Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 25. Colossal Core Heroic

We finally again have a heroic mode where I feel they decently beefed up the difficulty from campaign mode, and I appreciate it, even if it makes this map quite the challenge.  Everything is mostly manageable until the end, but then surviving the seemingly endless waves of Darksteel Fists and Brute Welders becomes quite difficulty.

I eschew the Cannoneers for this mode, going back to a more standard setup of a Tricannon to deal with large numbers and Arcane Wizards to finish off larger mobs.  I did try to replicate my strategy from campaign mode originally, but was not happy with the results.  I still feel like there is a better strategy that would keep the end of the map from being such a wild, chaotic mess, but I haven't found it yet.

Speaking of the end of the map, there's unfortunately a decent degree of RNG involved in the wins on these maps.  Part of the strategy for this map is trying to manage to fist pounds, and the last one that occurs really needs to kill two Brute Wielders either on the top or the bottom path, or else it's probably a loss with anything but a top-tier hero.  That's part of the reason for the barracks to the right - they do delay the mobs, helping prevent an overrun on the left side, but it also baits the fists into targeting them, trying to catch the Brutes with them.  Besides that you also have RNG such as which tower gets disabled by a Brute when killed.  If it hits your Tricannon that's a major loss and can cost the win.  I hate relying on RNG, but I just don't know if there's a build that can sufficiently control for it.

Impressions

Despite the difficulty the grades aren't all that bad, with only Grimson ending up in 'C' tier.  Unfortunately it's a function of the RNG - when it doesn't break your way, you just lose, but when it does, things feel...well not easy, but at least not so hard.

The one surprise in the grades is Stregi earning an 'A-' for her performance - especially when none of the other bottom-half heroes earned 'A's.  The reason is that this map is perfect for her hero spell.  It allows her to make one of the lanes at the end "safe" by constantly teleporting and sleeping the mobs on it, allowing you to devote all your resources to taking care of the other lane first, which is a huge plus.

Final Grades

• Vesper - B-
• Raelyn - B-
• Nyru - B
• Torres - B-
• Anya - B
• Grimson - C+
• Broden - A+
• Therien - B
• Onagro - B+
• Warhead - B
• Lumenir - A+
• Kosmyr - A+
• Stregi - A-
• Bonehart - A+
• Sylvara - A+

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 25. Colossal Core Heroic

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 25. Colossal Core Campaign

Ugh.  Not my favorite map of the game.  Better than Temple of the Fallen to be sure, not by a lot.  I talk a lot about this blog that a game's difficulty always lies on a spectrum with fun at one end and frustrating at the other, and this one is definitely a registered member of the Frustrating party.

It's all about the flying mobs, as is the case with so many Alliance maps that fall in the frustrating category.  It's very easy for a Flying Sentry or a Tinkerer's Drone to slip by your defenses, and there were a lot of restarts when recording these videos - even with the most powerful heroes.  I don't think that means that the strategies I'm showing are not reproduceable, but rather this is one of those maps where your micro has to absolutely be on point.  Proper positioning of heroes, reinforcements, and the Cannoneers is crucial to make sure the Sentries get taken down properly.

This level is one of those tales of two maps.  I originally tried an all-Cannoneer build and was reasonably successful, but there were so many restarts in getting a hero over the finish line that I just felt like there had to be a better way.  Thus I settled on starting with two Cannoneers and finishing out with Arcane Wizards.  I would rather have gone with a Tricannon build, but the Sentries appear so early you have to have towers that can deal with them, and the Cannoneer's dual ranged and AoE attacks (with Incendiary Ammo) make them rather ideal for the mob variety here.

At the very least I am glad I managed a solo hero solution.  Throw in a second hero - especially one that can hit flying enemies - and this map becomes easy.  Heck, it might even move back towards the fun side of the spectrum.  But as always my priority is trying to grade the heroes on their individual merits.

Impressions

The most obvious thing about the grades is that I did not give anyone an 'A+' this time around - not even Bonehart or Broden.  Even with those powerful heroes things can go awry, and you still have to be ultra-careful with calling waves early.  This is definitely one of those maps where if you early-call a wave at the wrong time you can get the snowball effect - you end up early-calling the next wave because you desperately need your cooldowns refreshed, but then you simply end up getting overrun by all the mobs.

