As I established with my Impossible Hero Challenge for Kingdom Rush Origins, at the end of each stage of the game (the three sections of the campaign and then the bonus levels) we do a report card to see how our heroes are faring. The problem here is that every single map so far - even the heroic and iron modes - has been trivial for all our heroes. They really nerfed the difficulty of this game. Again, I don't want to sound too negative, as I do like the game, but I'm just disappointed in this aspect of it. By this point in Origins we had already had one of the hardest challenges of the whole game - Royal Gardens iron mode - to say nothing of the plenty of other maps that were difficult enough to differentiate our heroes by grades.
All this is not to say that I haven't gotten any useful feedback on the heroes. While we've given all of them 'A's so far, I can definitely tell the differences between the 'A+' performances and the 'A-'s - but again, I swore I would not get into plusses and minuses in my grading scheme. Even though we don't have the grades yet to back it up, I want to revisit my initial impressions in the first post of this challenge to see how they've changed.
In general I feel like my impressions were largely accurate. The thing I've been most impressed by in doing this challenge so far is that hardly any of the heroes feel weak. While that's great from an 'enjoyability of the game' standpoint, it makes them hard to differentiate in terms of who is most powerful. I feel like the heroes have separated themselves into clear tiers, but within each tier it's not at all clear who should be ranked above whom. Here are the tiers as I see them right now:
- At the top Eiskalt and Murglun are clearly head and shoulders above all other heroes. They have a very Phoenix vs. Wilbur from Origins kind of dynamic - Eiskalt is like Phoenix and is best for dealing with large hordes of enemies, while Murglun is like Wilbur and is best for taking on single powerful enemies. As you may remember, Phoenix took the top spot in the Origins challenge, but literally by the slimmest possible margin. I feel it's going to come down to whether there are more horde vs. powerful enemy maps.
- The third, fourth, and fifth spots are still up for grabs between Beresad, Doom Tank SG-11, and Jack O'Lantern, and it's very hard to order them. Every time I think of a reason to place one of them in the third spot, I think of another reason to put a different one there.
- The third tier is made of Mortemis, Jigou, Jun'pai, and Margosa, and again it's hard to rank them, especially because they're so different. Jigou is without doubt the best tank in the game and is virtually indestructible (I feel confident we'll be able to call him the best tank in the whole series by the end). Margosa is a great tank as well, but trades less survivability for much more DPS. Jun'pai has a very useful kit and is great at both dealing with hordes and supporting a chokepoint. Mortemis is basically a one-man chokepoint. Again, it's going to come down to the types of maps we have to differentiate them.
- Poor Tramin I feel sits in a tier all by himself. I definitely see him as weaker than all the above heroes, but at the same time stronger than the free heroes in the tier below. We'll see what the grades say, but I'm feeling pretty confident about him taking 10th place.
- The free heroes - Veruk, Asra, and Oloch - form a tier at the bottom, which is appropriate for F2P heroes. Here the ranking is much clearer. I definitely believe Asra is the best of all of them and Oloch is clearly the worst. Oloch has several problems I'm sure I'll go into detail about in later posts, but he is just very weak compared to all others. Most notably, his hero spell, Seal of Isolation, is ridiculously weak compared to all others. I'm debating whether it or Razz and Rags' Changeling from Origins is worse, but it's going to take some time to figure that out.
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