[h1][b] TLDR: Classic tower defense done right. Good depth, engaging active abilities, and tons of content, even if one enemy slipping through after a 30-minute run will make you want to flip a table.
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[h1]PROS: [/h1]
➕Good progression with towers and heroes
➕Flexible difficulty - ranges from very easy to incredibly challenging, yet fair
➕Classic TD gameplay
[h1]NEUTRALS: [/h1]
🔹Could really use statistics/online component
🔹Story isn’t great, but it is a TD game, i.e not a genre known to have deep stories
[h1]CONS: [/h1]
➖Having a single enemy get through after 30-minute run can be very frustrating
➖Often “Trial-and-error” gameplay - failing on later waves to learn the enemy routing leads to lots of time being wasted on failed runs
[h1] [b] Content (Game world/Narrative) – [5/10] [/b] [/h1]
The game world consists of various 2D maps of different biomes - forests, snow, and mountainous terrain. There is no exploration and the occasional interaction where a player can click on sheep to explode (lol). Otherwise, the levels and world in general don’t seem to be anything special.
There isn’t much narrative here other than “Stop the invasion!” It seems to be a typical good vs. evil story that’s told entirely through the text before entering a round. The story is simple, present, but not the focus.
[h1][b] Gameplay (Mechanics/Difficulty) – [7/10] [/b] [/h1]
There’s some excellent mechanics here that truly showcase classic TD gameplay.
There are only 4 towers, but each one has a different upgrade path for the final upgrade. They offer unique skills and playstyle.
The player has some good interaction too through three main skills - a long cooldown high damage attack, a short cooldown troop deployment, and an actively controlled hero troop. I love all of these abilities, and it really allows the player to strategize on the fly to combat specific lanes that need help. Also, the heroes are really cool with lots of different options, it’s just a shame you can’t use them on the harder difficulties.
The gameplay loop consists of beating stages to unlock stars to then fill out a simplified talent tree that empowers you to complete harder difficulties.
There are lots of difficulty options here. Aside from the typical easy/medium/hard, there’s also a Heroic and Iron modes. These fundamentally change the gameplay style by offering restrictions and push the player tactics to the limit in optimizing towers vs enemy encounters. Some of these I found fun, but others can be frustrating as its dependent on building your defenses to counter certain enemies in certain lanes, which can lead to multiple failed runs until you figure out the exact combination that works. Not the worst outcome, but I found it super annoying to have a single enemy get through and insta-fail me on wave 15 out of 17, so there goes 30 minutes gone.
[h1] [b] Graphics (Quality/Technical) – [7/10] [/b] [/h1]
The graphics are simple, but still look good. I’d say this is PS2-era quality, but definitely HD.
On the technical side, there aren’t many graphical options, but still the game ran perfect for me with no issues. I didn’t notice any bugs.
1440p @ 240hz | installed on SSD
[h1] [b] Audio – [6/10] [/b] [/h1]
Audio is okay. The music isn’t noteworthy, but it’s there.
There’s small voice acting with simple lines from heroes and units. Honestly though, the same lines can get repetitive.
[h1] [b] Replay Factor (Longevity) – [5/10] [/b] [/h1]
Okay replay value. I’ve completed the main story within 7 hours and all time after that is spent on the post-campaign levels and Heroic/Iron difficulty runs. As of 15 hours I’ve accumulated around 60 stars out of 130(!), so it seems like there’s more content to do.
The game could use some sort of online component like Bloons TD6 has. I would love to see stats or rankins somewhere.
[h1] [b] Final Verdict – [7/10] [/b] [/h1]
Kingdom Rush (KR) is as classic of a tower defense game as you can get. KR sits alongside the greats like Plants Vs. Zombies in its both simple, yet deep and engaging gameplay.
KR has only four types of base towers, but with specializations, reinforcements, heroes, and a fireball has some good active playing that adds some nice spice to a normally somewhat idle genre. Add in a ton of levels, each with three play variants, and you’ve got a lot of content to play through. I enjoy the variety and gameplay of building up my towers to take on the ever-growing waves.
I think KR does have some room for improvement though. Here are some of the things I’d want to see in future versions:
Better story/writing
Stats/Online component
Better talent tree
More towers
My biggest frustration comes from some of the longer runs being around ~20-30 minutes and having a single small enemy get through your lines, then having to redo the entire run. The higher difficulties only have a single life point, meaning only one enemy unit can get through, and to even get to those higher runs, you have to have a perfect run anyway. This can lead to a lot of min/maxing and having only optimal tower placements allowing for a win.
Overall, I definitely recommend Kingdom Rush. It’s a really fun game that has excellent tower defense gameplay, but not that much else.
[h1] [b] Recommend? (Price) [Y/N] [/b] [/h1]
[h1]Yes[/h1]
$10 base price is good for the amount of content. A historical low of $2 makes this a MUST buy.
You can find my curator page here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Synik_GR
