too quickly, and basically require you to put Bladesingers in front of them to tank damage. That's an issue, because Bladesingers can be used on their own, so they are just more useful overall. Origins does focus more on hero micro, and the graphics are undoubtedly better. So I wouldn't call it a bad game by any means, but the tower balance is definitely worse than the previous two games.
@@Cozyn3z It's actually quite funny when you think about it, Origins is faster paced and throws more enemies at you than the other games, yet despite that Artillery is at its weakest in that entry. Well I actually think Weirdwood is almost good, his special skills are just overpriced.
@@Shyguymask Well artillery has always been very situational for me, the arch druid is really cool and can be usefull but it's speciel abilities are just too expensive. The Weirdwood is really useful to me, the burning nut upgrade is just too expensive for its long cooldown, but the area stun upgrade is at a sweetspot, its not too overpriced and its especially good for levels with a lot of spiders, if you place him at a central point, upgrade it twice and it can kill all the hatchlings, while stunning the rest, buying it fully is kind of a waste tho.
@@michielhorikx9863 Well every traditional boss fight gets trivial once you know a few things, actually that’s true of the entirety of Kingdom rush, the challenge lies in figuring it out, that why I like Origins a lot, because it tries to combine strategic gameplay as well as mechanical gameplay(Like you said with hero micro) And also a lot of enemy designs encourage this, like the blood ogres, or the spider twilight elves(the one that transforms soldier into another one of themselves) I really like strategy, but I also like skill based gameplay, so a combination is perfect for me. Regarding the balancing of the games, I completely agree that the balancing of Frontiers is pretty good, aside from the Mecha, but I would argue that the towers are the most unbalanced in the first game, there are 3 towers that dominate the scene, which is Telsas, Rangers and Sorcerers, not only that but the Rangers and sorcerers breaks the game when they are combined, so much so, that you can beat the entire game with those 2, with ease, I did it as a kid on my crappy Iphone 4 I remember, when I was a lot worse at the games, than I am today. Wrath of the forest is on a way too low cooldown, and stalls really well, if you have 2 rangers in the same area, with full wrath of the forest, enemies can literally not move, other than 1 or 2 steps in-between casts, the rest is logical, sorcerers’ lower enemies’ armor so fast that that the rangers can unleash their insane dps on all enemies. The other towers in the game are not bad at all, but those 3 are so overpowered that they fail to compare in most scenarios. Could you beat Origins with a 2-tower combo? Yes, but it would not be easy, if you were to play on the hardest difficulty. I don’t know what you mean with Artillery being there for crowd control, that has always been the barrack’s job. Crowd control is harmless effects like stalling and stunning, the artillery’s job is to deal splash damage, but still the weird wood can stun enemies for up to 3 seconds in its entire range. The golden longbow is a high risk, high reward tower, and its defiantly not bad, you say that it misses a lot, and yes that’s what archers does, however the closer enemies are to the longbow, the faster it attacks and the less it misses, which I think you forgot about, overall I don’t think the towers fits your playstyle, but if you position it well, and wait to invest in it till you have a high income, then it can be really strong, where the arcane archers are more of a safe choice, and the longbow should be bought sparingly, one is usually enough for one stage. The forest keepers I also think are just as useful as the other barrack, in its own way, Shyguy already said it well. I do agree that the High elven mage and the Arch druid, gets sidelined to much in the game, they do have some uses, but overall are too situational, sylvan curse is useful for boss fights, and the high elven mages sentinels can cover almost a third of the map, so they can be good when 2 exits or paths are close to each other. Overall balancing 8 different and distinctive towers, who each have 2 or 3 unique abilities is extremely hard to do well, and I think Origins and Frontiers hit pretty close to the mark, you can always restrict yourself, and it doesn’t fundamentally ruin a game, when only 1 or 2 towers are either under- or overpowered. Forgive the typoes, I did not read it through:)
You forget ro mention that in vengeance, level 3 or lower towers are useless, unlike other kr games, in origins, level 3 barracks are still good in the last level too. Thats a big unbalance, because that means hard start and really really easy ending on each level, so if you manage to survive the first 5 wave, you will most likely win, unlike other kingdom rush games.
i cant believe he didnt talk about how there are almost no death sounds or high pitch magical sound effects in the game that added alot to all the other kingdom rush games' atmosphere. the only sound effects i hear is when you upgrade a tower, your hero does something, a tower attacks with a very low pitch silent attack, get a stupid acheavement or when some of your allies block/fight enemies. i like any kingdom rush game for its gameplay but this is something way too noticable for me and it really ruined the experience i got from the game ToT
The souls change was so off-putting and it almost made me think that the game was hard until i unlocked the mausoleum and the DWAARP ripoff. A point i loved about every other KR game is that the star system actually encourages you to replay the levels. Can't beat a stage? Play previous levels that you haven't 3-starred yet and iron/heroic challenges to get more stars and level up your heroes in the process. In Vengeance if you can't beat a level either you use other loadouts or switch around your skill tree (which isn't something exclusive to Vengeance tbf) but beating previous levels is just completionist bait
I agree with everything you said. The only thing I'd add is that each tower doesn't DIVIDE into multiple tower choices as 4th tier. That RUINS vengeance for me. It creates a tower that's 1 dimensional completely ruining the strategy.
For me it's wasn't an issue, strategy had just been moved to the menu, but it sure makes sense that some people aren't a fan of it. I think it would have worked much better for you to pick between 4th level upgrades, instead of towers. So you would have 2 slots for each of the 4 tower types like before, but you could pick which 2 you went with from the menu.
11:14 That is some facts right there. I mean seriously people can't respect other opinions, it is called a strategy game for a reason. They would put this over that and when they do, there will be some people against it even tho it is called an OPINION not a fact.
Wow yeah I can see why you agree, the comments on the tier list videos that you make are pretty disapointing. I just dont understand, we all have our playstyles and yet here we have people trashing others opinions.
I sorta agree with that, but what I meant by that statement, was just that people often gets fixated on review scores, which puts their attention away from the criticism and feedback.
My biggest problem is that Bone Flingers and Mausoleums are so broken that you can beat most every level just using those two. Frogs are the only things that force you to change strategy
Hey, the Blazing Gem is broken too. Credit where credit is due, the Blazing Gem basically makes any high health enemy without significant magic resistance meaningless.
The major problem of Vengeance to me, was the tower level balance changed. In the preview 3 games, low level towers generally have a better cost-efficient than high level ones, but in vengeance, this was reversed. So the balance of the position and tower cost-efficiency was gone - the best strategy would always be finding the best spot to build a tower and max it, then the second best spot...
in the Jokull fight you can turn it to an endless campaign that's just easier than the other ones so far by simply not firing the cannons. You can also increase the difficulty and shoot her 3 times in order to make her go rage mode where she will freeze all towers that she can at once and also shoots 2 spikes to deal damage to your units.
So good. I don’t think RNG is insanely bad. For soul impact it ducks either way mostly lol. Pit lord is awesome though. It should be every 3rd summon with a changed icon. RNG makes a difference for your super hard solo barracks challenge for sure. You nailed this dude!
Thanks:) Yeah RNG is only really bad on some bonus stages, when you play without premium towers and heroes. I played the game a bit with them, and I was able to beat most levels first try lol.
I was fine with everything except for the fact they made the challenge modes for the levels unlock even if you didn’t 3-star the level. It took all the fun out of doing the challenge levels imo
I miss the days of the weak enemies that came in hordes. It added so much action to the game. These large, slow enemies make the game feel boring and slow, rather than hectic and fun.
I personally enjoyed the game. I've always loved the concept of playing as the villain, and I believe KRV pulled it off greatly. Most towers are reused enemies from other games, which is actually a great decision since you're playing as Vez'nan and it'd make sense to use his minions as towers. And you're making your way through the map, conquering areas and I especially loved the Linirea area, where you fight the units that were on your side in the first game. It's all very well done in my opinion. Your problems are very real, but despite the problems I managed to enjoy it. And it isn't Junkworld.
This was a fantastic video. You hit every nail on the head except for a few. The lore in Vengeance is so messy. People were upset that instead of Ingvar Bearclaw we got Arkuz, the Winter Queen instead of Elora Wintersong, and Bolgur instead of Bolin or Rurin. The entire point of the game was "Vengeance" and visiting old characters again. Instead IH added completely new enemies that the player couldn't care less about. It ruins the entire nostalgia feel that you talked about. Aside from the bosses, the enemies themselves lacked unique abilities. Most didn't synergize well with eachother, and were simply thrown at the player to give an easy bounty or act as a filler for the wave. Compare this to the entire jungle tribe from KRF that turned weak enemies into major threats. Or the Twilight Elf faction that focused on debuffing the players towers while buffing their allies. The cherry on top is that IH turned a blind eye to all this. It's incredibly frustrating trying to say an objective truth with it gaining no traction or consideration from the developers. Some heroes so blatantly overpowered (Eiskalt) are considered balanced, and some things so obviously terrible (Crow) are seen as fine. It dwindles down the motivation to continue supporting them in my mind. With that aside, its interesting that you put the original Kingdom Rush over the rest. It absolutely holds a special place in everyone's hearts as the game that started it all, but people appreciated Frontiers a lot because it was balanced amazingly well. Every tower contributed so much while not being an automatic win button. The unbalanced aspect came from the enemies (Saurian Artillery Spam). Origins' towers felt pretty pathetic to me, the barracks were very strong, and the artillery was nigh useless. It felt as if the entire game was spamming the same tower again and again. Cheers :)
Thanks! You bring up a great point here about enemy synergy, thats why the anurian campaign felt more engaging, while in the mountain campaign, you where mostly waiting around for the draguers and Frozen hearts to approach you, this combined with enemies having next to no synergy, made it feel boring. Other reasons why I liked the first game the most, is beacuse I don't view tower balance as something that ruins a game, if it has other great aspects, while the tower balance is far from perfect in the first game, every tower is still very different and they are all extremely fun to use, you can always restrict yourself with not using the overpowered towers, which makes you wanna replay it multiple times. Another reason is something I can not explain on the spot, like I said the game is very dear to me, and something about it just feels really good. It was a difficult task really to rank the first 3 games, they are all very close to eachother on my spectrum, evendough they were ranked.
