Recent reviews by HandOfKane

Kingdom Rush is a Tower Defense game first released as a flash game in 2011, but later ported to Steam and mobile. The game has the standard, familiar TD objective of "Prevent the enemies from crossing the finish line! If you let too many through, then you lose!" but with several ideas and features that keep it shining and standing out from the rest of the sub-genre.

There are 4 standard tower archetypes in the game: the familiar Archer tower, which has a high ROF but does low damage, Barracks, which trains soldiers that stand on the track and physically block your enemies, Mage towers, which are like Archers with a slower ROF, more damage, and armor-piercing shots, and Artillery, which has great splash damage but a very slow ROF and low accuracy. All hae a role to fill, though you'll often get frustrated at the quicky soldier AI, which will often make them stare into space while ranged enemies pelt them with arrows. All of the towers start out basic, but eventually you'll unlock upgrades and speciaizations, with cool special abilities. You'll be able to do things like upgrade your Archers to poison enemies, Artillery to shoot chain lightning, Mages to summon rock golems, etc.

One of the great things about Kingdom Rush it that it actually utilizes the environment in its levels, rather than just giving you a curvy road with an empty field. One level has friendly paladins helping you out. Another has a secret sasquatch you can free. Yet another has a tower where you can hire elven archers. This all adds depth to a sub-genre seen by some to be derivative and stagnant.

The porting job from browser to Steam is a mixed bag. The screen is much bigger, and heroes (including 3 not present in the flash version) are unlocked from the start, rather than having to spend stars to access them. However, there is some sloppiness. You can't look up monsters in teh beastiary during a match, for instance. The game still doesn't describe heroes' abilities other then their name. And one special tower on one of the boss stages, the Sunray Tower, is weirdly missing.

One problem is that there is no way to change target priority on your towers or focus a specific target. There's no way to tell your Artillery to fire on the clump of enemies your soldiers are holding back, instead of that one weak goblin that happened to run ahead. There's no way to tell your Mages to focus on the heavily armored enemies instead of the heavily magic-resistant ones. And you can't tell your Archers and Mages to focus on the flying enemies that your Barracks and Artillery can't handle, rather than the weak ground enemies that they can. Why suck a standard TD feature is missing is rather puzzling.

Once you've beaten a stage with the highest rating (3 stars, from having little to no leaks) you can replay the stage in additional challenges. Unfortunately, one of these is Kingdom Rush's biggest problem: the Heroic challenge. The challenge pits you off against 6 mega-waves in sudden-death mode while disabling most of your high-level upgrades and (usually) your heores as well. However, this mode is rather poorly balanced. Failing because the game started the countdown for the next wave while half of the previous wave isn't even on the map yet, because you didn't have the money to upgrade your towers to take on the much tougher early waves, or because the game spammed waves of wulfs and worgs at you, which are too numerous for your soldiers to block and too fast for your artillery to effectively clear out, is not fun nor a challenge. It's just the game saying, "Hey, try to do everything at once with only the 1000 gold we gave you! If you can't, then well, it just sucks to be you! BTW, you know all those Barracks and Artillery you built for said mega-runner wave? Well, the next wave is flying enemies. Have fun!!!!" Ugh.

The Iron challenges, a one mega-wave variant of the above challenge, OTOH, are very well done. The game is much more generouswith your starting cash while starting you off with some towers already on the field. It also disables some tower types, which at least gives you some sort of hint about waht strategy to shoot for.

Kingdom Rush is still a very well-done TD, which innovates and shines enough to be a lot of fun. It is definitly worth a buy.

• Very creative heroes and towers
  
• Allows more player interactivity and control than other TDs
  
• Several different types of enemies that require strategic depth
  
• Lots of bonus stages
  
• Uses the environment in its levels, rather than the generic "road with an empty field" terrain

• Some mildly annoying AI and other quirks
  
• No way to change target priority or focus targets
  
• Heroic challenges aren't fun

Overall rating: 9.0/10 (Superb)