izigame.me

I have finally had the opportunity to play Origins on PC, whereas I had previously played on mobile over half a decade ago. In terms of graphics, it's an Iron Hide game: it's great as always. The levels are lovingly constructed with small little details that are brought into even higher clarity on PC. Music and voice lines are generally forgettable, but not jarring and it's nice to make an orchestra out of your towers. I think in terms of gameplay, I find it is rather on the easy side when compared to the post game of the original, frontiers, and much of Vengeance. Heroes are generally well balanced as you can't do game breaking things with them like in Frontiers and Vengeance. While this is great from a game play perspective, I think that many heroes are unlocked too late to be experimented with and the grinding required to level them up to max level is both annoying and discourages their use. Since heroes also do not significantly impact gameplay outside of whether they hit air or not, paying an extra 10 dollars over the mobile port to unlock "all the heroes" may not be worth it when you will probably just use Eridan, the first hero, for the whole of the main campaign and only play every level once or twice. Towers on the other hand are not very well balanced. Like previous kingdom rush games, one tier four upgrade branch path generally is generally stronger than the others and there is no tower synergy passives like in Frontiers and Vengeance that help make tower placement more strategic, so there is often a single intended way to play most maps. This is especially noticeable with artillery which has underwhelming tier 4 upgrades that struggle to fully take advantage of choke points, and tier four infantry often being a downgrade from tier 3. Mage towers function reasonably well, but only one upgrade path is very effective as it has silence and a instant kill ability. This leaves archer towers being probably the strongest they have ever been in a Kingdom Rush game with a tower with an effective anti-armor attack and a stun while the other is long range and has a chance to instant kill enemies and mark them for double damage. I believe much of the fun of this game comes from the strong enemy core roster of the dark elves who are a competent enemy force that has units that can interact with towers and can overwhelm your infantry instead of mindlessly marching down the lane for you to kill. The other enemy in the roster are fairly uninteresting and don't do a whole lot which is a huge shame given that you only fight the full dark elf roster in a handful of missions.
Overall I would give this game an arbitrary 8/10 because it's a solid title that provides several hours of fun, though I would personally say that the experience is not a huge step up from the mobile port and a similar level of enjoyment can be derived for a lower price. Then again, most of us are here out of nostalgia and since I had a good time playing through it again, you probably will too.