I'll like to say my piece on the heroes I believe some of them weren't there (bearclaw, Elora, and Bolin and ruin) I believe they weren't around due to as with the first two they are unlocked after beating Vez Nan in the first game so in a weird way might not have met them while I don't know much I doubt Bolin would be a king but more a freelance man with his musket and ruin well he was after vez Nan time so might never have known him as he was also far away from the original map. But these are my one am thoughts take them with salt if you like
Totally True The thing I cant help but LOVE about Origins, is Vez'nan as a Playable Hero (Damn he is just MY FAV hero ever, all his powers are spot on with my playstyle) AND THOSE Thunderstrikes, they hit like insta-ARTILLERY rainfire all over the map, its madness
one of the things that i most disliked is the payed towers and...the bossfights being very easy in most cases. I wish a new game to come where we play as frontiers heroes trying to re-conquest the kingdom,with some mechanics from this game like the 5th tower slot and you be able to choose the towers.
poor frontiers heroes they go away kill a god and multiple giant monsters and when they finally come back the first thing they see is that they need to travel away to defeat a treat again
The Airstyle is a downgrade for me, it is a mixture of classic KR look and a more cartoonish look that really drags me off, almost like comedic look, making fun of itself and the previous games, it expands the map but it feels like a twisted version of whay the map used to be as if developers didn't remember what it was like or they did that on purpose
The artstyle has always not been too serious, so I don't understand that part about it making fun of itself, but the other part is fair to say, evendough I like the artstyle a lot.
As someone who played every kingdom rush game, in short since its been a while... the pacing felt off, periods of overwhelming strong units, periods of silence and gaps of no mobs or tension in maps, lackluster towers in exchange for more towers, heroes who felt lazy. I honestly wish they'd let those dedicated fans like us earn new heroes through gems from clearing stages, I would replay some what if I got that chance. edit: this is from a phone user's opinion, I didn't play the games on PC except the free versions but got the bought versions on Iphone. I still like and enjoy all of them, simply this last iteration of Kingdom Rush made me actually look at things with less fondness.
I completely agree with everything you said. I just started playing again and its not nearly as hard as the other. To me it seems like a step back. I really do hope they com out with another kingdom rush game that's fun, challenging, and less rng. I'm fine with the microtransactions but the heroes shouldn't be as strong as they are Xd
Don't know if you agree, but my main issue with the heroes is the hero spell. Having an extra ability that is in many cases overpowered makes the game a lot less interesting. I paid for all the heroes and towers when I got the game because I love Kingdom Rush (I waited for the deal), but Beresad's hero spell fully upgraded is enough to completely take out basically any enemy that comes in numbers using true damage. Even a Draugr on veteran mode at full health is taken out at once. There are many reasons why Boneheart is my favourite hero, and this is one of them.
Very good breakdown. With so many different towers for ones options, I would have thought gameplay would be very fun as you could mix up the style of play with different tower combinations. It appears that is the only positive along with a few other positives, but negatives outweigh it.
It is fun, trying out different towers and coming up with a good strategy, until you got it down and you now remember that this is the part, where you lose a bunch of times, beacuse of no pit lords. Playing it is weird, I really tried to enjoy it, so it kept on going from me having fun, to suddenly me yelling at Ironhide.
I want to like the Orc Shaman tower and the Dark Archer, but while the ideas are neat, their executions are just so weak and useless Something that could have been AWESOME with the Archer tower would have been a scale like in Origins, that each level yo purchase, adds another archer and therefor, making the shooting flow of arrows faster and also being able to target different enemies at once, reaching 4 archers at level 4 and on the extra options, adding '1 extra archer' a total of 3 times, ending up with a tower of 7 shooters (sounds exagerated I know, but it would be cool to see NEW strategies and unique towers, like barracks with 5 foot soldiers instead of 2. I mean, originaly barracks had 3 soldiers on the first games, and the elvish house had 4 elves that also served as improvised range shooters) Something similar with towers like the Orc Shaman, that it might be not as powerful as others, but to make it able to summon 'winds' to slow enemies, and the plants that heal your units, poison enemies or something
My opnion on origins is that it's a nice bit of experimentation. The post game was actually hard on veteran, and unlike in other games, hero usage feels strategic and neccassery instead of trivialising. Tower choice is a bit silly when some are useless most of the time, but I liked the departure from tradition.
Too many gimmicks in Vengeance like tapping laser crystals etc. Other games in the series had this as an extra like the poisoned mushrooms but in Vengeance if you don’t use them you’re basically screwed. I prefer to focus on tower building. Also I thought there were way too many towers - just adapt the basics! And finally it was waaaaaaaaay too easy apart from the added campaigns.
I think overall the best td game I’ve ever played is btd6, but kingdom rush frontiers and origins are the best nostalgic td games for me then btd5, however the game I have the most nostalgic connection to is fieldrunners though I’m not sure how well it would hold up
I dont thing vengance is that bad...you are right about bonus levels,bosses are very similiar and dragons are OP (also on mobile you have to pay for dragons and 2 OP towers what makes it more PTW)...but everybody is diffrent...for example my favourite is KRF because for me it has most cool looking enemies and bosses (vampires,leviathan and fishes,lizards,aliens)
Origins my favorite game: the story, the mini comics, the easter eggs, the unique heroes, the towers, and most of enemies are intriguing to fight. Kingdom rush original is my second favorite: my main complaint about this game is that it was too easy with the tesla and the only hard level for me was the Moloch one but it was a great start.
Loved the video, you explained everything really well and I pretty much am in agreement with you on every point you mentioned. I agree that the game desperately needs a middle ground. I find myself having such a hard time trying to clear stages with free towers and heroes (i.e Asra) due to the overreliance on RNG. But on the other hand, once I queue in with heroes like Eiskalt I just find myself bulldozing through the stages. The game needs a more accessible option to play it more casually without being fucked by RNG, and the souls upgrade system isn't helping either. Another main gripe I have is the towers. I get the point about wanting to break away from the traditional 4 tower 2 pathways style of the game, but IMO when you only get to choose FIVE towers for a whole round, it leaves so much to be desired in decision making about which towers to build and where you should build it. Downgrading from 8 to 5 choices is a huge turnoff for me. Overall it's still a good game, but it didn't give me the adrenaline I felt when I was playing other games of the series.
Big Thank:) I actually really liked only having 5 tower spots, it made you think a lot more about strategy, and which towers where the most optimal for each paticular stage, if you had 6 or more spots, that would kinda defeat the purpose of the new system, it kept me engaged, when I really hated the game from the RNG. But maybe a system with 4 basic towers, who each had 2 spots for 4th level upgrades, and then the same tower selection just with 4th level upgrades instead, could work better.
On Point, although calling it mediocre TBH is probably too much. I have to say though, from all the installments, I agree that this one is the weakest: few challenging levels (2), monetization and some bugs (seen for the first time in the series) would be the main deterrents for being considered a worthy successor.
I didn't think it was all that bad. I definitely agree with your opinion on bosses. I also felt called out every time you said the game is easy because I lost to the first boss on my first attempt. EDIT: YOU GET ALL SOULS NO MATTER THE LIVES. WOULD'VE HELPED IF I KNEW THAT EARLIER😀😀😀😀. Also it kinda sucked when I found out you don't get more stars for heroic and iron challenges.
The first boss is the hardest one for sure, so no need to feel bad, I think he got me once too, but I can't remember. Yeah, the whole thing with the stars and souls was one strange decision.
IMO the games go KRF, KRV, KR, KRO Kingdom rush frontiers is my favourite of the bunch because I think the towers are the most fun to play with and it has a better hero system than kingdom rush. Kingdom rush vengeance is pretty much equal with kingdom rush but I think it’s just a little bit better because of the better hero system and I really like the more specialized towers. Kingdom rush is the original and has no real flaws (although kingdom rush frontiers is definitely harder), but I can’t say the same for origins. I felt origins to be a little lacking and the artillery became basically useless. I also think kingdom rush frontiers is the hardest because the first jungle level has a very sharp difficult curve compared to the desert levels. I won’t say anything for the Saurian levels because I haven’t played those levels in a while and I just recently redownloaded krf
"Origins is the best Kingdom Rush game because the towers are WAY more balanced." Artillery is underpowered on most levels in that game. Arcane Archers have 3 amazing abilities (counting the innate ability that causes their basic attacks to reduce magic resistance) that cover all their weaknesses, making them the best tower in the game by a mile. Origins is still my favorite in the series, but balanced it is not.
Best KRV review sir, love it. Totally agree with your opinion especially the RNG thing. Tower defense should be a strategy game and RNG system such you mentioned are really fucked up the game. Great content
There's a lot of good points here but I don't think it's true at all that you need to rely on luck when using free heroes/towers on Impossible, there's plenty of reliable strategies to go for that work even if you get bad rolls.
Yeah, I can see a lot of room for improvement on my strategies too, but you don't have detailed knowledge of the game right of the bat, so you would most likely have to rely a little on luck to get through the first time. Specificly Level 19 and 21 are the levels that I was refering to. It is definatly possible to beat levels without having the RNG upgrades, but I tried to give a more objective view of the game, if you get what I'm saying.
I think the problem is that Iron Hide tried to cater to people who are not their real fans and who just want an easy TD game like bloons. I liked vengence overall but thought it was lacking in some regards and wish it was a little harder. If you go look at all the the negative reviews on kingdom rush games they are basically everything that you brought up as a negative. The mobile version is not buggy at all in my experience
I think you are viewing the rng incorrectly. The way to think of something like this is always plan for what will happen if you roll bad dice EVERY single time. NEVER build around the RNG with the idea that it's going to bless you. The added RNG is not your friend. It is an enemy that must be accounted for. If your strategy cannot survive bad luck, it's a strategy that needs to be revised. RNG increases the game's difficulty and decreases predictability. I am fine with both. The one thing I do agree on is that I don't like that some of the most expensive upgrades are prayers to RNG Jesus. Lilith was a pay-to-play character from one of the older games and is perhaps the single greatest embodiment I've seen of this issue with the game overvaluing strong luck-based abilities. Lilith was an expensive character that was intended to be top tier with her OP RNG abilities but the developers balanced her based on her best-case scenario, not her worst, and she was trash because of it. In Vengeance, the small chance your hero will instantly respawn is a good example of a WAY overpriced RNG-based skill which is exactly why I purchased it last. I do agree with the assessment that the bosses are lackluster and the waves don't come quick enough. Also, the way they decoupled the points you can spend from the number of stars you earn is a huge pet peeve of mine.
