After a long hiatus we're finally back to doing new maps. We begin the Ancient Hunger campaign today, and crocodiles are on the menu. Unfortunately I ended up not caring for this map all that much. I don't hate it like I do Temple of the Fallen, but we have the same problem here where I feel like I'm pigeonholed into using towers I'd rather not. Don't get me wrong, the Dwarven Flamethrower is brilliant, but I like the Tricannon (bonus points if you get the meme reference). And then of course we have to fall back on the Royal Archers yet again to deal with the flying enemies. At least the Winged Croks don't have any gimmick like other flying enemies.
However, I will say there is one thing I liked and that I expect to continue to like as the campaign progresses. The enemies here have a couple of transformation tricks - Crokinders transform into Gators, and Gators can be transformed into Killertiles by Quickfeet. Now normally in the Kingdom Rush series when this kind of thing happens you don't get the normal gold for killing a transformed mob but just the base value of the mob it transformed from. However, that's not the case here, meaning a 3 gold Crokinder can transform into a 50 gold Killertile. This gives you the option of pursuing a high risk / high reward playstyle by deliberately letting transformations happen.
Because of this the videos are somewhat of a story of two maps. When I did the Dark Army heroes first, I played very conservatively, using Nyru's hero spell to kill Crokinders wherever possible to avoid getting overwhelmed. Then as I continued through the Linerean heroes I realized the above fact and started playing far more aggressively, rarely trying to kill Crokinders before they hatched, and even letting them get turned into Killertiles for extra gold.
You'll notice that I ended up using both secondary heroes to their maximum potential this time around, unlike previous maps. This map justified it with it's ridiculous enemy count. While the upper end heroes could probably do it solo, there's just no way Raelyn has the tools to do so.
Impressions
Unfortunately using both heroes makes the grading extremely difficult, because you have to account for how much the secondary hero is contributing. Both Nyru and Grimson did a lot of work as the secondaries, and Nyru in particular as her hero spell is clutch in taking out waves of Crokinder. What I settled on was figuring out a grade the normal way based on how the map felt, then deducting up to a full letter grade based on how much I felt the hero needed to rely on the performance of the secondary hero.
Thus Raelyn takes a 'C' here, as Nyru performed a hard carry, both with her hero spell as well as taking down the Flying Croks. On the flip side, I still awarded Broden and Bonehart 'A+'s here, deducting nothing. While I did use the secondary hero, it was clear that I didn't have to, and couldn't have finished the map solo, and for that reason I felt they deserved to keep their 'A+'s.
The Linerean heroes we definitely worse off here, and the grades reflect it. Nyru is just very well suited to this level as discussed. But while Grimson certainly contributes a lot as well, it's nowhere near the same amount. I considered bumping the Linerean heroes grades up one notch (like a 'C+' to a 'B-') to account for this, but ultimately decided the grades were muddled enough already and didn't need this extra layer of futzing.
Final Grades
- Vesper - C+
- Raelyn - C
- Nyru - B-
- Torres - C-
- Anya - C+
- Grimson - B-
- Broden - A+
- Therien - B+
- Onagro - B
- Warhead - B+
- Lumenir - A-
- Kosmyr - A
- Stregi - C+
- Bonehart - A+
