Kingdom Rush Is On The Wrong Path

Music credit below:

Track: Alex Skrindo & Jordan Kelvin James - Freefall
Music provided by Ninety9Lives

Track: Unison & Ryzu - Vandalism
Music provided by Ninety9Lives

Daydreaming by me.

Thank you so much for watching.

[rebien]

The crocs just remind me of that old game "Where's My Water" definitely a little silly compared to the old enemies.

[olajza]

I feel like vengeance has started the overly cartoonish route by reintroducing Veznan in his underwear.

[Shyguymask]

As depressing as it sounds, the Alliance handholding tutorial is perhaps not completely unnecessary. Touhou Monster TD is inspired by & similar to the KR games, and the first level has a couple of floating texts telling you about the basics of the controls, then they just leave you be. But then you look at the Steam reviews and a number of them complains about "no tutorial".

[MrWolf]

The new dragon not targeting flying enemies had me going CRAZY!

[Shyguymask]

When it comes to the "cartoon" debacle, I want to remind everybody that in Frontiers, clicking on the big animal would make it violently poop everywhere, and in KR1 Flash the Sasquatch asked to be gifted women. I really don't see how these games have gotten more childish.

[freddi]

I really disagree about the artstyle. Sure, its gotten more colorful, sure, but Kingdom Rush has always been goofy to some extent. Denas throwing food and junk at enemies in KR1, sourcerers turning enemies into sheep, genies turning barracks and heroes into goofy animals, the rabbit challange from Origins, the changest to boss stages in iron and heroic challanges, etc, etc.There has always been a level of silliness to it all, and Vengeance and Alliance dont really do anything new in that department. If anything im glad they are adding more creative enemy designs. I'd rather have this than the millionth human soldier variant.

I agree about the handholding and general decrease in difficulty, though i dont think its as closely tied to visual design as you phrase here. I also think this issue isnt as big as people say it is, since Vengeance and Alliance have let players completely customize their experience with the amount of huge variety of towers. If i feel a tower or hero is too busted i just stop using it and try other towers that will make the playtrhough a bigger challange. I constantly saw people complain how OP Blazing Gem was pre-nerf, but i never saw it as a big deal because i simply found it a boring tower and moved on. This variety is what makes me prefer the new tower system over the old one and why i keep coming back to Vengeance and Alliance while not thinking about the other games for months on end

[raden]

Ok here is my take for the video

Tutorial argument : no argument there and i would put the blame more on the casual players more than ironhide for the more hand holding tutorial (dead space having 4 seperate shoot the limbs comes to mind) and there was several player that make me question if they even grasp the game so i guess IH wanted to be inclusive at a cost

Cartoon argument : this might sound very rude but I always found this argument a bit laden with nostalgia goggles. because personally i found the franchise never take themselves that seriously to begin with ever since the armor games days the only reason people are complaining about it now is because the more detailed art style makes the jokes more apparent and the fact people tend to grow up so you noticed more but that was only on the visual gag side. on the audio side the tone is always the same as the heroes are just hammy and pun heavy as they are in the later franchise(denas throwing junk has one the higher dps than a dwarfen engineer with a gun) and in text side the jokes always been the same with enemy description in their card having jokes filled (gul'thak camp fire stories, ulguk-hai breath, godiethl being a LOTR oc joke) and the boss enemy fates (jt got roasted after having a looney tunes death, bram got piked in the head and all it does is annoyed him, vassile castle turned into an amusement park) hell the joke about the hand bag was ironically was happend in the frontiers achievement with xyzzy saurian king was implied to be turned into a croc shoes (although it was more subtle which is probably what you wanted)

The sole exception is that i could think off, is the entire blackburn campaign where the tone kept sinister and the joke being kept minimal but frankly like i said an "exception" not the rule

PS: personally they should go with a 6 tower limit with the new system and i will be happy

[Paragon-rqvl]

9:15 If my 8 year old self beaten the entire flash version with 3 stars, while also reached the final boss (never defeated it without help though) in frontiers, I'm sure a child can play and enjoy kingdom rush just fine. I did find some of the heroic and iron missions kinda brutal though, still struggling as an adult with some of them

[sirgromith]

I really wish they go back to be like the first 3 games.

[mrthinker]

For me personally it can't beat origins in terms of story, gameplay and art

[zenophilius]

I do think that Ironhide understands that its main demographic ARE of preteens these days, and that perhaps they are currently trying to see how far they need to push the goofiness (for gen alpha) until they cannot retain older players and stop attracting the newer generation.

