All I can guess on this one is that the developers got tired of everyone complaining that Vengeance was too easy, so they decided to get a little vengeance of their own with this level. Not since The Ancient Ghosts iron have we had a challenge this hard, and honestly I would rate this one harder. That one was only really hard for heroes with only magical damage due to all the enemies having high magic resistance. Here, though, it's hard because they deliberately give you a crappy map.
Hey, want to play an insanely difficult level where you have to fend off waves of Prehistoric Dwarves with two of the crappiest towers in the game (one of which is completely useless)? Apparently Ironhide thought you did, because that's what you get here. Don't even bother with the Rocket Riders - they're obviously useless against the Pterodactyls, and honestly aren't any good against the Dwarves either. No, you pretty much have to complete this level with just Infernal Mages.
What's so bad about Infernal Mages? Well, imagine Oloch, but as a tower. They have the same sloooow attack speed, which is brutal when you're trying to keep Pterodactyls from leaking through. Their only ability that's really useful here is Infernal Portal, which works just like Oloch's Seal of Isolation, but somehow worse. Affliction is completely useless as the Dwarves don't have armor to begin with, and Lava Fissure can add a little DPS at the very end once you've gotten Portal on all the towers, but it's not a game changer by any means.
It's just a crappy setup all around, and it's made worse by this being a "gimmick" map. The thing you may not realize right away when trying it the first time is that enemies by default only exit the top lane due to the configuration of the Venus Flytraps. The leftmost Flytrap makes sure to move anything on the bottom lane onto the top lane before it gets to the exits. However, the Flytrap near the top entrance makes sure any enemies coming from the right on the top lane are catapulted straight to the exit so that the leftmost Flytrap can't move them down to the bottom lane.
However, I said enemies only exit the top lane by default because Infernal Portal - which you have to use to stall the Dwarves - can sometimes back a unit up on the top lane so that the leftmost Flytrap does move it down to the bottom lane. So not only do you have to use a crappy tower, but it's one useful ability that you're desperately relying on can bite you in the butt by moving a Dwarf to the bottom lane where you have no towers. So yeah, have fun with that.
And of course all of this means nothing to the Pterodactyls. If your hero doesn't have a ranged attack, you have to build Mages on the bottom lane initially to deal with them. I found it's not worth leaving them up to deal with the Pterodactyls that appear at the end, since all of them take the bottom tunnel to come out the top lane. They don't do enough damage to be worthwhile, so it's better after the Pterodactyl waves towards the beginning are done to tear them down to better upgrade your Mages near the exit. Of course, this puts you at a gold deficit compared to heroes that do have a ranged attack, so hopefully your hero is powerful enough to make up for it when the Dwarves appear.
Impressions
This map suuuuucks, and I don't feel the least bit bad about giving out a bunch of 'C's and 'D's. The free crew takes 'D's all around, which shouldn't be surprising. What was surprising though was that Asra was by far the worst of them. Yes, her DPS is trash, but so are the other two, and you'd think her ability to put Spider Bite on Dwarves plus her ranged ability against the Pterodactyls would make up for it. But that's a big fat 'no' - she struggles harder than anyone, and if I hadn't seen that Murasaki Kimidori had done it, I might just have given up and given her an 'F'.
As usual though it's really only the top row that struggles. And that's the story of Vengeance heroes - when a map is hard, it's only hard for the bottom 50% of the heroes, while the top 50% pretty much still breeze through everything. I ranted about it in my report card, but man, never has balance been this bad in a Kingdom Rush game.
Final Grades
- Veruk - D
- Asra - D
- Oloch - D
- Margosa - C
- Mortemis - B
- Tramin - C
- Jigou - B
- Beresad - A
- Doom Tank SG-11 - A
- Jun'pai - B
- Eiskalt - A
- Murglun - A
- Dianyun - A
- Jack O'Lantern - B
No comments:
Post a Comment