Remember how in the old games when u had finally cleared all the waves there was a silence and then a boss fight music and ur fingers would get sweaty cuz u didnt know what to expect[ honorable mention the cerberus from the 1st game] or even if u knew u would still get nervous cuz u didnt wanna fail again just because the game was that hard and required stratigical thinking only for vengeance to take all these aspects that made the game unique and fun to play to just throw them away its just sad I hope they fix things up with their next release
I dont mean to sound like a braggart but. Ive never had issues with Centipede boy in KRO. Im the same way with Sarlegaz in the first KR. I do however have a ton of difficulty with KRV post game bosses, like more than other people seem to do. In my opinion also, KRVs artstyle is a bit too different for some of the enemies for me to really look at it the same as other Kr games. I still dont regret buying it tho
To be fair, I think it’s an excellent stand alone TD game. I think we’ve been spoilt with the original and especially Frontiers. If Vengeance had been released by a different studio, we’d be raving about it. Fingers crossed they make another one soon and don’t put it on Apple Arcade. Freedom!
honestly my biggest criticism is the lore. I really didn't like that the story of this one just took back all the stuff you did in game one. but aside from that and some tower balancing issues I absolutely loved it. I got the steam version, and sure, some levels are just won by using the good towers. but I still found myself enjoying them a lot. the strategy variations just really call to me
Well, now Kingdom Rush is essentially over. They switched to a turn based RPG Format. "Legends". For me its the end, unless they go on to refresh the TD Defense series. Making the game exclusive to Apple, is also a slap in the face.
Found your channel through the barracks only challenge videos. You should make more vids similar to them, they were hilarious. Keep up the great content
In My opinion, the RNG elements did not make much of a difference since because they are RNG you should not rely on them so then they are not useful nor detrimental most of the time in this game. The difficulty did spike at times but over I felt a steady increase. I never felt forced to buy anything even though Impossible difficulty is... well almost impossible starting from the beginning. The mini-campaigns were lackluster in terms of bosses but I overall felt an improvement. In my opinion, vengeance is slightly worse than origins but better than the first and second kingdom rush. I feel as though the changes made were for the sake of not doing the same thing over and over again in terms of upgrades and other things although I do hope they remove the RNG elemts.
I wonder how different the game would be if they had about the same first three towers but the got three unique towers in the higher levels like Archer towers is basically the defaultish but we get three specialist towers in the fourth instead of just two On second thought, idk if it would be a huge difference especially cause lower tier towers are bad anyways
I noticed (and all of you most likely) that they made 11 bosses in kingdom rush 1 and every other one has only 6. Kingdom rush 1 is still fun to replay even after replaying it 10 times just because of the well made levels towers enemies and bosses i remember playing it so many times as a kid and i also remember going to sites that let you have premium content like the lightning spell and having skins for reinforcments and having +1 reinforcment so instead of 2 there were 3 and also getting all the heroes, kingdom rush 1 is the best and will be the better than any other version of kingdom rush just because of how much effort they put into it the first one in my opinion.
personally it’s my favourite of the series, i felt the load out crafting with the towers was super engaging and the enemy and level mechanics were more creative and fun
my biggest fear is that Ironhide would turn into greedy like a lot of game company fall for.I mean that the heroes in game is fine for me cause it already happen since the first game,but paid towers?Come on! I actually fine with it,but making them very broken proofs even more that the game is like pay to win.I wish Ironhide reduced the microtransaction and RNG because i think people don't mind make the app game expensive because the game is very good just like you said.I just don't want my favourite game company from my childhood (Flash games) fall from grace.
Yeah I really hope this is a one off, if they need to earn more money for future projects, just increase the price, or make the game more difficult, to encourage more in app purchases. I didn't play it much on my phone, but it felt like they tried to frustrate you, so phone players would buy more towers and heroes.
I like vengeance, it is my 2nd favourite behind the original kingdom rush, vengeance is TOO slow and seems to go on tough but fewer enemies which completely removes the vibe of kingdom rush series, and since vengeance is expandable im expecting new things over the years that will drastically improve the game, im thinking of new modes like "rush" where enemies or waves spawn 50% faster, and a mode that reverts enemies back to swarmy ones like the enemies in the rest of the 3 games and still affected by difficulty, new spells and new towers and heroes that is very interesting and powerful, like a hero that becomes better the lower its hp gets, im thinking of an upgrade option for reinforcements where instead of 2 demons its just a pit lord?, enemies are supposed to be slow and few but tougher but that just single handedly removed the essence of kingdom rush games, and with the powerful tower and heroes those tough enemies are weak and also making the game very boring, they must be buffed and impossible difficulty is not enough, bosses don't have any special abilities that make them stand among others other than basic abilities that you will expect by their looks and vengeance is the only game i feel where the game design expect the bosses to be defeated other than a real big threat that can end a level like on the other 3, also again towers are not balance bone flingers are supposed to perform 2 roles the barrack and archer but they perform it even better than most real barracks and archers, the goblirang idea looks very powerful an archer that can hit ALL enemies in its path TWICE but in vengeance where enemies are fewer and tougher makes them weak, eiskalt is just supposed to support you by slowing many enemies down giving you time but becomes the most overpowered hero in the ENTIRE FRANCHISE, shadow archers are supposed to be starter tower yet pretty pricey when you are just a starter while also having 2 near useless abilities, and for sake the ENCYCLOPEDIA! Also endless mode is still missing in vengeance and i hope it to be just a thing that can keep you still having FUN on the game after completing it other than multiple lanes and challenge that becomes near impossible beyond wave 50, speaking of fun SANDBOX on kingdom rushes? Anyone?
My only issues with it are no endless modes, unfair tower placements, and the fact that you have to buy it to get it on your phone. My favorites of kingdom rush vengeance are the diverse towers and the Campaign Final boss where you have to face 3 paragons while making sure the arch demon still lives. Luckily i downloaded a hacked version of Kingdom rush vengeance on happy mod in mobile.
Great video! Though I agree with most of what you say, I don't think the tower system change was a good idea. Outside of it being more similar to other TD games due to the linear leveling, the strategic versatility per level is effectively decreased due to being able to use less towers, and some of the towers, especially the mages, have a case of overlapping roles. And as a tester for the games, I can explain why the game is relatively buggy. Outside of the other games being out for longer, the Android/Steam versions (iOS notably excluded) are actively bugfixed by the developer (not Ironhide, but a contractor). Furthermore, Vengeance runs on a different engine when compared to those Android/Steam versions, which appears to be noticeably more buggy than the Love engine used by the other games on Android/Steam.
For me the best ones are the first kingdom rush and kingdom rush frontiers cause are the most nostalgic for me, i keep playing today for complete 100% all the games.
I agree with your opinion on jokull junior, as he is honestly disgustingly strong with his high damage and FULL BOARD FREEZE, and I also see your points on challenge, but that aside vengeance is better than other games for once reason, the Anurian theme slaps and you can’t change my mind about that
The Jokulls nest bossfight wasn't that hard for me, but yeah in hindsight it can be a bit boring, considering the amount of potential it had. The Anurian mini campaign was the best part of game, and the music is great aswell, it is clear that Bruno Boselli composed those ones.
@@Cozyn3z Yeah the jokull fight was lame, but eiskalt is just stupidly broken, like more broken than the swamp thing, and don’t get me started on that thing
I agree with a lot of it. I didn’t like that it didn’t show you if you beat it on harder modes, so like why? It didn’t matter if I beat it on casual or impossible
Id like to see a kingdom rush game that is updated and adds new maps, heros, and balance updates throughout time. This way it keeps the game fun and fresh and can fix problems that they don’t realize when they release the game
Great video. Pretty much agree with everything and you said it so well and concisely. I also feel you should add that unlike the previous game, you can only place 5 different towers which is 3 less than there used to be, essentially reducing the variety you have to play with within the 15 or so mins of a single level.
(Copying a reply, beacuse my opinion on the tower system remains the same) I actually really liked only having 5 tower spots, it made you think a lot more about strategy, and which towers where the most optimal for each paticular stage, if you had 6 or more spots, that would kinda defeat the purpose of the new system. Maybe a system with 4 basic towers, who each had 2 spots for 4th level upgrades, and then the same tower selection just with 4th level upgrades instead, could work better.
@@Cozyn3z I still miss having branching paths. Maybe they could've made tier 4s still branch since a lot of them look like they want to anyway (melee and ranged harrasers, support and damage shamans etc)
@@epser5842 I feel this was a test game in a way for something new and didn't do to much to fast. 1 am comment take with salt if you wish but bone flingers are fun I like making themed stuff haunted tower theme quite fun
While I liked vengeance, the game just felt too spam the starting mage towers middle ability for me. The only level I had to try more than once was the first boss level until I figured out the mage strat and I then cruised to the end
They have such an amazing concept, playing as the enemy, using the villain’s arsenal while you fight off basically against familiar faces. I personally enjoyed it, but I can see why kingdom rush veterans have problems with the game!
This game looks greater than any other of the previews games, i give them that! But it has a lot of issues.. It never felt like a challenge to me. It was like easy mode. Frontiers is still my fav game of the series.
I feel like you didn't stress enough how horrible the new tower system was for players who weren't willing to pay for the premium ones, they almost halved the amount of choice you have between towers in a game (and therefore half the strategy element) and removed the rewarding feeling of finally upgrading to level 4 and getting that shift in dynamic and power spike, also the campaign was way too short (maybe that's a result of it's easiness).
definetly even though in graphics is by far the best, the lack of endless mode, enciclopedia, more maps and having the 50% of the game content as DLC kill this game is a shame cuz gameplay wise it could be the best using the tower options
Here’s my biggest complaints about this game 1. Most levels, excluding the Linirea levels, didn’t really have anything special in them. Stuff like recruiting the Sasquatch in the first game, starting with dwarve towers in frontiers, and getting Malik as a bonus hero in origins was my favorite part of those games, but the first two campaigns had barely any of that. Also, the environment stays the exact same in most levels, and just feels disconnected- there were no fire gnolls or witch doctors creating new paths mid-level or anything like that. Most bosses didn’t really do anything to negatively effect you mid-level, either; they just kinda waited there until the final wave. 2. The spells matter WAY to much. It’s hardly even a tower defense game in the way that the previous games were- on most harder levels, the only viable strategy is to stall until your soul impact or demons recharge. 3. Annoying basic enemies. The draugrs, green skeletons, and anurians all have high health, magic resistance, and armor despite being the most common enemies. It really discourages playing with magic towers on the snow levels, physical units on anurian levels, etc. It’s much more satisfying to take out tons of low-health, no armor enemies than to slowly chip away at a few, high-health ones. 4. Horrible post-campaigns. Not a single one of them had any special towers or cool bosses. Nothing to spice up the gameplay in them, all it was was some new enemies and an average boss. 5. Bad map layout. It feels like every other level is just micromanaging between two or three different, disconnected routes. Some of the most fun moments in the other games were building tons of strong towers at choke points, but there really weren’t any opportunities for doing that in this game.
