Kingdom Rush Vengence PC Review

I demolished Kingdom Rush Vengence. Not because it was easy, not because there wasn’t much time to play the game before the release date, but because I adore this series and how inventive it can be.

If you’re tired of the tower defence genre, then this game might be the one to revitalise it. Very much in the same league as the Kingdom Rush series, the fundamental gameplay remains the same but with the introduction of new heroes, towers, factions and abilities.

Continuing from my saved game from the demo that was available during the Steam Games Festival, I wrote the day off and got stuck in. Do bear in mind, I finished the story element of the game on casual to start with, unlocked all the goodies, then went through doing both the Heroic and Iron Challenges.

Kingdom Rush Vengence PC Review

There are well over 20 stages in the game, starting with Vez’Nan’s Tower and going full circle. The premise of the game is a reversal from its predecessors in that you take control of the evil wizard, destroying the neighbouring realms in the process.

You aren’t restricted to fighting one faction. If you played the demo, you’d be familiar with the Dwarves and their mechanical genius and weaponry, but delve deeper, and there’ll be Elves, Humans, Amphibians and the Undead. Hopefully, this isn’t a spoiler, but once you seemingly defeat the enemy, loads more stages open up, and they’re significantly more challenging.

Towers range from the classic arrows, infantry, cannons and magic to include structures with Dark Elves that can melee or do ranged attacks, a blimp that hovers over enemies and drops bombs, or the undead tower that sends patrols of skeletons in the direction of your attackers.

The humour in Kingdom Rush Vengence is on form yet again, jam-packed with pop culture references from Breaking Bad through to The Thing. The folk at Ironhide Game Studios know their stuff. There are in-game achievements that function as a Where’s Wally/Waldo? as you click on and interact with background items.

It only took me until stage 17 or so to realise I could do that…

There’s A Hero…

The heroes list is excellent. Pick melee or ranged, necromancers to dragons – there’ll be a hero for everyone. Awwww. My personal favourite was Tramin, a mad inventor that performs ranged attacks from anywhere on a map, his special is Bombaggedon. 

He tosses a box of walking bombs onto the trail that explodes on impact. The only negative part of this special wasn’t the cooldown, but the bombs have freewill and would occasionally head down a path I didn’t want them to go.

Naturally, you can only play one hero at a time, and while you too will have a favourite, it’s worth playing them all, levelling them up and trying out their numerous abilities. Additionally, you can also call reinforcements as per other titles, where they’re summoned for a brief time to slow down the flow of waves.

There are six pages of achievements in the game, and I’m currently in the process of unlocking them. A lot of them are easy to obtain, such as clicking a dog in the background to selling 20 towers. I got a reality check when an achievement popped up saying ‘No Survivors III – Slay 10,000 Enemies’ very early on. Go out much?

Top Of The Tower

If Kingdom Rush Vengence and the series is new to you, you may be surprised that there are no other modes such as multiplayer. This doesn’t bother me in the slightest, but if you’re more of a fan of something like Pixel Junk Monsters, you’re out of luck.

There aren’t any other game modes – not that I could think of anything suitable for this type of game. The sheer number of achievements and the fundamental enjoyment this game brings outweighs any missing bells or whistles.

To some degree, I feel like I spoiled my experience of Kingdom Rush Vengence by binging on it so quickly. I can guarantee that I will be playing this for some time, however, and also revisit, again and again, the same as Pixel Junk Monsters, coincidentally.

I’ve already replayed some levels purely for the fun of it – nothing to do with the review, achievements or levelling up of a hero (they max out at level 10). For that reason, this game scores highly for me, and I can’t fault it within the context of the genre.

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Kingdom Rush Vengence Review Summary

As a tower defence game, and also as a fan of the Kingdom Rush series, I have to put my foot down and give it full marks. It’s witty, enjoyable, escapist material that doesn’t fail to entertain and distract from what other madness is going on the real (fantasy) world.