I keep checking my settings to make sure I'm actually playing on Impossible difficulty. So far Vengeance is far easier than Origins, as by now in Origins we had had some moderate challenges that at least distinguished our heroes a little bit. As it is we put another round of trivial 'A's in the bag and hope for more on the next map.
We recycle our build strategy from the campaign mode and not even the upgrade cap can slow us down. We plowed through this one with barely an inconvenience. I did have to rely on the Tesla coils to catch a leak during Oloch's video, but that was more due to a misplay on my part rather than him not getting the job done. I go so bored that I decided to let Eiskalt, Murglun, and Jack O'Lantern have a go at holding back the hordes without building any of the Melting Furnaces. Eiskalt did it without a problem - no reinforcements or Soul Impact needed. Murglun did nearly as well, but allowed a few leaks back to the choke point. Jack did okay, but I did have to use reinforcements and Soul Burn with him to get things done.
On to the third map and still not a whiff of a real challenge yet. I decided for this one to do a build that didn't rely on destroying the mine carts by clicking on them. It certainly makes things easier if you do, but I didn't want to post a solution that relied too heavily on micro if I didn't have to. More 'A's in the bag for our crew and let's move on.
This iron challenge was so boring and tedious I had trouble staying awake while recording it. It's maps like these that illustrate the slowed pace of the game that I talked about in my veteran walkthrough post. Here's hoping we'll start getting to the good stuff soon.
The only challenge we're having so far is that the video names are getting so long I'm bumping up against the character limit on YouTube. I decided to mix up the strategy here and go for an all Melting Furnace setup. It worked perfectly and the heroes mowed down all the mobs without problem. Everyone gets to pad their GPA with another 'A' and we continue on.
We do need towers this time, but still this is a trivial task for all our heroes. I'm hopeful that maybe by the heroic or iron mode of the next map we'll have an actual challenge that needs grades, but for now it's all 'A's.
This is just more of the same as heroic mode. All our heroes do well at taking down swarms of trivial mobs. The tower restrictions don't even matter considering we're not even building any. 'A's for everybody and we march on.
There's still no real challenge here, even if it is heroic mode, so we'll cut this one short. I decided to forgo towers altogether here but provide reinforcement backup if the heroes needed it. Again, I'm pleased with the performance of all the heroes in such circumstances. 'A's for everyone and we'll move on.
Without further ado, let's jump straight into our new Impossible Hero Challenge series! I've really been liking Kingdom Rush Vengeance so far, so I'm pumped to get rolling on this challenge. Even though map 0, Veznan's Tower, can be done on Impossible difficulty, it's still utterly trivial and it doesn't have heroic or iron modes, so we're skipping it for the purpose of this challenge.
We know from experience of course that many of the first few maps are going to be pretty trivial when using level 10 heroes and all upgrades. This one is no exception, so what I wanted to see was how all of the heroes did if I sent them up against the mobs with no tower or reinforcement support (except to mop up leaks). After all, if they can't handle a few waves of the two weakest enemies in the game in a reasonable manner then it doesn't bode well for the future. Fortunately, even though it's fairly clear from the start how our heroes are going to generally sort themselves by power, all heroes did a perfectly fine job here.
Having completed my Impossible Hero Challenge for Kingdom Rush Origins and taken a relaxing vacation, I've been plenty stoked to jump right into Kingdom Rush Vengeance. I intend to do an Impossible Hero Challenge for this game as well, but first things first - we have to actually unlock Impossible difficulty.
As with Origins, Impossible is unlocked by beating the campaign, so I've done a walkthrough for the campaign on Veteran difficulty (the next highest available). As always the goal is no lives lost on any map, but there are a few differences this time as well. First, unlike my Veteran walkthrough on Origins, I'm not including the heroic or iron modes this time around. In Vengeance you only unlock upgrade points on the campaign mode, unlike previous games where you got an extra upgrade point when completing heroic and iron, meaning there's really no point in doing the heroic or iron modes on Veteran (for which I am thankful - it saves me a lot of videos). Second, I did this walkthrough with only the heroes and towers that are free on the mobile version, so that the videos are equally applicable to that version. I didn't do this on my Origins walkthrough which is one of my regrets.
