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Your current strategic depth is that I can choose one tower and just finish the whole game with it, not to mention diluting the core gameplay of tower defence into hero focused combat...
Also there are quite a few towers that feel weak/useless - how is this strategic depth? We should have less tower but ones that offer meaningful/hard choices on what to go with.
The game has some realy nice ideas but is held back but it's simplicity tbh. The other modes only going until round 6 for example is also not great as you never get to actually upgrade enough towers and their abilities.
Im a bloons andy and I love all the options and complexity the game has and I'd like to see more of that in this game aswell.
I would honestly assume the reason we only got 2 abilities is to cater more towards a younger audience on mobile who are easier targeted by simple games that are easy to learn. Unfortunately this game falls very short and doesn't give a lot of room for player decisions.
Then you've made a mistake, because it achieved the exact opposite. Three upgrades added more uniqueness, not less. It also added strategical depth, because you couldn't always afford to take all 3 upgrades fully, so you had to make choices, and that's what strategy is. Less choices to make = less strategic depth.
To prove a point, here's my look at KRV towers & if having 3 upgrades on every tower actually led to a better or at least net neutral experience:
-Shadow Archer has a "Mark" debuff and an instakill at the same time, which don't mesh well together, and who can forget about the awful crow? One of these skills could be removed and Shadow Archer would still be around the same.
-Orc Warriors only has stats upgrades. One of them is for damage, one of them is for survivability and the third one does both. So there are technically two damage upgrades and two survivability upgrades on the same tower, so if it was condensed into just two upgrades for each aspect there wouldn't really be a loss.
-Infernal Mage has an upgrade for reducing enemy armor/resistance, but will proceed to teleport the enemies away from your chokepoint before your other towers can hit the vulnerable enemies. But hey, three upgrades adds so much value, right?
-Rocket Riders upgrades just threw in random stuff as upgrades that don't really synergize with each other in any meaningful ways. Would be better if one of these upgrades was removed and the remaining two were more focused on so that the tower would be closer to having a specific niche.
-Dark Knights cannot decide on if they want to instakill enemies or wear them down with Thorns/Reflect damage.
-Melting Furnace's Abrasive Heat upgrade feels like it was just slapped on for the sake of it. Do you want to position Melting furnace on a curve or to buff your towers? These two aspects don't mesh well together and there wouldn't really be a big loss with that upgrade removed.
-No issues with Mausoleum I guess
-Goblinrangs's Angry Bees upgrade is kind of filler and doesn't add much to the tower when it already establishes itself as throwing boomerangs for days. The boomerangs are why you're using the tower, and both damage and crowd control upgrades are included in those boomerangs already.
-No issues with Bone Flingers
-Twilight Harassers don't need Fury of the Twilight, not only are they mainly used to spam arrrows at the enemy but they have Backstab to improve survivability at close-range combat anyway. Remove that upgrade and nothing really changes.
-Orc Shaman doesn't know what it wants to be as a whole. Similar to Rocket Riders they slapped a bunch of different things together and called it a new tower. I don't hate it but it's not really a highlight.
-Grim Cemetery is fine
-Rotten Forest is awesome actually
-Ignis Altar is fine
-Deep Devil Reef's net throw is stupid and doesn't fit the tower at all, if anything it work against it because the trapped enemy will not be blocked by soldiers nor will it be targeted by the magic portion of the tower.
-Shaolin Temple by itself is creative enough, but the upgrades not so much. Generic lone unit summon that doesn't really add to the tower's concept, and simple gold-collection upgrade. Could have been better if either these two upgrades were replaced by a better one that meshes with the tower better, or if one of them is removed and the other is fleshed out more.
-Blazing Gem contradicts itself. Does it want to kill enemies through sheer consistent DPS, or does it want to insta-kill them? These two things work against each other. Remove Destructo-Ray.
-Wicked Sisters is fine
-Swamp Thing's only really important upgrade is Binding Liquid. The other two are situational at best, at least Carnivore is. I don't want to use Melee mode to kill weaker enemies to heal my Swamp Thing instead of just having it continously throw high damage stunning projectiles from afar. At least "Smash!" makes sense if you want to kill a high HP non-boss target. Remove Carnivore especially considering you can just retreat back into ranged mode if its HP gets low.
-Goblin War Zeppelin's Paratroopers upgrade is a nothing-upgrade and nothing would really change if it was just removed. it's practically filler especially considering that thing is the last reason you're using the tower.
