REVIEW | Legends of Kingdom Rush

LifeisXbox’s Legends of Kingdom Rush review | You may have heard about or seen the Kingdom Rush series before. That would be because it has existed since 2011, and it was a free flash browser tower-defense game. There were four games released before Legends of Kingdom Rush, and they were all tower defense games. Well, that was until now when the Ironhide Game Studio team decided to go with a turn-based RPG/ strategy game, and I’m honestly glad they did.

Most Memorable Moment

My most memorable moment while playing Legends of Kingdom Rush was when I defeated a boss with just one character left. My other party members died relatively quickly, so I thought I had no chance of succeeding, it was a pretty satisfying, although slightly stressful victory. I guess the lesson of the day is to never give up!

ℹ️ Reviewed on PC | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion of the writer.

What we Liked!

• Beautiful visuals | I really like how Legends of Kingdom Rush looks. There were animated balloons, animals, snow, and other things in the background of the adventure maps and in-combat, and this helped to make the world feel alive to me. There were also two types of cutscenes, one happens at the start of every combat, showing the enemies and having some simple dialogues happening, and there are also some comic-book style cutscenes that usually showed the current adventure villain talking about something related to the story.

• Epic Soundtrack | The soundtrack was great to listen to, it gave the game a fitting epic atmosphere. Be it from the main menu music, adventure maps, sound effects, or in battles, the devs did a great job of setting the tone right for every occasion with the soundtrack.

• Map navigation | I wouldn’t say I have the most experience with turn-based RPGs and strategy games, but I have played XCOM: Enemy Unknown, XCOM 2, Pathway, and a few other lesser-known titles. The adventure map navigation in Legends of Kingdom Rush seemed a lot like the one in Pathway, where you choose one of the available tiles to proceed in a 2D map. However, here you can’t go backward and there’s no concern about running out of fuel before you reach the boss. Random events can occur, and you can attempt to conquer them by rolling at least one die. If you get a star, you succeed and receive rewards; if you get an X, you fail and lose health, debuffs, and/or money. You can also use an item to succeed if you have it, provided that it is the right item for the event. Events don’t just happen at random, they can appear on the map as well. There are shops where you can buy various items that can be used for healing, buffing, and eliminating debuffs, as well as blacksmiths where you can increase either your character’s attack or armor for gold. Ambushes are another possibility, and they can occur randomly between map tiles.

• Character progression | There are ranged and melee characters, but unlike most strategy games, you can’t alter their weapon or armor; instead, you can only improve your attack and armor by leveling up, using items, or using the already mentioned blacksmiths. There are two different types of level-ups that you can get. The ones that occur during adventures let you select a skill to unlock for that adventure; initially, you won’t have options because only one skill is unlocked by default per level-up. These level-ups also upgrade your stats for the adventure. The second kind of level-up you can get is when you gain experience through completing or failing adventures which allows you to unlock new abilities, giving you additional options for when you level up in an adventure. You can only have one “leader” in your party at any given time, but “leader” characters can unlock two more skills than other party members. You can play with and unlock six leaders and twelve normal party members.

• Combat | Combat shares features with various strategy games, much like map navigation does. You can move about, make standard attacks, use special skills, buff your friends, and debuff your opponents, but only a select few (not many) characters can heal other characters in a battle. The barbarian heals himself when he becomes enraged, the witch doctor heals himself by killing an adversary with a critical hit, and other characters can heal themselves by using their skills.

• Replayability | There’s a good amount of replayability in here, as the paths you take, the enemies you find, the party member you will find in the adventure, random events, items, and other things all vary between each try, and there’s a high chance you’ll have to retry adventures a few times before being able to complete them. Safe to say this isn’t an easy game to play. I’m not ashamed to say I had to lower the difficulty on the second adventure until the last to be able to finish the campaign. Plus there’s also an adventure you unlock after beating the game, and an arena mode that you unlock after the tutorial if I remember correctly.

Mixed Feelings

• Arena mode | There are two choices in the arena mode: quick play arena and daily arena. In both of them, you play with a randomly selected team; in one of my tries, there were even six party members. There are also randomly selected “diversifiers” who can be good or bad. Arena mode isn’t horrible and gets the action started right away, but the quick play arena’s random upgrades, enemy count, party size, and map can result in absurdly challenging situations even when playing on casual difficulty. I didn’t find playing a random fight with no character progression nor map navigation to be as engaging as the regular adventures were.

What we Disliked

• Nothing | There weren’t any bugs or performance issues, and there was nothing that was bad about the game.

How long to beat the story | 4-7 hours
How long to get all achievements | 13+ hours

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