THe thing I hate the most is that you can't see at what difficulty you've beaten the game in. Aswel as only having one save and and just lack of QoL perks that are there in other games. I also would've loved "Reversal" minigame for each map. One where you send out troops and the computer puts towers to counter. Would've been a fun and an expirement for Ironhide. Also they stopped updating the game too soon. No Endless ):
I never thought Kingdom Rush Vengeance was mediocre, which isn't something Kingdom Rush is known for. Granted, it's not bad from an indie game standpoint, but it's still lacking. And I agree with the mini-campaign bosses. They could've been a lot more creative. For example, King Pollyx could've involve tons of teleporting that has him sometimes move backwards from near the end, forcing the last stand towers to take initiative. The Winter Queen would have the players grind cash from her minions to pay to use a special tower that's the only thing that can harm her. And The Ancient Ghosts could've fused into a mega-boss as a last resort, forcing the usage of the Haunted Gems.
When you compare it to what has come before it, it is pretty mediocre, but it still has some good qualities. The most fun I had with the bossfights was when Polyx said the "I'm froggin' angry" line. Good ideas, I would have been fine with 1 or 2 of the bossfights being traditional, as long as they where a little difficult, they could have just done it like in the main campaign, some innovative and some traditional.
I prefer the old tower selection system. You can access all your towers (once unlocked) at any time. No need to choose wich ones you want everytime you start a level. Its annoying. Also, it seems like there is few sounds, game is too quiet. And (infernal) mage tower feels so weak shooting those tiny little fire balls with no impact.
I'm kinda hurt since I found the after campaign levels nearly extremely hard, particularly the frogs, whereas I was able to beat origins' levels nearly without any difficulty. Most likely just me though
5:27 The pit lord basically is a combination of every imp upgrade:Explosion on death,ranged attack,good at melee, and really tanky. He's just slower but yeah not being able to take advantage of a privelege. so I would like him to be an option the works for both imp trees: 1) if both of your imps last their entire duration without dying, a pit lord willjbe added to the second batch(game only checks if the pit lord hasn't been already summoned) 2) If both die, immidetly summon a pit lord, the pit lords landing deals AOE magic damage, but he wont be summonible/applible next time(if your reindorcements are ready the game wont check to give you a pit lord, until after that batch.) 3)if only one dies the entire way, have a fire pit left behind(deals 60 true damage once and pulls enemies inside maximum of 3). The first one is if your using the ranged imps for dps, the next one gains even more. The Second to for defense, having two tanks on top of their explosions with now added two more and one more tank, I believe it becomes a "you can barely pass" option. The third is like the one's summoning the imps are asking "are things going Down or were ok?" so they just leave a fire pit behind just incase.
YES! The enemies in vengeance was SO DAMN SLOW. So much so that it feels like a drag to replay a level to get 3 stars or aim for a higher difficulty. Most of the times the only reason I would even replay a level is when wave 13-15/15 was suddenly harder compared to other waves and you would have to play the level again.
Bit late to this but I do think you are spot on for the positives and the negatives and this is what Ironhide should build on for a 5th Kingdom Rush Game!!!!!!! Origins is definitely way harder but I think the multiple different towers idea for Vengance was much better then the 8 in the other games!! The more towers the better!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (free though)
There are actually no slow enemies in Origins at all. The only one is the Twilight Golem, which gets slower the more its damaged, however even that enemy starts at fast movement speed :D
![เบิ้ล ปทุมราช - สาวสอง ( มีมี่ของอ้าย ) ft. ตาต้า,ต้องเต [OFFICIAL MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/mqlMjnP08XI/mqdefault.jpg)
How about you watch an actual good critique of Vengeance
th-cam.com/video/sxAhE3T2ISM/w-d-xo.html
I still love it more than my previous fav game, kr origins
Also they removed the encyclopedia of enemies.
Oh yeah that pissed me off a lot
Its on steam, but only on steam
I even agree with not having an encyclopedia since we are no longer human kings fighting monsters but monsters fighting kings! but they could have put whatever! like a magic scroll of vez-nan that shows the enemies! to be without the encyclopedia is terrible!
The encyclopedia of enemies was like those paper manuals that came in the boxes of games back on its day, so cool to read :D
@@bertogames8264 what? Thats pretty stupid of them
*Not me feeling insecure when he said Frontiers is easy outside of the desert levels*
@George Khoory for real I had to watch supermombojumbo to beat the jungle levels on veteran
@George Khoory Yeah, the first Jungle level had a rather steep difficulty increase far as I remember first time playing it.
KRF is easy/medium difficulty in terms of the main campaign, however it has the hardest mini campaign of any KR game ever (the fish levels).
Fuck those parasite levels they are THE ABSOLUTE WORST.
@George Khoory Umm, have you played the Curse of Castle Blackburn mini-campaign? Pandaemonium *might* be harder than Castle Blackburn but Pit of Fire was easy by comparison. The Rising Tides mini-campaign is nowhere near as difficult as those two though. They might seem harder, but that's more because of an individual style of playing than actual difficulty. The are very hard, I agree, but especially if you have a list of future waves in front of you to prepare it can be much more balanced than the two hardest above. The Shrine of Regnos is a boon as well, using it to its fullest extent can save you. The sheer complexity and variability of the challenges make the Rising Tides enjoyable, instead of just overwhelming the player the way the hardest KR1 levels do. Bloodshells, Bluegales, Blacksurges, the water, even redspines nets are interesting little abilities that make that mini-campaign entertaining to try and puzzle out, and in the end it doesn't come down to micromanagement the way some others do.
I don't think Kingdom Rush Vengeance was a low-quality game but I just feel that had a certain shift of soul that disconnected it from the rest of the series
This may be because iron hide split it’s company to work on iron marines world 3 and vengeance .
Who said its low-quality? Its still great but not as great as the others, the rest has 4.8 on review while vengeance has 4.7 which is incredibly rare to see such high score
@@yuridc1780 its up to interpretation i feel.
True even I felt something offputting. Was it murdering your former allies? A fixation on the old format of the game? IDK what exactly but something was off.
@@kanpuriyakaaphal maybe the art? i don't know, its hard to place.
The whole kingdom rush community is gathered in this single video.
Pretty much. There aren't as many of us as there are for other games, but we do love our Kingdom Rush. In the end, I think most of us stick around for the pure sweet nostalgia from back when KR was first released as a flash game. Ah, those were the days.
We’re a much smaller community then many other fandoms. That’s why we can unite on videos.
@@samwortham2385 yo pfp!!
I'm glad I decided to just purchase frontiers now. I still haven't finish kr1, I can't just imagine how much more hours I'll sunk to play kr. These games are the best
@@samwortham2385 You're right, those were the days.
one of my biggest complaint is the lack of endless level. They offer so many towers with totally different abilities and skills but no endless level to figure out the best combination is just dumb.
Omg I'm glad somebody had the same thought, nobody is mentioning the lack of an endless mode in vengeance
Am not a endless level fan (played them once and never touched them again) but I do see your points
My favorite of the kingdom rush games has to be frontiers, I loved almost all of the towers and I also loved all the crazy shit they pulled with the level design in that game. It felt like the devs were like children playing with their new toy of randomly changing the map on you
True, frontiers was the game to pull the most surprises on me, I had never actually gasped in surprise before I played it
I also agree.KRF was the best KR game for me.
I see you are gentleman as well
I disagreed when he said Frontiers was lazy since they recycled the same tower designs which I disagree since it’s the sequel of course they are going to reuse them
@@kanpuriyakaaphal remember that one surprise executioner in buccaneers den? That was one hell of a moment
I think there should be a Kindom Rush game with a bigger map and hundreds of collectables to keep the game fresh and fun.
They should make a version that combines the original, frontiers and maybe 2 other areas that are on the map that we havent played with lots of enemies, towers, upgrades and maybe some other things.
@@-Stultus- YES. I would pay 2 times more for a KR game with more content in general.
That would be way too difficult for the devs, but deep down we know that's the game we really want
Lemme add to that. A KR game that adds new content and campaigns in the regions shown, but it also is combined with KR and KRF so you can play those levels, and use those heroes.
Wouldn't it be awesome hunting Vez'nan down with Alric?
@@themiller3940 Yes
For me, Vengeance was too slow. There was almost no strategy, just use these specific towers and you're done, instead of having to use different towers for different gimmicks per stage. It falls flat with bosses, as they just aren't as scary as the previous games'
Using different towers for different stage of the game. That's a really wonderful idea.
Not like you really needed strategy for kr1, you just spam Tesla and maybe roots and gg
@@carlosl8372 thats not how it works
@@Max-zo6rv you can literally beat all of kr 1 by spamming Tesla, it's broken af
@@carlosl8372 lord Blackburn beg to differ.
Unpopular opinion but Origins wasn't all that good either, in fact I'd say I prefer Vengeance over it, the dealbreaker reason being that Origins's postgame/mini-campaigns are overall crappy. It had a decent mini-campaign with three levels (Hulking Rage) but everything else is just bad. Bittering Rancor not only rehashes all the Twilight enemies we've already seen numerous times in the campaign, but it's only two levels long with no new music or refreshing scenery. The boss fight was the only good part of it. Forgotten Treasures is better but it's still only two levels long, not to mention Dwaraman Gates feels too similar to Blood Quarry. And Tainted Pit is too easy because it lets you stack all your towers in the same spot. The other big problem with Origins are the tower themselves. Almost none of the towers are significantly affected by enemy armor or magic resistance at all. Both level 4 Barracks deal mostly true damage, Wild Magus is mostly used for the instakill, Arcane Archers deal both physical and magic damage, Golden Longbow mostly instakills. And then there's artillery, with the star upgrade making it bypass physical armors even more than it did before. Even the heroes themselves pack true damage in most cases. High Elven Mages is the only level 4 tower in the game that actually gets affected by magic resistance, and as far as I'm concerned it's unviable and bad just because of that. Gameplay feels shallower because a layer of the gameplay (armor/resistances) is almost non existent in practice, which leads to spammy gameplay. Forest Keepers spam for example trivializes the main campaign because they kill literally everything with true damage spears. Back to Vengeance, can't speak for Impossible or the mini-campaign challenges, but I never really noticed the game becoming luck based at all on Veteran. But the way better mini-campaigns combined with armor/resistances actually affecting the gameplay significantly again makes me prefer Vengeance to Origins tbh.
