Kingdom Rush Frontiers Review (Conflagr8)
Fun tower defense game that focuses on more active gameplay than the standard formula.
My playtime on it is about the time it took me to 100% the achievements at a casual pace.
The negative aspects of this game are mostly holdovers from its original mobile+microtransactions release. Even though the microtransactions have been removed and their features incorporated into the base game for steam, you still have:
-A gem currency to buy one-time-use abilities that range from mediocre to extremely strong (you earn a small amount of gems per level completed). These abilities are not mandatory by any means, and I only ended up using them to do the final level 3 stars at max difficulty.
-A roster of heroes where almost half the heroes are unlocked in one batch in the final area. This last batch of heroes (presumably the premium, paid heroes from the original release) are quite a bit stronger than the heroes you unlock through normal progression. Once you unlock him, the undead dragon hero performs better than the others in almost all circumstances.
-A grindy hero leveling system that discourages variety. Heroes are an integral piece of your kit, and their power increases drastically as they level up. As a result, through gameplay progression you keep unlocking heroes that are, at their unlock level, pretty useless compared to the ones you've been leveling up. Leveling goes slowly until you get to the late game, so you'll find yourself with a wide roster of heroes that you only use 1 of unless you're willing to grind experience for others.
When it comes to tower balance, every tower has a place but some have more places than others. Each tower type has 2 evolutions, but in all cases 1 evolution is clearly more useful, and one of the mage towers even ends up eclipsing barracks as a whole.
The mid-game can be a little rough, but this game shines in the late game and the early game.