Written by Thomas G.J. Sharpe
I recall a period of time I spent unemployed and found myself on Newgrounds playing Ironhide’s flagship series Kingdom Rush. I know some stand by Bloons TD, but the best tower defence for me was Kingdom Rush. I whiled away the expanses of a few days between job applications and the inevitable wall of silence that prospective employers feel entitled to supply. The light-hearted world building, comic cutscenes, and accessible learning curve scratched all the itches. It was good casual gaming done with style. Ironhide have started to branch out into new territory after testing a non-fantasy setting with Iron Marines, a “casual RTS” as they put it. With a follow-up to this and some sort of post-apocalyptic, Mad Max-type title coming out, the towers seem to be receding into the background.
Legends of Kingdom Rush is set in the world of KR
but is a strategy roguelite that takes an X-Com angle on it’s gameplay.
While fun and seated firmly in all the trappings of what we can expect now from
Ironhide in the way of tone, aesthetic, fun, and accessibility, LoKR
falls slightly shorter than the good times of the tower defence titles. A hard
standard to maintain, if I’ll be honest, and the Steam reviews do reflect that
this hasn’t quite hit the same mark.
With a light, story that lines each run, you accrue a motley
band of familiar heroes to fight the current evil of the day, encountering
different events along the adventure. Sort of like the things you’d meet on the
road in the euphoric silliness of Death Road to Canada. Do I want to
rest at the campfire or search the area? Go fishing or tell a story. That sort
of thing. As expected, there isn’t the depth of the encounters of Darkest
Dungeon, but the characters till develop and level up as you go. It is an
enjoyable process to customise these heroes, and it isn’t overwhelming. None of
LoKR is, and this is a strength, broadly speaking.
The combat, between encounters, makes up much of the game.
Little hex-arenas that pit your squad against some wee beasties and some
not-so-wee beasties. The learning curve is ok, the difficulty is just ahead of
you. Using your various spells from mages, cleaving strikes from knights, and
volleys of arrows, you must consider positioning, thinking (a bit) ahead, and
item usage to survive the day.
The first knock against this is the sheer amount of time the
runs take. I almost would have preferred a full little RPG-lite, rather than a
roguelite system. The characters are enjoyable and well-written enough to carry
something like that, I would offer. Further, once you start to realise that
certain playstyles expose a lack of balance, the scope to want to try other
combinations feels a bit uninviting. A couple of goes through, I’d settled into
what I learned to be a bit of a cheesy strategy, and this always feels
underwhelming. I just didn’t really have much desire to go back to it, however
much I enjoyed it.
The developer, however, is up-front with players about being
a primarily a non-desktop, casual and accessible game. I read some opinions of
the GUI being quite clunky on desktops, and I must say that this was on my
mind, but certainly wasn’t game breaking for me. I’ve always quite enjoyed
Ironhide’s big clunky buttons, but perhaps there are some inelegancies to the
clicking you have to do.
All in all, I enjoyed LoKR, but I think not for as
long as the game was designed to be enjoyed for. I’m going to mark this one
down, for myself, as an interesting foray into another bit of KR-world
fun, but one that I won’t return to over KR tower defence titles. This
may land better with more patient players, however, and especially those who
are looking for a touch more of the gorgeous comicky world filled with detail
and joy.
Overall 6/10
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