Thanks for explaning this to me, I have seen other people who disliked origins, but never really understood why. I think the reason why resistances was made less influencual in Origins, is beacuse the game was much faster in nature, and they tried to overwhelm you with numbers, which I like, evendough I can see why you dislike it. However the Impossible difficulty kinda fixed it, when the difficulty also gave enemies a resistence buff, aswell as a health increase. I think the main reason we disagree here, is that we play Kingdom Rush for different reasons, I play it for the challenge, which is why I liked Origins, it brought me more of a challenge than the other 3 games, hence also why I don't dislike the mini campaigns in it, beacuse they were tough with hard boss fights(The beheader kinda got easy over time tho). The only mini campaign that reused to many enemies, for my taste, was the one with the twilight elves, which was a little disappointing, but hey they were fun enemies with good designs, and the difficulty made it up to me. In Vengeance the game became a little luckbased on Impossible without premium content, on a few stages, mainly 19 & 21 for me, and I think it has to do with my playstyle, now that I have thought about it, I normaly quickly jump to a strategy that could work, and rely a lot on playing well with my hero and abilities. Either way it's not a good adition to a strategy game, and I would not like to see it return, in future games.
Oh yeah something I forgot to mention is that the mini campaigns have some good enemy designs, for example the Anurian Chaser, or the one who switches immunity. The boss battles in post game Vengeance did not really live up to that quality, and ended the mini campaigns on a low note for me.
Baj'nimen is a completely trivial bossfight once you know one thing - the enemy spawns are not based on time, but on how far he has passed through the stage. You can stall him at the front with two Bladesingers and he dies in a few minutes without spawning any troops.
I don't know how recently you have played KR1 on Steam, but it has received a few bugfix updates in the last year or so that also make the balance a bit better. I would only day Barbarians and Bertha are underpowered, with all other six towers being very viable.
Frontiers also has better tower balance than Origins. Although Mechas are a bit too powerful in numbers and Templars are basically garbage, the towers are pretty balanced. The mages are underused thanks to poor enemy design, since almost no enemy in the second and third bit of the main campaign has armour. The barracks are also underused mostly thanks to poor enemy design, since almost no enemy necessitates, and way too many enemies have some ability that's anti barracks. It doesn't help that you have Waste Disposal and the Necromancer to stall, both of which aren't as affected by enemy abilities.
Origins completely guts artillery by focusing more on single enemies (see Twilight Elves) and by making other options actually better at crowd control (see Bladesingers, they both provide area damage with Perfect Parry and stall the enemy in place so they'll take damage over a large time period). It also suffers slightly from poor enemy design, where there is only a single enemy in the Hulking Rage mini campaign with armour. High Elven Mage just does not deal enough DPS for a tier 4 mage. I believe it's 43 for a basic mage (compare that to the 55+ that Sorcerer, Arcane and Archmage get, where I take the Sorcerer curse damage over time effect into account). The Sentinels help that somewhat, but they make the tower even more expensive and at that point, you're better off just getting a Wild Magus with instakill. Golden Longbows sound nice in theory, but when prediction of enemy movement sucks in curves and does not account for enemies being blocked, and the projectile takes ages to hit, you're just missing a significant portion of the shots. Hunter's Mark is its saving grace, but even that misses sometimes, since it's also just a normal projectile. Crimson Sentence is some of the worst RNG bullshit in the series. Forest Keepers, especially in mini-campaigns and on Impossible mode, die too quickly, and basically require you to put Bladesingers in front of them to tank damage. That's an issue, because Bladesingers can be used on their own, so they are just more useful overall.
Origins does focus more on hero micro, and the graphics are undoubtedly better. So I wouldn't call it a bad game by any means, but the tower balance is definitely worse than the previous two games.
@@Cozyn3z It's actually quite funny when you think about it, Origins is faster paced and throws more enemies at you than the other games, yet despite that Artillery is at its weakest in that entry. Well I actually think Weirdwood is almost good, his special skills are just overpriced.
@@Shyguymask Well artillery has always been very situational for me, the arch druid is really cool and can be usefull but it's speciel abilities are just too expensive. The Weirdwood is really useful to me, the burning nut upgrade is just too expensive for its long cooldown, but the area stun upgrade is at a sweetspot, its not too overpriced and its especially good for levels with a lot of spiders, if you place him at a central point, upgrade it twice and it can kill all the hatchlings, while stunning the rest, buying it fully is kind of a waste tho.
@@michielhorikx9863 Well every traditional boss fight gets trivial once you know a few things, actually that’s true of the entirety of Kingdom rush, the challenge lies in figuring it out, that why I like Origins a lot, because it tries to combine strategic gameplay as well as mechanical gameplay(Like you said with hero micro) And also a lot of enemy designs encourage this, like the blood ogres, or the spider twilight elves(the one that transforms soldier into another one of themselves) I really like strategy, but I also like skill based gameplay, so a combination is perfect for me.
Regarding the balancing of the games, I completely agree that the balancing of Frontiers is pretty good, aside from the Mecha, but I would argue that the towers are the most unbalanced in the first game, there are 3 towers that dominate the scene, which is Telsas, Rangers and Sorcerers, not only that but the Rangers and sorcerers breaks the game when they are combined, so much so, that you can beat the entire game with those 2, with ease, I did it as a kid on my crappy Iphone 4 I remember, when I was a lot worse at the games, than I am today. Wrath of the forest is on a way too low cooldown, and stalls really well, if you have 2 rangers in the same area, with full wrath of the forest, enemies can literally not move, other than 1 or 2 steps in-between casts, the rest is logical, sorcerers’ lower enemies’ armor so fast that that the rangers can unleash their insane dps on all enemies. The other towers in the game are not bad at all, but those 3 are so overpowered that they fail to compare in most scenarios. Could you beat Origins with a 2-tower combo? Yes, but it would not be easy, if you were to play on the hardest difficulty.
I don’t know what you mean with Artillery being there for crowd control, that has always been the barrack’s job. Crowd control is harmless effects like stalling and stunning, the artillery’s job is to deal splash damage, but still the weird wood can stun enemies for up to 3 seconds in its entire range. The golden longbow is a high risk, high reward tower, and its defiantly not bad, you say that it misses a lot, and yes that’s what archers does, however the closer enemies are to the longbow, the faster it attacks and the less it misses, which I think you forgot about, overall I don’t think the towers fits your playstyle, but if you position it well, and wait to invest in it till you have a high income, then it can be really strong, where the arcane archers are more of a safe choice, and the longbow should be bought sparingly, one is usually enough for one stage. The forest keepers I also think are just as useful as the other barrack, in its own way, Shyguy already said it well. I do agree that the High elven mage and the Arch druid, gets sidelined to much in the game, they do have some uses, but overall are too situational, sylvan curse is useful for boss fights, and the high elven mages sentinels can cover almost a third of the map, so they can be good when 2 exits or paths are close to each other.
Overall balancing 8 different and distinctive towers, who each have 2 or 3 unique abilities is extremely hard to do well, and I think Origins and Frontiers hit pretty close to the mark, you can always restrict yourself, and it doesn’t fundamentally ruin a game, when only 1 or 2 towers are either under- or overpowered.
Forgive the typoes, I did not read it through:)
You forget ro mention that in vengeance, level 3 or lower towers are useless, unlike other kr games, in origins, level 3 barracks are still good in the last level too. Thats a big unbalance, because that means hard start and really really easy ending on each level, so if you manage to survive the first 5 wave, you will most likely win, unlike other kingdom rush games.
This eliminates actual beginning strategies just use all your gold to max out a Swamp thing and boom you win
i cant believe he didnt talk about how there are almost no death sounds or high pitch magical sound effects in the game that added alot to all the other kingdom rush games' atmosphere. the only sound effects i hear is when you upgrade a tower, your hero does something, a tower attacks with a very low pitch silent attack, get a stupid acheavement or when some of your allies block/fight enemies. i like any kingdom rush game for its gameplay but this is something way too noticable for me and it really ruined the experience i got from the game ToT
yeah! It didnt even feel like kingdom rush when there was no ting sound from a mage tower
Imagine hearing a kot of plims plims plims
When you are using spirit mausoleum
The souls change was so off-putting and it almost made me think that the game was hard until i unlocked the mausoleum and the DWAARP ripoff. A point i loved about every other KR game is that the star system actually encourages you to replay the levels. Can't beat a stage? Play previous levels that you haven't 3-starred yet and iron/heroic challenges to get more stars and level up your heroes in the process. In Vengeance if you can't beat a level either you use other loadouts or switch around your skill tree (which isn't something exclusive to Vengeance tbf) but beating previous levels is just completionist bait
I agree with everything you said. The only thing I'd add is that each tower doesn't DIVIDE into multiple tower choices as 4th tier. That RUINS vengeance for me. It creates a tower that's 1 dimensional completely ruining the strategy.
For me it's wasn't an issue, strategy had just been moved to the menu, but it sure makes sense that some people aren't a fan of it. I think it would have worked much better for you to pick between 4th level upgrades, instead of towers. So you would have 2 slots for each of the 4 tower types like before, but you could pick which 2 you went with from the menu.
Your here 😲
Imagine, 20 towers, with 2 paths with 2 or 3 upgrades
It can be done LOL@@rafaelcosta8291
Just need to search for idea@@rafaelcosta8291
11:14 That is some facts right there. I mean seriously people can't respect other opinions, it is called a strategy game for a reason. They would put this over that and when they do, there will be some people against it even tho it is called an OPINION not a fact.
Wow yeah I can see why you agree, the comments on the tier list videos that you make are pretty disapointing. I just dont understand, we all have our playstyles and yet here we have people trashing others opinions.
I sorta agree with that, but what I meant by that statement, was just that people often gets fixated on review scores, which puts their attention away from the criticism and feedback.
@@Cozyn3z I agree, a number out of ten is what dictates if someone will buy/do/play nowadays rather than the actual criticism and praise given to it
"number 4, clash of the olympians" lmao
My biggest problem is that Bone Flingers and Mausoleums are so broken that you can beat most every level just using those two. Frogs are the only things that force you to change strategy
I had sorta the same experience
Hey, the Blazing Gem is broken too. Credit where credit is due, the Blazing Gem basically makes any high health enemy without significant magic resistance meaningless.
@@samwortham2385 nah, the blazing gem doesn't care about magic resist
Facts Lol
I always use these two lmao
The major problem of Vengeance to me, was the tower level balance changed. In the preview 3 games, low level towers generally have a better cost-efficient than high level ones, but in vengeance, this was reversed.