So yeah, as a whole, KRA making level 4 towers focus more on two upgrades is a good thing, at least compared to IronHide's execution of Vengeance when level 4 towers had three upgrades.
The original trilogy had only Barracks get 3 upgrades per towers, and guess what? Most of those towers had one upgrade that was useless & conflicted with the tower's main purpose! Holy Strike is practically useless when Paladins are only made for tanking. Edge Mastery is pretty much a waste of money because Bladesingers are & should be spending as much of their time possible doing animations from their other much more valuable upgrades. Barbarians try to be good at everything at once and coupled with their lack of armor they are a game design nightmare. Templars have no idea on what they want to be, besides a failed attempt at a "Bruiser" barracks. Not to mention that some of these Barracks upgrades also overlap in purpose: Paladins have two survivability upgrades, Templars have two survivability upgrades and Barbarians have two upgrades dedicated to melee combat (which don't even synergize with each other).
Imagine if in KRA, "Healing Prayer" was split into a "Heal when at low health" upgrade and a "Invincibility when at low health" upgrade. Not only would their purpose blatantly overlap, but the total cost would also be higher and the tower would be unviable as a result (We can figure this out based on Ironhide's execution with stuff like this, they aren't perfect). Imagine if Arborean Emissary was just a generic magic tower at first, and its main purpose (the debuff) was moved as a third upgrade to the tower instead of being an inherent, core function of the tower. That's something Vengeance would have done. Imagine if you're playing Frontiers and Necromancer's skeletons were something you needed to unlock as an upgrade instead of just having it being the core of the tower & having two upgrades like it is in reality. Imagine if you were playing KR1 and Sorcerer Mage's armor debuff was something you needed to upgrade. I could keep going on about this.
You think three upgrades is actually providing more strategy & choices, but in reality, it removes strategy at its worst. Going back to 2 upgrades per tower as the standard is a step in the right direction, and we can already see the results with the towers in this game being overall better designed & balanced compared to Vengeance.
Lmao, if you want people to actually read your essay of a post, don't start it like that
Dude, you're just making excuses for bad design decisions by cutting them out without adding anything in return. I didn't say a word about a third ability being a must have, even if it won't do anything. I'm talking about variation. You're describing all these upgrades as if you max out all the towers in every mission and upgrade them with all the abilities. The first three parts of KR gave essentially 8 different towers per level, versus 5 in KRV and KRA. So 2 upgrades seemed harmonious in the first parts, as you could strategize the 8 towers with 2-3 upgrades in completely different ways. In KRV we got 5 turrets per level, but this was offset by 3 upgrades for each, which is fair enough, since you never build one tower of each type, meaning you could upgrade turrets in different ways, you had a choice to do so.
The gameplay in KRA just turned into mindless upgrading of towers until they were fully pumped.
Now for some more math. 8 towers of 2 upgrades each in the first parts gives you 16 combinations. 5 towers of 3 upgrades each gives 15 combinations (a little less, but not significant enough to notice). But 5 towers by 2 upgrades gives 10 combinations per level, which is already significantly noticeable for players who tried the past parts
Basically nothing of value was lost by moving back from "3 upgrades on all towers", that's what you don't understand. Have you ever heard of "The less is more"? That's literally the Kingdom Rush series's greatest standout quality in general.
What "variation" is brought by third upgrades that are either useless or at worst contradicts/conflicts with the tower's main purpose? Does having Edge Mastery in Origins just sit there unupgraded leave you with great joy? As I said, Vengeance is also noticeably worse in variety because a lot of the towers just blends together in their purposes and niches. KRA towers have stronger and more clear indentities compared to Vengeance towers.
It is true that being able to only carry 5 towers into levels in KRA is not enough, but 2 upgrades on towers by itself is NOT the reason. The reason is because towers are more specialized (like it used to be back then) and we should have more options at once to create synergies & fill specific niches. In Vengeance you really do not upgrade towers "in different ways" either. You do not upgrade Infernal Mage JUST for the armor/resistance shatter while ignoring the other, better upgrades. You do not upgrade Harassers JUST to upgrade Fury of the Twilight while ignoring the other, better upgrades. You do not upgrade Deep Devil's Reef just to choose to go for Net Throw instead of stronger units or stronger magic dps. That's not "variation". If anything, it's an illusion of choice. 3 upgrades is NOT better for having the illusion of choice.
