Well there's still zero challenge here so it's all 'A's again, but I feel bad making these posts with no real content other than the link. To that end, since there's nothing to comment on regarding the videos themselves, I'd like to add more thoughts regarding the game that I've developed.
First, I'm really disappointed that this game is definitely buggier than previous entries in the series. The previous three games were largely bug free on the main. None of the bugs are really that big of a deal. Mostly they are just problems with input responsiveness (not responding to mouse or button clicks), although during this particular playlist - I believe in Eiskalt's video - I did have an instance where one of my Specters Mausoleums froze and wouldn't fire anymore, necessitating selling it and rebuilding another.
Second, I'm rather shocked by how much they have nerfed spells (i.e., Soul Impact and reinforcements). I'm assuming this is due to a desire to refocus the gameplay on towers and heroes. Both spells perhaps reached the peak of their power in Origins, the previous game, where a lot of the hardest challenges came down to managing them very well, and perhaps the developers felt that was the wrong direction to go.
For reinforcements, it's notable that you no longer can have two sets out at once. In previous games - at least with all upgrades - it became standard that reinforcements had a 10 second cooldown but lasted for 20 seconds. So if you were always using them as soon as they came off cooldown, you would always have two sets (four units) of reinforcements on the field. Here, even with all upgrades, the cooldown is 14 seconds with a duration of only 16, so there's virtually no overlap between sets. In addition the units are weaker compared to their most recent Origins counterparts. Now granted, we do have the Pit Lord upgrade, which is pretty cool and powerful, but I don't like that there's now an element of RNG in how much you can rely on your reinforcements.
But reinforcements got it easy compared to the nerf bat that was taken to Soul Impact. In Origins Thunderbolt was immensely powerful - like clean out your chokepoint completely kind of powerful. Only the most powerful enemies in the game couldn't be killed by a direct hit. But Soul Impact can only kill the weakest enemies here, while moderately damaging more powerful foes and only tickling the strongest ones.
In previous games Rain of Fire / Thunderbolt had two very clear use cases: you either used it as an "oh crap" reaction to save a situation that had gotten out of control, or you used it preemptively to take out a dangerous mob or group of mobs that would be a major problem if they actually made it to your chokepoint (see Demon Legions in the original Kingdom Rush for the perfect example). Here the only use seems to be using it on large groups of enemies to make things slightly easier.
I don't mean to sound so negative, as I really do like this game, but it's always easier to talk about the negative than the positive. I'd like to have some positive things to say about our heroes, but first we have to find a real challenge for them. I honestly think at this point we're going to make it into the second act of the game with all trivial 'A's. I hope I'm wrong, but we'll see.
No comments:
Post a Comment