So the balance of the position and tower cost-efficiency was gone - the best strategy would always be finding the best spot to build a tower and max it, then the second best spot...
in the Jokull fight you can turn it to an endless campaign that's just easier than the other ones so far by simply not firing the cannons. You can also increase the difficulty and shoot her 3 times in order to make her go rage mode where she will freeze all towers that she can at once and also shoots 2 spikes to deal damage to your units.
So good. I don’t think RNG is insanely bad. For soul impact it ducks either way mostly lol. Pit lord is awesome though. It should be every 3rd summon with a changed icon. RNG makes a difference for your super hard solo barracks challenge for sure. You nailed this dude!
Thanks:) Yeah RNG is only really bad on some bonus stages, when you play without premium towers and heroes. I played the game a bit with them, and I was able to beat most levels first try lol.
@@Cozyn3z yeah. This game could have been a 10/10 rather than a 5/10
@@therealmorganofficial This game is a random number/10.. Sorry I couldn't resist
I was fine with everything except for the fact they made the challenge modes for the levels unlock even if you didn’t 3-star the level. It took all the fun out of doing the challenge levels imo
honestly this is a very well made video
I miss the days of the weak enemies that came in hordes. It added so much action to the game. These large, slow enemies make the game feel boring and slow, rather than hectic and fun.
I personally enjoyed the game. I've always loved the concept of playing as the villain, and I believe KRV pulled it off greatly. Most towers are reused enemies from other games, which is actually a great decision since you're playing as Vez'nan and it'd make sense to use his minions as towers. And you're making your way through the map, conquering areas and I especially loved the Linirea area, where you fight the units that were on your side in the first game. It's all very well done in my opinion.
Your problems are very real, but despite the problems I managed to enjoy it.
And it isn't Junkworld.
Am I the only one who dislikes the Origin’s artstyle/graphics? Not saying they are bad, i just prefer KR/KRF.
YES
This was a fantastic video. You hit every nail on the head except for a few.
The lore in Vengeance is so messy. People were upset that instead of Ingvar Bearclaw we got Arkuz, the Winter Queen instead of Elora Wintersong, and Bolgur instead of Bolin or Rurin. The entire point of the game was "Vengeance" and visiting old characters again. Instead IH added completely new enemies that the player couldn't care less about. It ruins the entire nostalgia feel that you talked about.
Aside from the bosses, the enemies themselves lacked unique abilities. Most didn't synergize well with eachother, and were simply thrown at the player to give an easy bounty or act as a filler for the wave. Compare this to the entire jungle tribe from KRF that turned weak enemies into major threats. Or the Twilight Elf faction that focused on debuffing the players towers while buffing their allies.
The cherry on top is that IH turned a blind eye to all this. It's incredibly frustrating trying to say an objective truth with it gaining no traction or consideration from the developers. Some heroes so blatantly overpowered (Eiskalt) are considered balanced, and some things so obviously terrible (Crow) are seen as fine. It dwindles down the motivation to continue supporting them in my mind.
With that aside, its interesting that you put the original Kingdom Rush over the rest. It absolutely holds a special place in everyone's hearts as the game that started it all, but people appreciated Frontiers a lot because it was balanced amazingly well. Every tower contributed so much while not being an automatic win button. The unbalanced aspect came from the enemies (Saurian Artillery Spam). Origins' towers felt pretty pathetic to me, the barracks were very strong, and the artillery was nigh useless. It felt as if the entire game was spamming the same tower again and again.
Cheers :)
Thanks! You bring up a great point here about enemy synergy, thats why the anurian campaign felt more engaging, while in the mountain campaign, you where mostly waiting around for the draguers and Frozen hearts to approach you, this combined with enemies having next to no synergy, made it feel boring.
Other reasons why I liked the first game the most, is beacuse I don't view tower balance as something that ruins a game, if it has other great aspects, while the tower balance is far from perfect in the first game, every tower is still very different and they are all extremely fun to use, you can always restrict yourself with not using the overpowered towers, which makes you wanna replay it multiple times. Another reason is something I can not explain on the spot, like I said the game is very dear to me, and something about it just feels really good. It was a difficult task really to rank the first 3 games, they are all very close to eachother on my spectrum, evendough they were ranked.
I'll like to say my piece on the heroes I believe some of them weren't there (bearclaw, Elora, and Bolin and ruin) I believe they weren't around due to as with the first two they are unlocked after beating Vez Nan in the first game so in a weird way might not have met them while I don't know much I doubt Bolin would be a king but more a freelance man with his musket and ruin well he was after vez Nan time so might never have known him as he was also far away from the original map.
But these are my one am thoughts take them with salt if you like
kingdom rush 1 is free on android
Worth S tier
Totally True
The thing I cant help but LOVE about Origins, is Vez'nan as a Playable Hero (Damn he is just MY FAV hero ever, all his powers are spot on with my playstyle) AND THOSE Thunderstrikes, they hit like insta-ARTILLERY rainfire all over the map, its madness
one of the things that i most disliked is the payed towers and...the bossfights being very easy in most cases. I wish a new game to come where we play as frontiers heroes trying to re-conquest the kingdom,with some mechanics from this game like the 5th tower slot and you be able to choose the towers.
poor frontiers heroes they go away kill a god and multiple giant monsters and when they finally come back the first thing they see is that they need to travel away to defeat a treat again
The Airstyle is a downgrade for me, it is a mixture of classic KR look and a more cartoonish look that really drags me off, almost like comedic look, making fun of itself and the previous games, it expands the map but it feels like a twisted version of whay the map used to be as if developers didn't remember what it was like or they did that on purpose
The artstyle has always not been too serious, so I don't understand that part about it making fun of itself, but the other part is fair to say, evendough I like the artstyle a lot.
bruh the artstyle is far superior to the other games
As someone who played every kingdom rush game, in short since its been a while... the pacing felt off, periods of overwhelming strong units, periods of silence and gaps of no mobs or tension in maps, lackluster towers in exchange for more towers, heroes who felt lazy. I honestly wish they'd let those dedicated fans like us earn new heroes through gems from clearing stages, I would replay some what if I got that chance.
edit: this is from a phone user's opinion, I didn't play the games on PC except the free versions but got the bought versions on Iphone. I still like and enjoy all of them, simply this last iteration of Kingdom Rush made me actually look at things with less fondness.
I completely agree with everything you said. I just started playing again and its not nearly as hard as the other. To me it seems like a step back. I really do hope they com out with another kingdom rush game that's fun, challenging, and less rng. I'm fine with the microtransactions but the heroes shouldn't be as strong as they are Xd
Don't know if you agree, but my main issue with the heroes is the hero spell. Having an extra ability that is in many cases overpowered makes the game a lot less interesting. I paid for all the heroes and towers when I got the game because I love Kingdom Rush (I waited for the deal), but Beresad's hero spell fully upgraded is enough to completely take out basically any enemy that comes in numbers using true damage. Even a Draugr on veteran mode at full health is taken out at once. There are many reasons why Boneheart is my favourite hero, and this is one of them.
Very good breakdown. With so many different towers for ones options, I would have thought gameplay would be very fun as you could mix up the style of play with different tower combinations. It appears that is the only positive along with a few other positives, but negatives outweigh it.
It is fun, trying out different towers and coming up with a good strategy, until you got it down and you now remember that this is the part, where you lose a bunch of times, beacuse of no pit lords. Playing it is weird, I really tried to enjoy it, so it kept on going from me having fun, to suddenly me yelling at Ironhide.
I want to like the Orc Shaman tower and the Dark Archer, but while the ideas are neat, their executions are just so weak and useless
Something that could have been AWESOME with the Archer tower would have been a scale like in Origins, that each level yo purchase, adds another archer and therefor, making the shooting flow of arrows faster and also being able to target different enemies at once, reaching 4 archers at level 4 and on the extra options, adding '1 extra archer' a total of 3 times, ending up with a tower of 7 shooters (sounds exagerated I know, but it would be cool to see NEW strategies and unique towers, like barracks with 5 foot soldiers instead of 2. I mean, originaly barracks had 3 soldiers on the first games, and the elvish house had 4 elves that also served as improvised range shooters)
Something similar with towers like the Orc Shaman, that it might be not as powerful as others, but to make it able to summon 'winds' to slow enemies, and the plants that heal your units, poison enemies or something
My opnion on origins is that it's a nice bit of experimentation. The post game was actually hard on veteran, and unlike in other games, hero usage feels strategic and neccassery instead of trivialising. Tower choice is a bit silly when some are useless most of the time, but I liked the departure from tradition.
Too many gimmicks in Vengeance like tapping laser crystals etc. Other games in the series had this as an extra like the poisoned mushrooms but in Vengeance if you don’t use them you’re basically screwed. I prefer to focus on tower building. Also I thought there were way too many towers - just adapt the basics! And finally it was waaaaaaaaay too easy apart from the added campaigns.
Story wise, the game feels like a necessary entry. I like it in that regard.
I think overall the best td game I’ve ever played is btd6, but kingdom rush frontiers and origins are the best nostalgic td games for me then btd5, however the game I have the most nostalgic connection to is fieldrunners though I’m not sure how well it would hold up
I dont thing vengance is that bad...you are right about bonus levels,bosses are very similiar and dragons are OP (also on mobile you have to pay for dragons and 2 OP towers what makes it more PTW)...but everybody is diffrent...for example my favourite is KRF because for me it has most cool looking enemies and bosses (vampires,leviathan and fishes,lizards,aliens)
Origins my favorite game: the story, the mini comics, the easter eggs, the unique heroes, the towers, and most of enemies are intriguing to fight.
Kingdom rush original is my second favorite: my main complaint about this game is that it was too easy with the tesla and the only hard level for me was the Moloch one but it was a great start.
Loved the video, you explained everything really well and I pretty much am in agreement with you on every point you mentioned.
I agree that the game desperately needs a middle ground. I find myself having such a hard time trying to clear stages with free towers and heroes (i.e Asra) due to the overreliance on RNG. But on the other hand, once I queue in with heroes like Eiskalt I just find myself bulldozing through the stages. The game needs a more accessible option to play it more casually without being fucked by RNG, and the souls upgrade system isn't helping either.
Another main gripe I have is the towers. I get the point about wanting to break away from the traditional 4 tower 2 pathways style of the game, but IMO when you only get to choose FIVE towers for a whole round, it leaves so much to be desired in decision making about which towers to build and where you should build it. Downgrading from 8 to 5 choices is a huge turnoff for me.
Overall it's still a good game, but it didn't give me the adrenaline I felt when I was playing other games of the series.