If anything, the Arborean Emissary in KRA alone makes me feel like I have more legitimate choices than every tower in Vengeance. I can either leave the base level 4 tower unupgraded if the debuff is the only thing I want. Or if I'm placing it near a lot of ally units/barracks, I can make the decision to upgrade the healing skill if I feel like it's going to make a difference. Or I can spend money on the vines skill to stun enemies if I feel like they aren't going to stick nearby for long. Or I can simply get both because not only are both upgrades valuable, but they also somewhat synergize with each other instead of conflicting with each other, without feeling like it's "mandatory" for the viability of the tower (stunned enemies won't attack and damage ally units + more time to spread the debuff and have other towers take advantage of it).
"Gameplay in KRA is just mindless upgrading of towers" is an absolutely nonsensical statement. First of all, what else do you spend your money on after building level 1 towers? Second of all, even if what you said is true, how is the rest of the series remotely different in this aspect? What is "less mindless" about maxing out Barrage on Crossbow Fort every single time you buy it, or maxing out Overcharge on Tesla every single time you buy it, or blatantly spamming Battle Mecha in general?
What if Arcane Archers's magic resistance-shattering arrows were a third upgrade you needed to spend additional money on? What if Arch-Druid Henge's stockpilling was a third upgrade? What if you needed to spend additional gold on Golden Longbows to make its range huge? More doesn't = better. But actually no, the Orcs barracks in Vengeance having three different stats increases-only upgrades, with them overlapping, makes Vengeance strategies and niches much more varied and deep than KRA.
Also some of the things you listed arent even helping your argument. Yes having 3 options is more depth than 2 options. What are we even talking about.
Comments like this are exactly why detailed refutations and in-depth comparisons like my previous comment are needed.
Having 3 options to enhance a tower is more depth than having 2 options since you can decide between 3 potential buffs. Period.
"Less is more" was never the strength of the Kingdom Rush series, the core original strength had always been mechanical polish and accessible simplicity, without sacrificing strong strategic freedom and flexibility. This strength continues to become more and more ignored in favor of hasty and convoluted blanket reductions in nearly every aspect: the polish and accessibility has regressed (why the fresh hell are there applied debuffs from 3 separate towers with zero in-game mechanical explanation or clarity? Even better question, where is the encyclopedia?), the strategic freedom has been diluted, and the overall level of content has drastically thinned.
In an ideal world you're right that in a perfect world, we could have if not prefer three upgrades for every tower and they would just so happen to EACH be perfectly balanced, synergizing with each other and suit the tower like a key in a keyhole. But in reality, game balance is difficult and Ironhide is not perfect. And we know their track record: Their tower design & balance is consistently much better when they focus on two upgrades instead of three upgrades. We saw this with Barracks towers in the trilogy, and we've seen it in Vengeance.
If you find the tower design/balance in Alliance lacking, then the very last thing that could be called a "solution" would be to add a third upgrade to everything (in fact it would almost surely only make things worse).
No, IT IS the strength of the Kingdom Rush series. we can simply compare KR to Bloons and other TD games to prove this.
Instead of simply letting the player place towers anywhere they want, there are "Strategic points" around the levels and players must use their creativity and tactics to craft the best defense around what the game gives them, making them engage with the level design. Compare this to Bloons TD 6 where you almost always just clump towers in the same general area.
Instead of having a billion different towers which often comes with a bunch of genericness and/or balance problems, the (older, at least) games focuses on fewer options that are more creative, fleshed out and balanced, which was done the best in the first two games.
Instead of having a bloated amount of levels that makes the game bloated (Looking at you, Bloons and PvZ2), the game focuses on fewer, better designed stages each with their own gimmicks and very different enemy waves among other things, every stage is its own experience different from the others.
This is why I play and adore Kingdom rush as a series. You could say that the series has been moving away from this aspect overtime to an extent, and I agree. But it's understandable that Ironhide wants to spice things up and not have their games be seen as a bunch of rehashes/reskins.
This is the stuff that should be talked about. I literally had to ask a KR-related Discord server on what the Arborean Emissary does, and what Necromancer's "Curse" means.
No arguing is pointless. You have NO CLUE about game design whatsoever. Half of your arguments dont support your claim and the others are straight up made up out of nothing. Idk if you get paid by the company or you genuenly never played a good game so you dont know any better but this is hilarious.
Removing content is never a decision to add more depth or uniqueness to anything. Get you brain checked man.