TRAILBLAZING TO NEW HEIGHTS
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After catching me unawares a few months ago, the Kingdom Rush-series keep hooking me with this
excellent sequel, titled Kingdom Rush: Frontiers. The first game prepared me for the genre, and now this entry (also from developer Ironhide Game Studio) rewires my brain to completely relish in tower defense. It was a genre I had dismissed as child's play for mobile casuals, but now it might've opened up a whole new world of possibilities.
The new frontier setting starts out in a desert, before sliding over into a
jungle and then deep into a dark mountain range, where the final battle takes
place. Along the way you pick up new units of thematically relevant kinds,
like Middle-eastern assassins and voodoo necromancers. Also, a few
one-off buildings comes with the territory, allowing you to purchase
strong allies that'll bolster important choke points.
If you're unfamiliar with the exhilirating concept of tower defense, Kingdom
Rush: Frontiers teaches you at a single glance. A number of roads run from one
edge of the screen to another. The enemy sends his troops down those
roads towards a point (or two) you have to defend. To do that, you need to
raise towers at certain preset locations on the screen. These come in four different basic
kinds, each housing their own units; soldiers, bowmen, wizards and artilleries. They automatically start attacking as soon as an enemy gets within range.
The enemies attack in waves. If too many units slip through, you lose the level and have to start it
over. In the first game I found it frustrating to lose close to the end of the
longer stages. This is no longer true, at least not in this sequel. Instead
it sparks a strong desire for revenge. You now have increased opportunities to alter your towers' stats on the world map between stages, and then freely reset and redistribute these upgrades. You just have to spend the currency; stars you earn by completing levels as efficiently as possible.
With the addition of a hero - a powerful all-round emergency unit that you move freely around the screen - you can quickly alter your playstyle. New to this sequel
is that you can upgrade the heroes' abilities as they level up. So, losing a stage
no longer feels like an insult - it feels like a wake up-call, like an encouragment to step up to the occasion. As an RPG-nut, I took great enjoyment in min-maxing my troops and watch the enemy step right into my traps.
During the enemy assaults, the towers can be upgraded a few levels, to great effect. They
eventually branch off into one of two completely different dwellings, which opens up
to a lot of strategic thinking. Some do wonders against tougher, larger
juggernauts, while others can quickly reduce hordes of small units. Some are great at
halting enemy advancement, and others have great reach. Finding out and combining their specialized effects is some of the most fun I've had in
this genre. It can completely turn the tide of a battle.
It's stressful, but in a most rewarding way, as you constantly have to shift your
attention between monitoring the enemy's advancement, building or upgrading
towers, keeping track of your economy, and controlling your hero.
It's easy to overlook your two free emergency responses; quickly spawning weak
militia reinforcements, and raining down fire from above. Both are available
after a short or long cooldown.
The Windows version I'm reviewing contains 15 main story levels and an extra handful of
difficult, post-credit stages. You progress through the world map from west to
east, towards scarier battlegrounds, and at the end of each of the
three major areas you face a challenging boss. I'm impressed by the way the
designers add new, unexpected twists to every single map. For instance, one of
them involves a fun King Kong-esque monster, who rains down devastating fire on
your units by sacrificing maidens into a volcano.
Visually, the game maintains that colorful, cartoonish presentation that's both detailed and provides a great overview. It makes
every unit stand out, even as the screen gets crowded at the end of each level. The simple brown/green/gray color schemes of the environments leave a lot of room for different spell effects to flourish.
The audio cues from your troops can be funny, if you enjoy referential
humor (in this case, I'm indifferent). For instance, when backstabbing an enemy, the assassin
unit utters the phrase "Requiescat in pace!", which might cause nostalgic
flashbacks for fans of Assassin's Creed II.
Advancement through the game comes with increasing tension and excitement as
the levels get longer. You've got to be ready for new enemy units with brand
new abilities, and perhaps even raze a tower or two that's totally ineffective
against them. Kingdom Rush: Frontiers is an all-round better and more intense game than the first. Each level ends with a complete onslaught, as the enemy goes all-in for a final push, and it is a thriller to behold.
Frankly, I can't say much have changed since the first game. But Kingdom Rush
is one of those series that become more enjoyable with increased player skill.
It took the entire first game for me to get the right familiarity. The more I get
into the mentality, the more my tactics start working out, and I get that intense
satisfaction of almost precognitive awareness.
Suddenly, my units start winning because I understand the meaning behind the
lay of the land. I put some effort into my strategic thinking, and respond to new
situations with renewed confidence. And with all that insight, I'm looking
eagerly into the future, wondering what the strategy genre in its entirety
might hold. Kingdom Rush: Frontiers is one of the most invigorating,
trailblazing experiences I've had in video games in a long time - it might
have opened up an entire new frontier for me to explore.
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