Kingdom Rush Vengeance (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Northerners' Village Heroic

We've used several words to describe the maps so far in the game - "hard" has just not been one of them.  This one is best described as "interesting", as it at least attempts to do something interesting with the enemy mix.  Both sides get many waves of Wildlings with a Valkyrie following at the rear.  The idea is that as you start killing the Wildlings at the front, the Valkyrie immediately resurrects them as Draugr.  It's cute, but easily countered by using reinforcements to block the Valkyrie and separate her from the Wildlings.  At least they tried to make it hard.

Kingdom Rush Vengeance Impossible Hero Challenge - Northerners' Village Heroic

Kingdom Rush Vengeance (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Northerners' Village Campaign

Well at least this one only took 16 minutes instead of 20.  What a snooze-fest.  My initial Veteran-difficulty playthrough of this game was way more challenging and interesting than this.  I need to look at the numbers, but I'm wondering if they dropped the percentage increases between Veteran and Impossible for this game compared to Origins and that's part of why it's so easy.  Impossible difficulty should be a reward for playing back through the game again, but so far this whole challenge is just a chore.

Kingdom Rush Vengeance Impossible Hero Challenge - Northerners' Village Campaign

Kingdom Rush Vengeance (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Frozen Rapids Iron

There was just a major mistake made in the design of the iron modes for this game.  In previous Kingdom Rush games it's always worked that iron modes restrict you from using two of the four categories of tower: barracks, ranged, magic, and artillery.  But since each tower category had two specialization upgrades, you effectively had four towers to choose from when tackling the level.  This made it a bit of a puzzle, as you had to figure out which ones were most effective for the enemy mix they were going to throw at you (which usually involved some big curveballs).  Sometimes the best build strategy ended up being something out of the ordinary or a bit of a surprise, which made you feel clever when you figured it out.  But here all that's gone out the window.  This iron mode restricts you to one tower.  One.  Gee, I wonder what I'm going to need to build?  Yes, there are some pre-existing troll huts and Specters Mausoleums given to you, so you need to figure out how they fit in, but again it's painfully obvious like Northerners' Outpost iron and there's just nothing to figure out.  Throw in an enemy mix that is nothing surprising or particularly difficult and you have an iron mode that's just a chore to finish instead of a satisfying challenge.

Kingdom Rush Vengeance Impossible Hero Challenge - Frozen Rapids Iron

Kingdom Rush Vengeance (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Frozen Rapids Heroic

Another map where there's a lot of intensity, but no challenge.  I've used this description multiple times now, and if you don't know what I mean, it means there's a ton of mobs being thrown at you, virtually filling the screen, but yet it's nothing your defense can't easily handle.  It is, as Shakespeare said, a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing.  Our quest for a challenge rolls on.

Kingdom Rush Vengeance Impossible Hero Challenge - Frozen Rapids Heroic

Kingdom Rush Vengeance (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Frozen Rapids Campaign

This is what I was talking about in my blog post for my Veteran walkthrough playlist - it takes 20 minutes to do this map, even when instantly calling every wave!  It just pushes the game into slow and tedious territory.  This map at least dials up the intensity, if not the challenge, so that my first few run throughs with the weaker heroes were mildly interesting, but by the time I got to the later heroes I started playing around with the build order just for fun to entertain myself.  And when you can do an entire map without ever using reinforcements or Soul Impact you know it's too easy.

Kingdom Rush Vengeance Impossible Hero Challenge - Frozen Rapids Campaign

Kingdom Rush Vengeance (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Northerners' Outpost Iron

I can't tell you how disappointed I was in this one.  After the heroic mode being at least mildly engaging if not challenging, this one was utterly trivial.  Talk about spelling it out - it was abundantly clear where I was supposed to place the melting furnaces and to use the trolls both for blocking and damaging the wyverns.  It's things like this that make recording these videos just a tedious chore.  But we press on anyway!

Kingdom Rush Vengeance Impossible Hero Challenge - Northerners' Outpost Iron

Kingdom Rush Vengeance (Steam) Impossible Hero Challenge - Northerners' Outpost Heroic

Again we teeter just on the edge of a real challenge, but all our heroes did adequately 'A'-worthy jobs again.  I did go back and redo my recording with Oloch, changing the build order just slightly to make things a little easier for him.  Not that he was in danger of not getting the job done, but the original recording was just a bit messier.  I toyed with the idea that it might warrant a 'B', but it was borderline and I just don't like the idea of our first real grades being to give a single hero a 'B'.  So we continue on gradeless and hope for more in the iron mode.

Kingdom Rush Vengeance Impossible Hero Challenge - Northerners' Outpost Heroic