Big Thank:)
I actually really liked only having 5 tower spots, it made you think a lot more about strategy, and which towers where the most optimal for each paticular stage, if you had 6 or more spots, that would kinda defeat the purpose of the new system, it kept me engaged, when I really hated the game from the RNG. But maybe a system with 4 basic towers, who each had 2 spots for 4th level upgrades, and then the same tower selection just with 4th level upgrades instead, could work better.
On Point, although calling it mediocre TBH is probably too much. I have to say though, from all the installments, I agree that this one is the weakest: few challenging levels (2), monetization and some bugs (seen for the first time in the series) would be the main deterrents for being considered a worthy successor.
I didn't think it was all that bad. I definitely agree with your opinion on bosses. I also felt called out every time you said the game is easy because I lost to the first boss on my first attempt. EDIT: YOU GET ALL SOULS NO MATTER THE LIVES. WOULD'VE HELPED IF I KNEW THAT EARLIER😀😀😀😀. Also it kinda sucked when I found out you don't get more stars for heroic and iron challenges.
The first boss is the hardest one for sure, so no need to feel bad, I think he got me once too, but I can't remember. Yeah, the whole thing with the stars and souls was one strange decision.
IMO the games go KRF, KRV, KR, KRO
Kingdom rush frontiers is my favourite of the bunch because I think the towers are the most fun to play with and it has a better hero system than kingdom rush. Kingdom rush vengeance is pretty much equal with kingdom rush but I think it’s just a little bit better because of the better hero system and I really like the more specialized towers. Kingdom rush is the original and has no real flaws (although kingdom rush frontiers is definitely harder), but I can’t say the same for origins. I felt origins to be a little lacking and the artillery became basically useless. I also think kingdom rush frontiers is the hardest because the first jungle level has a very sharp difficult curve compared to the desert levels. I won’t say anything for the Saurian levels because I haven’t played those levels in a while and I just recently redownloaded krf
"Origins is the best Kingdom Rush game because the towers are WAY more balanced."
Artillery is underpowered on most levels in that game. Arcane Archers have 3 amazing abilities (counting the innate ability that causes their basic attacks to reduce magic resistance) that cover all their weaknesses, making them the best tower in the game by a mile.
Origins is still my favorite in the series, but balanced it is not.
Best KRV review sir, love it. Totally agree with your opinion especially the RNG thing. Tower defense should be a strategy game and RNG system such you mentioned are really fucked up the game. Great content
There's a lot of good points here but I don't think it's true at all that you need to rely on luck when using free heroes/towers on Impossible, there's plenty of reliable strategies to go for that work even if you get bad rolls.
Yeah, I can see a lot of room for improvement on my strategies too, but you don't have detailed knowledge of the game right of the bat, so you would most likely have to rely a little on luck to get through the first time. Specificly Level 19 and 21 are the levels that I was refering to. It is definatly possible to beat levels without having the RNG upgrades, but I tried to give a more objective view of the game, if you get what I'm saying.
You nailed it: the game was too easy. I didn't struggle during the main campaign at all, even on the harder difficulties.
I didn't played it yet and the only reason why is because I don't want to play as villains.
I think the problem is that Iron Hide tried to cater to people who are not their real fans and who just want an easy TD game like bloons. I liked vengence overall but thought it was lacking in some regards and wish it was a little harder. If you go look at all the the negative reviews on kingdom rush games they are basically everything that you brought up as a negative. The mobile version is not buggy at all in my experience
I think you are viewing the rng incorrectly. The way to think of something like this is always plan for what will happen if you roll bad dice EVERY single time. NEVER build around the RNG with the idea that it's going to bless you. The added RNG is not your friend. It is an enemy that must be accounted for. If your strategy cannot survive bad luck, it's a strategy that needs to be revised. RNG increases the game's difficulty and decreases predictability. I am fine with both.
The one thing I do agree on is that I don't like that some of the most expensive upgrades are prayers to RNG Jesus. Lilith was a pay-to-play character from one of the older games and is perhaps the single greatest embodiment I've seen of this issue with the game overvaluing strong luck-based abilities. Lilith was an expensive character that was intended to be top tier with her OP RNG abilities but the developers balanced her based on her best-case scenario, not her worst, and she was trash because of it. In Vengeance, the small chance your hero will instantly respawn is a good example of a WAY overpriced RNG-based skill which is exactly why I purchased it last.
I do agree with the assessment that the bosses are lackluster and the waves don't come quick enough. Also, the way they decoupled the points you can spend from the number of stars you earn is a huge pet peeve of mine.
Remember how in the old games when u had finally cleared all the waves there was a silence and then a boss fight music and ur fingers would get sweaty cuz u didnt know what to expect[ honorable mention the cerberus from the 1st game] or even if u knew u would still get nervous cuz u didnt wanna fail again just because the game was that hard and required stratigical thinking only for vengeance to take all these aspects that made the game unique and fun to play to just throw them away its just sad I hope they fix things up with their next release
I personally like this more than Origins because I sometimes just forget Origins exists it just doesn't feel like a kingdom rush game emotionally
Origins was so easy to me. I don't think I died at all
I dont mean to sound like a braggart but. Ive never had issues with Centipede boy in KRO. Im the same way with Sarlegaz in the first KR. I do however have a ton of difficulty with KRV post game bosses, like more than other people seem to do.
In my opinion also, KRVs artstyle is a bit too different for some of the enemies for me to really look at it the same as other Kr games. I still dont regret buying it tho
To be fair, I think it’s an excellent stand alone TD game. I think we’ve been spoilt with the original and especially Frontiers. If Vengeance had been released by a different studio, we’d be raving about it. Fingers crossed they make another one soon and don’t put it on Apple Arcade. Freedom!
what is the "premium towers"?
honestly my biggest criticism is the lore. I really didn't like that the story of this one just took back all the stuff you did in game one. but aside from that and some tower balancing issues I absolutely loved it. I got the steam version, and sure, some levels are just won by using the good towers. but I still found myself enjoying them a lot. the strategy variations just really call to me
Well, now Kingdom Rush is essentially over. They switched to a turn based RPG Format. "Legends". For me its the end, unless they go on to refresh the TD Defense series. Making the game exclusive to Apple, is also a slap in the face.
I still can’t get over the fact that they didn’t add a monster encyclopedia for mobile
Found your channel through the barracks only challenge videos. You should make more vids similar to them, they were hilarious. Keep up the great content
Thanks your support means a lot. There is going to be more of that, with time!
In My opinion, the RNG elements did not make much of a difference since because they are RNG you should not rely on them so then they are not useful nor detrimental most of the time in this game. The difficulty did spike at times but over I felt a steady increase. I never felt forced to buy anything even though Impossible difficulty is... well almost impossible starting from the beginning. The mini-campaigns were lackluster in terms of bosses but I overall felt an improvement. In my opinion, vengeance is slightly worse than origins but better than the first and second kingdom rush. I feel as though the changes made were for the sake of not doing the same thing over and over again in terms of upgrades and other things although I do hope they remove the RNG elemts.
I wonder how different the game would be if they had about the same first three towers but the got three unique towers in the higher levels like
Archer towers is basically the defaultish but we get three specialist towers in the fourth instead of just two
On second thought, idk if it would be a huge difference especially cause lower tier towers are bad anyways
i played the game till the mines then got shit on by the first real boss the engineer dude and quit and never came back
I think frontiers is the most balanced game of all, not origins, sorry.
I was comparing balance between the first game and origins, and yes Frontiers is the most balanced, as far as towers goes.
@@Cozyn3z battlemecha wasp missiles are build different tho
Heroes are more balanced in origins though to be fair.
I noticed (and all of you most likely) that they made 11 bosses in kingdom rush 1 and every other one has only 6. Kingdom rush 1 is still fun to replay even after replaying it 10 times just because of the well made levels towers enemies and bosses i remember playing it so many times as a kid and i also remember going to sites that let you have premium content like the lightning spell and having skins for reinforcments and having +1 reinforcment so instead of 2 there were 3 and also getting all the heroes, kingdom rush 1 is the best and will be the better than any other version of kingdom rush just because of how much effort they put into it the first one in my opinion.
personally it’s my favourite of the series, i felt the load out crafting with the towers was super engaging and the enemy and level mechanics were more creative and fun
my biggest fear is that Ironhide would turn into greedy like a lot of game company fall for.I mean that the heroes in game is fine for me cause it already happen since the first game,but paid towers?Come on! I actually fine with it,but making them very broken proofs even more that the game is like pay to win.I wish Ironhide reduced the microtransaction and RNG because i think people don't mind make the app game expensive because the game is very good just like you said.I just don't want my favourite game company from my childhood (Flash games) fall from grace.
Yeah I really hope this is a one off, if they need to earn more money for future projects, just increase the price, or make the game more difficult, to encourage more in app purchases. I didn't play it much on my phone, but it felt like they tried to frustrate you, so phone players would buy more towers and heroes.
I like vengeance, it is my 2nd favourite behind the original kingdom rush, vengeance is TOO slow and seems to go on tough but fewer enemies which completely removes the vibe of kingdom rush series, and since vengeance is expandable im expecting new things over the years that will drastically improve the game, im thinking of new modes like "rush" where enemies or waves spawn 50% faster, and a mode that reverts enemies back to swarmy ones like the enemies in the rest of the 3 games and still affected by difficulty, new spells and new towers and heroes that is very interesting and powerful, like a hero that becomes better the lower its hp gets, im thinking of an upgrade option for reinforcements where instead of 2 demons its just a pit lord?, enemies are supposed to be slow and few but tougher but that just single handedly removed the essence of kingdom rush games, and with the powerful tower and heroes those tough enemies are weak and also making the game very boring, they must be buffed and impossible difficulty is not enough, bosses don't have any special abilities that make them stand among others other than basic abilities that you will expect by their looks and vengeance is the only game i feel where the game design expect the bosses to be defeated other than a real big threat that can end a level like on the other 3, also again towers are not balance bone flingers are supposed to perform 2 roles the barrack and archer but they perform it even better than most real barracks and archers, the goblirang idea looks very powerful an archer that can hit ALL enemies in its path TWICE but in vengeance where enemies are fewer and tougher makes them weak, eiskalt is just supposed to support you by slowing many enemies down giving you time but becomes the most overpowered hero in the ENTIRE FRANCHISE, shadow archers are supposed to be starter tower yet pretty pricey when you are just a starter while also having 2 near useless abilities, and for sake the ENCYCLOPEDIA! Also endless mode is still missing in vengeance and i hope it to be just a thing that can keep you still having FUN on the game after completing it other than multiple lanes and challenge that becomes near impossible beyond wave 50, speaking of fun SANDBOX on kingdom rushes? Anyone?
