Campaign modes continue to be pleasant challenges - just hard enough to be interesting without being a real struggle, as mostly evidenced by the grades below. This is one map though where the flying enemies make all the difference. Everything else is pretty manageable, but the game is constantly trying to get a Corrupted Stalker or Void Blinker to slip through your defenses.
I've seen people complain about the amount of flying enemies in this game, and I'm still formulating my own thoughts on the matter. In previous games flying enemies weren't generally that hard. They had low hit points and were mostly there just to keep you honest against only building artillery (and even then you could often still get away with doing it in the original and Frontiers). But here it feels like Ironhide really upped the design of the flying enemies to make them more of a legitimate threat in their own right. Void Blinkers move fast and have relatively high hit points for a flying unit. You're usually relying on their stunning attack to keep them in one place long enough for your towers to take them down, but usually the devs like to send them along right when it would also be a really bad time to have your choke point blockers stunned, so they're really well designed from that perspective. Tamed Stalkers are obviously DPS checks - do you have enough ranged and/or magical DPS to take them down? - but again, they often come through when other enemies are around to distract your towers from focus-firing them. Ultimately I'm still trying to decide if the flying enemies in the game fall on the "well-designed challenge" end of the spectrum or the "frustratingly difficult" side of the spectrum.
Impressions
Grades are pretty decent here. Raelyn earns the only 'C', and it's becoming clear at this point that Torres' grades are rising significantly post-buff, so she's sadly heading straight for last place in the rankings all by herself. Doubly sad is the fact that Anya is really starting to fall behind as well. She'll definitely finish above Raelyn, but at this point she's in strong competition for second-to-last.
At the other end our 'A' crew is mostly the usual suspects, although Nyru earns a rare 'A-' here. Lumenir also raised her game for this one and gets an 'A+' for tearing it up along with Broden. Something about her abilities just really clicks well with this map, and she performed amazingly well.
Final Grades
- Vesper - B+
- Raelyn - C
- Nyru - A-
- Torres - B+
- Anya - B
- Grimson - B
- Broden - A+
- Therien - B+
- Onagro - A
- Warhead - A-
- Lumenir - A+
- Kosmyr - A
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