TRAILBLAZING TO NEW HEIGHTS
After catching me completely unawares a few months ago, the Kingdom Rush series keeps its hooks firmly in me with this excellent sequel, Kingdom Rush: Frontiers. The first game served as an introduction, but this follow-up (once again by Ironhide Game Studio) fully rewired my brain and made me genuinely relish tower defense. It’s a genre I had long dismissed as casual mobile fluff, but Frontiers convinced me I was wrong — spectacularly so.
The new “frontiers” setting begins in a desert, then shifts into dense jungle and finally plunges deep into a dark mountain range where the final confrontation takes place. Along the way, you unlock new units that fit the regions thematically: Middle Eastern assassins, voodoo necromancers, and other flavorful additions. Some stages also introduce unique, one-off buildings that let you purchase powerful allies to reinforce key choke points.
If you’re unfamiliar with the exhilarating simplicity of tower defense, Kingdom Rush: Frontiers teaches you at a glance. Enemies march along predefined roads from one end of the screen to the other, and it’s your job to stop them before they reach your base. To do so, you construct towers at preset locations. These come in four basic types — barracks, archers, mages, and artillery — each automatically engaging enemies within range.
Enemies arrive in waves, and if too many slip through, the level is lost. In the first Kingdom Rush, failing near the end of a long stage could feel punishing. Here, failure instead sparks a desire for revenge. Between stages, you can invest stars — earned by playing efficiently — into permanent upgrades, and crucially, you can reset and redistribute them freely. Losing no longer feels like an insult; it feels like an invitation to rethink your strategy.
A major addition is the hero unit: a powerful, mobile character you can reposition freely to respond to emergencies. Heroes level up as you play and can be customized through ability upgrades, adding a welcome RPG layer. As a self-confessed RPG nut, I found great joy in min-maxing my setup and watching enemies march confidently into meticulously prepared kill zones.
During battles, towers can be upgraded multiple times before branching into one of two specialized paths, opening up meaningful strategic decisions. Some towers excel against heavily armored juggernauts, others shred swarms of weaker foes. Some slow enemy movement, others dominate at long range. Learning how these systems interact — and combining them effectively — is where the game truly shines. A single well-timed upgrade can completely turn the tide of a battle.
The result is a constant, rewarding stress. You’re juggling enemy movements, tower placement and upgrades, your economy, and direct hero control, all at once. On top of that, you have two emergency abilities at your disposal: instantly spawning militia reinforcements, and calling down devastating fire from the sky, each governed by cooldowns. Forgetting about them can be fatal; using them wisely feels brilliant.
The Windows version includes fifteen main story levels, followed by a handful of brutal post-credit challenges. Progression across the world map moves steadily eastward into increasingly dangerous territory, with a major boss encounter closing out each of the three primary regions. I was impressed by how every single map introduces some new twist. One memorable stage even features a King Kong–like monster hurling fiery destruction by sacrificing maidens into a volcano.
Visually, the game retains its colorful, cartoonish style — detailed enough to be expressive, yet clean enough to remain readable even when the screen is overflowing with enemies. The restrained environmental color palettes leave plenty of room for spell effects and animations to pop.
Audio-wise, troop callouts lean heavily into referential humor. Whether that’s charming or grating will depend on the player. Personally, I was indifferent, though hearing an assassin whisper “Requiescat in pace” may trigger fond memories for fans of Assassin’s Creed II.
As the campaign progresses, tension steadily escalates. Levels grow longer, enemy abilities become more complex, and strategies that worked previously may suddenly collapse. Sometimes the correct response is even to tear down a once-reliable tower and replace it entirely. Each level builds toward a full-scale final assault, and those climactic moments are consistently thrilling.
Truth be told, not much has fundamentally changed since the first Kingdom Rush. But this is a series that grows alongside the player. It took the entire first game for me to truly internalize its logic, and Frontiers rewards that growing familiarity. The better I understand the terrain, enemy patterns, and tower synergies, the more confident — and almost clairvoyant — my decisions become.
Suddenly, my victories feel earned not through reflexes, but through foresight. I read the battlefield, adapt on the fly, and respond to new threats with calm precision. With that realization, my appreciation for strategy games as a whole has expanded dramatically.
Kingdom Rush: Frontiers is one of the most invigorating and confidence-building experiences I’ve had in years. It didn’t just deliver a great sequel — it opened up an entire genre I had previously written off. And for me, that might be its greatest achievement of all.
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