My only issues with it are no endless modes, unfair tower placements, and the fact that you have to buy it to get it on your phone.
My favorites of kingdom rush vengeance are the diverse towers and the Campaign Final boss where you have to face 3 paragons while making sure the arch demon still lives.
Luckily i downloaded a hacked
version of Kingdom rush vengeance on happy mod in mobile.
Great video! Though I agree with most of what you say, I don't think the tower system change was a good idea. Outside of it being more similar to other TD games due to the linear leveling, the strategic versatility per level is effectively decreased due to being able to use less towers, and some of the towers, especially the mages, have a case of overlapping roles.
And as a tester for the games, I can explain why the game is relatively buggy. Outside of the other games being out for longer, the Android/Steam versions (iOS notably excluded) are actively bugfixed by the developer (not Ironhide, but a contractor). Furthermore, Vengeance runs on a different engine when compared to those Android/Steam versions, which appears to be noticeably more buggy than the Love engine used by the other games on Android/Steam.
For me the best ones are the first kingdom rush and kingdom rush frontiers cause are the most nostalgic for me, i keep playing today for complete 100% all the games.
I agree with your opinion on jokull junior, as he is honestly disgustingly strong with his high damage and FULL BOARD FREEZE, and I also see your points on challenge, but that aside vengeance is better than other games for once reason, the Anurian theme slaps and you can’t change my mind about that
The Jokulls nest bossfight wasn't that hard for me, but yeah in hindsight it can be a bit boring, considering the amount of potential it had. The Anurian mini campaign was the best part of game, and the music is great aswell, it is clear that Bruno Boselli composed those ones.
@@Cozyn3z Yeah the jokull fight was lame, but eiskalt is just stupidly broken, like more broken than the swamp thing, and don’t get me started on that thing
I agree with a lot of it. I didn’t like that it didn’t show you if you beat it on harder modes, so like why? It didn’t matter if I beat it on casual or impossible
The one thing i disliked about origins is That the didn't make a dragon boss because you see one on the map
I actually like vengeance more then frontiers. But it is just for making a greater twist on the formula. Frontiers plays too much like the original.
True
Id like to see a kingdom rush game that is updated and adds new maps, heros, and balance updates throughout time. This way it keeps the game fun and fresh and can fix problems that they don’t realize when they release the game
Great video. Pretty much agree with everything and you said it so well and concisely. I also feel you should add that unlike the previous game, you can only place 5 different towers which is 3 less than there used to be, essentially reducing the variety you have to play with within the 15 or so mins of a single level.
(Copying a reply, beacuse my opinion on the tower system remains the same)
I actually really liked only having 5 tower spots, it made you think a lot more about strategy, and which towers where the most optimal for each paticular stage, if you had 6 or more spots, that would kinda defeat the purpose of the new system. Maybe a system with 4 basic towers, who each had 2 spots for 4th level upgrades, and then the same tower selection just with 4th level upgrades instead, could work better.
@@Cozyn3z I still miss having branching paths. Maybe they could've made tier 4s still branch since a lot of them look like they want to anyway (melee and ranged harrasers, support and damage shamans etc)
@@epser5842 I feel this was a test game in a way for something new and didn't do to much to fast.
1 am comment take with salt if you wish but bone flingers are fun I like making themed stuff haunted tower theme quite fun
While I liked vengeance, the game just felt too spam the starting mage towers middle ability for me. The only level I had to try more than once was the first boss level until I figured out the mage strat and I then cruised to the end
I like this game above all other KR games because I can finally play in the "villain" perspective.
They have such an amazing concept, playing as the enemy, using the villain’s arsenal while you fight off basically against familiar faces.
I personally enjoyed it, but I can see why kingdom rush veterans have problems with the game!
This game looks greater than any other of the previews games, i give them that! But it has a lot of issues.. It never felt like a challenge to me. It was like easy mode. Frontiers is still my fav game of the series.
I feel like you didn't stress enough how horrible the new tower system was for players who weren't willing to pay for the premium ones, they almost halved the amount of choice you have between towers in a game (and therefore half the strategy element) and removed the rewarding feeling of finally upgrading to level 4 and getting that shift in dynamic and power spike, also the campaign was way too short (maybe that's a result of it's easiness).
definetly even though in graphics is by far the best, the lack of endless mode, enciclopedia, more maps and having the 50% of the game content as DLC kill this game
is a shame cuz gameplay wise it could be the best using the tower options
Here’s my biggest complaints about this game
1. Most levels, excluding the Linirea levels, didn’t really have anything special in them. Stuff like recruiting the Sasquatch in the first game, starting with dwarve towers in frontiers, and getting Malik as a bonus hero in origins was my favorite part of those games, but the first two campaigns had barely any of that. Also, the environment stays the exact same in most levels, and just feels disconnected- there were no fire gnolls or witch doctors creating new paths mid-level or anything like that. Most bosses didn’t really do anything to negatively effect you mid-level, either; they just kinda waited there until the final wave.
2. The spells matter WAY to much. It’s hardly even a tower defense game in the way that the previous games were- on most harder levels, the only viable strategy is to stall until your soul impact or demons recharge.
3. Annoying basic enemies. The draugrs, green skeletons, and anurians all have high health, magic resistance, and armor despite being the most common enemies. It really discourages playing with magic towers on the snow levels, physical units on anurian levels, etc. It’s much more satisfying to take out tons of low-health, no armor enemies than to slowly chip away at a few, high-health ones.
4. Horrible post-campaigns. Not a single one of them had any special towers or cool bosses. Nothing to spice up the gameplay in them, all it was was some new enemies and an average boss.
5. Bad map layout. It feels like every other level is just micromanaging between two or three different, disconnected routes. Some of the most fun moments in the other games were building tons of strong towers at choke points, but there really weren’t any opportunities for doing that in this game.
THe thing I hate the most is that you can't see at what difficulty you've beaten the game in. Aswel as only having one save and and just lack of QoL perks that are there in other games. I also would've loved "Reversal" minigame for each map. One where you send out troops and the computer puts towers to counter. Would've been a fun and an expirement for Ironhide. Also they stopped updating the game too soon. No Endless ):
honestly?
the art style, despite being so much better, and musteve taken MUCH, much longer and effort..
I liked the old art style more.
Well it had to be changed a little anyway, for example the artstyle in origins fits the setting and timeline, it looks ancient
@@Cozyn3z oh yes of course, but it still looked way closer to the original then vengeance did.
@@buzzlightyearpfp7641 yeah, It looks less like a comic book now, and more cartony, but I like it, it has turned into its own thing.
I never thought Kingdom Rush Vengeance was mediocre, which isn't something Kingdom Rush is known for. Granted, it's not bad from an indie game standpoint, but it's still lacking.
And I agree with the mini-campaign bosses. They could've been a lot more creative.
For example, King Pollyx could've involve tons of teleporting that has him sometimes move backwards from near the end, forcing the last stand towers to take initiative. The Winter Queen would have the players grind cash from her minions to pay to use a special tower that's the only thing that can harm her. And The Ancient Ghosts could've fused into a mega-boss as a last resort, forcing the usage of the Haunted Gems.
When you compare it to what has come before it, it is pretty mediocre, but it still has some good qualities.
The most fun I had with the bossfights was when Polyx said the "I'm froggin' angry" line. Good ideas, I would have been fine with 1 or 2 of the bossfights being traditional, as long as they where a little difficult, they could have just done it like in the main campaign, some innovative and some traditional.
@@Cozyn3z exactly
The fact Veznan is not a playable hero makes me sad. :(
The first kingdom rush had the best towers imo.
Frontiers imo had the best towers. But first game had the best bonus levels
I prefer the old tower selection system. You can access all your towers (once unlocked) at any time. No need to choose wich ones you want everytime you start a level. Its annoying. Also, it seems like there is few sounds, game is too quiet. And (infernal) mage tower feels so weak shooting those tiny little fire balls with no impact.
A bit late but the fact that you can 1 shot the boss with power just take away the fun
Not gonna lie I never found back the pleasure that I had playing frontiers and classic even in origins
I'm kinda hurt since I found the after campaign levels nearly extremely hard, particularly the frogs, whereas I was able to beat origins' levels nearly without any difficulty. Most likely just me though
5:27 The pit lord basically is a combination of every imp upgrade:Explosion on death,ranged attack,good at melee, and really tanky.
He's just slower
but yeah not being able to take advantage of a privelege.
so I would like him to be an option the works for both imp trees:
1) if both of your imps last their entire duration without dying, a pit lord willjbe added to the second batch(game only checks if the pit lord hasn't been already summoned)
2) If both die, immidetly summon a pit lord, the pit lords landing deals AOE magic damage, but he wont be summonible/applible next time(if your reindorcements are ready the game wont check to give you a pit lord, until after that batch.)
3)if only one dies the entire way, have a fire pit left behind(deals 60 true damage once and pulls enemies inside maximum of 3).
The first one is if your using the ranged imps for dps, the next one gains even more.
The Second to for defense, having two tanks on top of their explosions with now added two more and one more tank, I believe it becomes a "you can barely pass" option.
The third is like the one's summoning the imps are asking "are things going Down or were ok?" so they just leave a fire pit behind just incase.
Unpopular opinion: Iron marines is the best game.
Haha! I really liked it too
Thats sucks dude it has too little replayability
@@Kamotegsg And the kingdom rush games do?
While i do agree with some of your points,the rng is a bit annoying,at least on pc,this is my fav one yet out of all of em.
YES! The enemies in vengeance was SO DAMN SLOW. So much so that it feels like a drag to replay a level to get 3 stars or aim for a higher difficulty. Most of the times the only reason I would even replay a level is when wave 13-15/15 was suddenly harder compared to other waves and you would have to play the level again.
Bit late to this but I do think you are spot on for the positives and the negatives and this is what Ironhide should build on for a 5th Kingdom Rush Game!!!!!!!
Origins is definitely way harder but I think the multiple different towers idea for Vengance was much better then the 8 in the other games!!
The more towers the better!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (free though)
for me personally, i loved this WAY more then any other kingdom rush game
Ah yes,nothing like making the last game in the series (for now) be about the main villain bassicly killing all your heroes.
Still prefer it over kingdom rush frontiers
There are actually no slow enemies in Origins at all. The only one is the Twilight Golem, which gets slower the more its damaged, however even that enemy starts at fast movement speed :D