[Taurmega]

It's kinda funny to me that saying they're shying away from blood was said in the same video with b-roll footage of the boss in this update killing towers with a blood effect lol

While the art style did change over time with distinct examples (like comparing the KR skeletons with the KRV ones), I do think that the games as a whole were always a bit silly in some aspects and gritty in others. Like, I consider the 2nd boss in KRF to be extremely silly; much sillier than pretty much anything in AH. On the contrary I consider the boss of AH to go way harder than anything in KRF.
I still consider this "lighthearted fantasy that takes a moment to laugh"; same as it's always been, it's just that the art style opted to be more personalised and distinct. I'm fine with the direction it's going, and I don't really consider it a problem at this moment. This is nowhere near the levels of art problems that KRV sometimes had; Margosa's portrait being the most unsightly asset in KR's history, honestly.

(This is all coming from someone who draws stuff and enjoys cool art styles)

Honestly, MY biggest problem with AH is how buggy it is. Seems to be released in a pretty rough state with some things that I genuinely wonder how they got through testing.

[Zezitra]

The SYlvara abilty isnt a PVZ reference, its from the Origins games

[Ester]

I dont think the games have gotten more childish (i do agree that maybe the difficulty can be a bit wonky at times) but in terms of art design i really dont think so, sure they've gotten more colourful and i think they've got more personality and this makes the game to me even more charming.

Some aspects of the whole game are a little more "cartoon-y" but i've always found that its a misdirect and later it gets a bit darker. In my opinion the whole of Alliance works in a cutsy to monster aesthetic. The Wildbeasts were quite cute and "cartoony" faction of almost disney like creatures (even tho the hyaenas eat thier victims.) we then move onto the cultists which still have quite a cute aesthetic and then transform in literal abominations, the little ones (whose name i cant remember atm) literally stab themselves and explode into tentacles, to me, thats horrifying. And then the final part of game are just all mosterous abominations, all the designs are alien and wierd and i think work well to invoke otherworldly spawn that with a little imagination, are quite disturbing.

This new campaign imo works the same way, maybe not as well because theres not as many levels or enemies the explore the concept, but there is still an idea of, cute thing turns into scary thing, the eggs with legs (arguably the cutest thing ever) hatch into cute babys which then grow into battle hardened killertiles which personally i find quite intimidating. I do wish they pushed it even further maybe the killertiles could evolve further, maybe into the tank ones (who's name i also forgot.) But i do think it is a little bit more "cartoony" overall, but again its a misdirect for the final boss who i found to be genuinely quite scary in both design and gameplay. I was pretty suprised but i got to it and even when it was tied up it felt a little cute. But yeah it escaped and i was faced with an absolutely giant 6 legged croc that kept growing. I found it quite intimidating. These new levels are also an offshoot of the first Wildbeasts area, the imo more cutesy area which again misdirects into whats later darker and more disturbing. I'm hoping that if the coming dlc and later expansions are offshoots of the later levels then theyll be darker to fit the tone of the other levels.

I hope that all makes sense, i do understand that im not the target audience, im an adult woman in her ealry twenties and i absolutely love the art direction, but i can also understand people who dont like it as much idk its all a matter of opinion really, all i can say really is that ive loved almost every part of alliance so far is there room for improvement? yes, do i wish they pushed designs a bit further? yes, but hopefully if they nail the later expansions alliance will probably top vengance and my favourite KR game :D

Any editing is me fixing my apalling grammar sorry xD

[mohdsyazwan]

Final boss stage is really challenging for veteran difficulty, that 2/3 head croc alone so annoying haha

[Mazen]

You got a point about cartoons art style

[plagueknight]

I get the whole cartoonish thing, but I’m not a fan. I loved how the previous three games looked the gore, the edginess, and the serious tone, especially in Origins. To me, that made the games cooler and more enjoyable. I just hope future updates tone down the cartoonish style and focus more on the darker, grittier atmosphere that made the earlier games so captivating.

[shallbetterdj]

you played these as a kid. Man do I feel old

[EnderJackerith]

Why there's so many races in that game? I miss the orcs and elfs shenanigans

[vexgolem]

Last time I checked your channel you had 80 subs now you have 331, Nice growth, and I bet you will surpass me in like a week or 2