You'll also notice that for all my discussion about the difficulty spectrum above, no one lands in the 'C' tier.  It's not that this map is really super hard.  Difficulty is by itself a spectrum from easy to hard, obviously, but then for a given level of difficulty, a map will then lie on a spectrum of fun to frustrating.  The truth is this level is just middling in terms of its difficulty, but for that difficulty it is extremely frustrating.

Final Grades

• Vesper - B
• Raelyn - B-
• Nyru - B-
• Torres - B
• Anya - B-
• Grimson - B
• Broden - A
• Therien - B+
• Onagro - B+
• Warhead - B+
• Lumenir - A-
• Kosmyr - A
• Stregi - B
• Bonehart - A
• Sylvara - A-

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 25. Colossal Core Campaign

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 24. Frantic Assembly Iron

We get an interesting iron mode this time around, where one of the required towers is the new Cannoneer Squad introduced with the DLC.  To be honest I had actually forgotten that a new tower came with the DLC, and that since it's a paid DLC I could use it in my videos.  Well thankfully we're forced to use it here, because it turns out it's pretty powerful.

Now let me caveat that a little bit: it's a powerful tower - when fully upgraded.  This is one of those towers kind of like the Eldritch Channeler.  The Channeler is honestly probably not worthwhile to build unless you prioritize also giving it Power Overflow.  So it is with this tower - you really need to go all-in with both of its abilities.  It's expensive, but the payoff is pretty worth it.  Once fully upgraded you have a tower that does over 100 ranged DPS, plus some pretty insane AoE damage with Incendiary Ammo, and of course can block up to five mobs.  That's quite a lot, and I found the best solution for this map was to commit to them fully, building out as many of them I could.  The results speak for themselves - the Cannoneers were so powerful I was able to do this map with solo heroes.

Impressions

While the Cannoneers are powerful, this map is still pretty easy, as evidenced by the fact that grades are high despite having only one hero.  Nothing surprising here - Vesper and Raelyn land at the bottom with 'B-'s, while everyone else pads their GPA some more with pretty good grades.  Even Grimson earns a very rare 'A-'.

Final Grades

• Vesper - B-
• Raelyn - B-
• Nyru - B+
• Torres - B
• Anya - B
• Grimson - A-
• Broden - A+
• Therien - A-
• Onagro - A-
• Warhead - A-
• Lumenir - A+
• Kosmyr - A+
• Stregi - B
• Bonehart - A+
• Sylvara - A+

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 24. Frantic Assembly Iron

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 24. Frantic Assembly Heroic

Once again we get a heroic mode that is just a redux version of campaign mode, where it feels just like the campaign, only shorter.  I'm really disappointed in this and feel heroic and iron modes are one of the most disappointing things about both Vengeance and Alliance.  In the original Kingdom Rush heroic modes were hard.  They were also creative.  Despite using the same group of enemies, they didn't feel like the waves from campaign mode, and usually you needed an entirely different build to deal with the challenge.  These days when I tackle a new heroic mode I by default start with the build from campaign mode, and more often than not that gets the job done with perhaps just a little tweaking.

Here the tweak is that I forgo Tricannons to just build more Arcane Wizards.  I'm sure I could have made Tricannons work, but I felt I got better results at the end of the map with two more Wizards with Disintegrate.  In any case I still can't escape the feeling I'm just playing campaign mode over.

Impressions

Nothing remarkable here, and grades even improve slightly over campaign mode because somehow they managed to make heroic mode easier.  Raelyn lifts herself out of 'C' tier, Warhead earns yet another 'A', and everything else is as you would expect.

Final Grades

• Vesper - B
• Raelyn - B-
• Nyru - B
• Torres - B
• Anya - B+
• Grimson - B
• Broden - A+
• Therien - B+
• Onagro - B+
• Warhead - A
• Lumenir - A+
• Kosmyr - A+
• Stregi - B-
• Bonehart - A+
• Sylvara - A+

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 24. Frantic Assembly Heroic

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 24. Frantic Assembly Campaign

The fun ramps up a bit with this second level of the DLC thankfully.  I'm always happy with any map that lets me go hard on Tricannons.  This one has just the right amount of chaos to it, where I manage to get two Tricannons with Bombardment going, spraying absurd amounts of damage onto the field, but which are needed given the number of mobs thrown at you.  To me it's a callback to the feel of the original Kingdom Rush game.  In that game the ceiling on both the power of your build and the power of enemy waves thrown at you was much higher.  Ironhide has since backed off of that in subsequent games, and I think that's a shame.

