Kingdom Rush Alliance review: Let yourself have fun
Kingdom Rush Alliance was released on Steam and mobile app stores on July 25, 2024. Alliance is the fifth installment in the Kingdom Rush tower defense series, and was a game I didn’t really enjoy the first time through. I love the game now and would recommend it to everyone, so what changed?
The gameplay loop of Alliance is like that of all other tower defense games. “Creep” enemies walk along designated roads and paths, trying to reach an exit located at the edge of a given map. In every game, the player starts with 20 lives and loses one whenever a creep passes through the exit point. If the player reaches zero lives, then they lose.
To battle and defeat these creeps, players need to build towers. These have varying abilities and attacks, each are unique in their own way. Most are themed after a certain faction or race of people within the Kingdom Rush world.
Kingdom Rush games break away from the usual tower defense formula by allowing players to build “barracks” and control hero units that directly interact with and block creeps on the road. These units act as roadblocks, giving the player more control over the map than other tower defense games typically allow.
In Kingdom Rush, players are also given access to “spells” that aid in clearing waves of enemies. In Alliance, each of these spells is themed and attached to a certain hero.
Alliance also differed from other games in that it let you control two heroes at the same time. Other titles allowed only a single hero.
I’ve played the Kingdom Rush series since I was young. My earliest memory of the series is looking over my friend’s shoulder while he showed me the game on the PC in his living room. At some point, I eventually downloaded the series for mobile and played it for years alongside games like Minecraft and Bloons Tower Defense.
This game has kept me company through my parents’ divorce, and through the long plane rides and airport waits that followed. Even though they’re maybe a bit one-dimensional or unexplored, I’ve grown really attached to a lot of the characters and towers from this series.
I also really liked Kingdom Rush: Vengeance despite its flaws. I loved what the developer team was trying to do in innovating the Kingdom Rush formula, and I think in Alliance, they perfected what they attempted in Vengeance.
So by all accounts, I should have loved Alliance when it came out. A few fan-favorite towers were returning with reworked abilities, and there was an otherwise entirely new roster of heroes and towers coming out.
Once the game finally dropped, I played through it and didn’t even complete the final level. I liked the game, but I found myself mildly disappointed that I didn’t love it.
There were a few reasons for this. One is that, when the game launched, it was arguably light on content. There were only fourteen levels — counting the tutorial, which most players breeze through in a couple of minutes — and it felt like most of the levels could be completed first try, relatively quickly.
However, I think the main thing that held me back from really enjoying this game was that I went online and looked at what a bunch of other people were saying about it. The heroes I was using were apparently bad, and I didn’t have an optimal tower loadout. I adapted my strategy and made it to the final boss, but didn’t even bother completing the game on my first playthrough.
I didn’t think much of the game for a long time. I probably wouldn’t even have replayed it if not for the release of Kingdom Rush Battles, which led me to join a community of Kingdom Rush fans who really loved Alliance.
Given their passion for the title — one which I had thought somewhat mediocre — I was encouraged to give it another try.
Every once in a while, playing a video game will make you feel like a child again. You’ll see something so cool or fun, that all you can do is just sit there in awe and this wonder-induced stupor.
Playing Alliance the second time around gave me this feeling.
A year later, the number of levels in the game added since release had nearly doubled. Nine more “main campaign” stages had been added, with another eight DLC levels that added innovative heroes and barracks into the game. It felt like the game didn’t end after an hour or so of gameplay.
The second time around, I played through this campaign on the highest difficulty setting I had unlocked (Veteran), and I would restart every time I lost more than two lives. This really padded the game time and had me actively working to optimize my strategies, rather then just coasting through the level and thinking it was kind of mediocre or even frustrating.
It seems to me now that certain levels were meant to be reset if you lose more than two lives. The way that the waves are built and designed just fits this perfectly.
Replaying the game, I also decided to use what was “fun” rather than what other people said was “good” around the game’s release date. I used the game’s starting hero — Vesper — throughout almost the entire game. Vesper has become one of my favorite units and I dropped him before because some moron online said that he was bad.
To me, Vesper is the epitome of Alliance’s good and satisfying game design. With the gimmick of two heroes being added to this game, Vesper has a kit that allows players to either “set and forget” him somewhere, or more directly control and “micro” him depending on what the player wants. It’s perfect how he’s this generalist hero designed for both styles of play.
The heroes and towers in this game are extremely satisfying to use. Despite how fun the heroes are, I think the towers and their strengths, weaknesses, and abilities are what make this game really shine.
In doing what was fun rather than optimal, I also got around to testing out towers that I didn’t touch the first time I played the game. I played with the Demon Pit and the Dune Sentinels — towers that people also said were “bad” — and I was amazed at how they changed up the gameplay loop. They also have unique abilities and silly one-liners I’d never heard before, these two towers I was really impressed with the second time around.
Beyond that, new towers and levels were also added into the game. The extra levels were unlocked at the half-way point in the game rather than the very end, which I think is massive for replayability and unlocking the towers you receive as an award from beating these levels.
Something I’ve always been sad about with Kingdom Rush games is when towers are unlocked extremely late into the game. It always felt like you didn’t get any real chance to use them before the game was just over.
One of the new towers that was released in the extra levels is the Twilight Longbows. This one has probably become my favorite “marksman” archetype tower in the entire series, and I was able to unlock and begin using it at a pretty reasonable point in the game.
The tower designs in this game are all so unique. Both thematically, and in gameplay. Every tower has its own niche and maps where its strong. Even if a tower is a bit “weaker,” its weaknesses can be worked around or even subverted with the right kinds of support and set-up.
As I mentioned earlier, the heroes also are also unique and really fun to use. Alliance has given us the best roster since Kingdom Rush Frontiers. All of them have different maps they really shine on, it complements the tower select system perfectly.
So at the end of the day, playing this game has really re-emphasized to me that you should play what you think is fun, not what some clueless dweeb online is telling you is optimal. That really is the “make or break” of Alliance for me, though the game has improved considerably in the year and a half its been released also.
Ironhide studios has teased more updates for Alliance, but they have yet to release any concrete details or roadmaps.
They are currently developing Kingdom Rush Battles alongside their mainline games, which is a live service multiplayer PVP project. For more on Battles, click here.
Most importantly, I did beat the final boss of the main campaign on my second playthrough.