I have played around with the non-free heroes and towers. For one, this game took the unusual step of making some towers and heroes unlock from the elite bonus stages. In previous games everything unlocked with the campaign only. So I have run through all the elite stages (just on Casual for ease) to get everything unlocked, and of course I also have to level all heroes up to 10 before starting my challenge, which I'm most of the way done with at the time of writing this.
Having done all that I have some initial thoughts on the game. I think the biggest thing I've noticed is that the pace has been slowed way down compared to Origins. Whereas campaign mode for most Origins maps usually took no more than 15 minutes, here they are taking 17, 18, or even 19 minutes. That may not sound like a big difference, but believe me you feel it while playing.
It's not a difference in waves, as both games stick to a standard 15 waves. Nor is it a difference in my play, as I feel I'm early-calling waves at about the same frequency as I did in Origins (which is to say most of them, so you can imagine how long it would take to do a map with no early calling). It's just this game is much more akin to the pace of the original Kingdom Rush game. I find myself missing the heightened intensity of Origins.
Another thing I've noticed is that they eliminated all of the environmental doodads to click on compared to Origins. I'm ambivalent as to this change. On the one hand it was nice in Origins to have more things to do, but I can't say I overly enjoyed any of them. They all felt either too weak (Magic Blossoms), too important (timing Venom Vines to eliminate Gloomy packs), or had too much RNG to be truly useful (Sorcerer's Stones).
Of course the biggest change in the gameplay of Vengeance is the towers. Instead of the level 4 upgrade of each tower being a choice between two specializations, now each tower's level 4 upgrade is just another upgrade of the tower's stats and an unlock of its special abilities. In exchange, there are now 18 towers total (9 free, 9 premium), and you select up to 5 to use at a given time. It may seem like it, but to me this isn't really that big of a change. If I were to go back through my Impossible Hero Challenge for Origins I'm pretty sure I'd be hard pressed to find maps where I used more than four different towers - and often it was just three. I'm pretty sure I never used six or more tower types at once, so I don't feel limited by only being able to select five. And since I've limited myself to the free towers I basically have just one more to choose from compared to the 8 specializations in previous games.
As with this walkthrough, for my Impossible Hero Challenge I intend to only use the free towers. I'm a little bummed because I've tried out the premium towers and some of them are amazing (which you would expect if you're having to pay for them). Let's just say that Blazing Gems and Swamp Things are ludicrously overpowered. I wish I could use them for the challenge, but it's important to me that my videos be applicable to people playing the free version on mobile. For the heroes it doesn't matter since I do both the free and the premium heroes in the challenge, but I don't want anyone saying "Well of course you can beat this map if you use Swamp Things!".
As for the heroes, I really like some of the premium heroes. I don't want to say much now, because I don't want to bias myself too much before starting the challenge proper, but let's just say I can already tell who's going to be the Phoenix and Wilbur of this game. On the flip side, I can also see who's going to be the Eridan and Razz and Rags as well :).
I liked the difficulty curve of this campaign. It's hard to rate the overall difficulty of the game since I haven't done any heroic or iron modes yet or the elite levels on anything but Casual, but I felt the campaign provided some decent challenges without ever being frustrating. I really liked the boss fights. The first one is very standard and nothing special, but I really loved Jokull's Nest and Denas's Castle. The special mechanics made them memorable, and they did a great job of communicating them to you purely visually.
The storytelling of the games has gradually been getting better ever since the first Kingdom Rush. Here I appreciated getting to know Vez'nan and King Denas better, so that it feels like there are actual personalities behind the events of the game. I especially liked (minor spoiler) facing off against heroes from the first game in the last three levels before Denas's Castle.
So my bottom line review is this: each game in the series has been an incremental improvement over the previous one, and Vengeance is no exception. At the end of the day you're just getting more Kingdom Rush. If you've loved the games so far, you'll love this one. If you haven't, there isn't anything groundbreakingly new in this one to change your mind.
With that, here is the walkthrough. I'm looking forward to starting my Impossible Hero Challenge series and I hope you'll join me for it.