There's not much to say about the waves themselves.  They're largely a standard tank and spank, with a decent bit of challenge in correctly allocating resources to various hotspots on the field.  I like the Mad Tinkerers - they're surprisingly difficult to kill (high magic resistance is part of that), and their ability to create those annoyance drones is perfectly designed.  The drones barely have any hit points, but they do distract your Arcane Wizards for a single firing cycle from hitting more priority targets, which has a surprisingly big impact.

And of course we have a boss fight at the end of all things!  I guess Ironhide took inspiration from Vengeance's pirate DLC and realized you don't just have to save boss fights for the final level.  It's not the hardest by any means - largely strategy just consists of trying to block or stall units coming from the left so your towers can focus fire on him.  Originally when I started with the more powerful heroes I left my Tricannons up, but it ends up being better strategy to replace them with Arcane Wizards when the fight begins.

Impressions

No single hero solution for this map, nor am I expecting any for the rest of the DLC.  The grades are pretty standard, with Raelyn once more earning the dunce hat being the lone hero in the 'C' tier.  Everything else is by the book, with perhaps the exception of Warhead earning a very rare 'A'.  His tankiness, physical damage to deal with the Tinkerers, and hero spell - which works very well on this map - all make him shine in a rare way.

Final Grades

• Vesper - B-
• Raelyn - C
• Nyru - B
• Torres - B-
• Anya - B
• Grimson - B
• Broden - A+
• Therien - B
• Onagro - B+
• Warhead - A
• Lumenir - A+
• Kosmyr - A+
• Stregi - B-
• Bonehart - A+
• Sylvara - A+

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 24. Frantic Assembly Campaign

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 23. Darksteel Gates Iron

Iron mode is slightly more difficult than heroic mode - as it should be - but still pretty much a repeat of the first two modes in terms of strategy.  Given the Arcane Wizard and Ballista Outpost, we choose to go all-in with Wizards, and yet again it's just a matter of steadily upgrading all of them at your two choke points.  I'm wondering if Ironhide meant the Ballistas to be used for Flying Sentries - using the Final Nail ability to stun them to keep them from escaping - but their physical DPS would then be rubbish against all the armored enemies.  Disintegrate is such a better ability anyway, so as mentioned we just ignore the Ballistas.

You might be thinking the free level 4 Paladins in the middle is meant to implement a kind of "swinging gate" choke point strategy, but honestly you're overwhelmed by the mobs most of the time so that all they really do is just slow up the mobs somewhat.  They're nice, but not worth investing any more money in.

Impressions

Grades are pretty bog-standard and unremarkable here, and not too bad all things considered.  Stregi earns the only 'C'-tier grade.  Drowsy Return is a nice hero spell, but when both exit lanes are getting overwhelmed simultaneously on the final wave it's not as much of a game changer as you might think.

Final Grades

• Vesper - B
• Raelyn - B-
• Nyru - B
• Torres - B-
• Anya - B
• Grimson - B
• Broden - A+
• Therien - B+
• Onagro - B
• Warhead - B+
• Lumenir - A
• Kosmyr - A+
• Stregi - C
• Bonehart - A+
• Sylvara - A+

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 23. Darksteel Gates Iron

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 23. Darksteel Gates Heroic

Heroic mode is once more a redux of campaign mode, featuring very similar wave compositions.  Here, however, there is enough gold to support an AoE solution consisting of one Tricannon and one Arcane Wizard at each chokepoint.  The Wizards are still needed to take down the flying Sentries, but the Tricannons go a long way towards taking everything else down far more easily.

Impressions

To avoid what happened last time I started with Raelyn, and it was quickly very obvious that I would again need a two hero solution for her.  Thus I just went with two heroes for everyone, although this map is so borderline in that regard that it ended up generating a lot of grade inflation.  That's fine though and I'm just not going to lose sleep over it.  This game has 35 levels to it at present, so I'm not worried about the grades being slightly skewed every now and then - the law of large numbers will ensure that the heroes will get sorted properly in the end.  None of the grades are particularly notable and everyone gets a slight boost to their GPA as a result.

Final Grades

• Vesper - B
• Raelyn - B
• Nyru - B+
• Torres - B
• Anya - A
• Grimson - B+
• Broden - A+
• Therien - A
• Onagro - B
• Warhead - B
• Lumenir - A+
• Kosmyr - A+
• Stregi - B+
• Bonehart - A+
• Sylvara - A+

Kingdom Rush Alliance Impossible Hero Challenge - 23. Darksteel Gates Heroic