Kingdom Rush Origins Review (Vidar)
Weaker than its predecessors. Why? In my opinion, it boils down to a few things, starting with the active ability. In the first two games, the meteors you call down can be impactful, but they always felt like an "extra" thing you were doing (rather than being "needed" to complete the stages).
In this installment, you call down thunderstrikes. They're significantly more powerful right out of the gate than the meteors from the first two, but they're also very frequently "needed" to complete the missions. I'm not saying that the missions can't be played efficiently and completed without them, but they become a constant way of completing stages. Over and over again, I find I've really just been slowing down the monsters to buy time and hold on for another cast of the thunderbolts. It makes for a less interesting gameplay experience. Yes, in the first two installments, I would have moments where the meteors "saved the day", but nothing at this frequency.
Furthermore... I also think that the overall tower set in this game packs less punch than in the previous games. There isn't any combination of towers that the game allows me to go for that I get excited about setting up.
One bright note, there are fewer lone "air enemy waves" on maps to catch a player off guard who's doing great but skimping on anti-air (how dare we skip anti-air when we've seen zero air units until half-way through our waves...). Instead, this game opts for either 1) waves that suddenly overwhelm your barracks and push through (and then the monsters split two separate ways so you can't drop soldiers to plug them up), 2) enemies that disable your infantry and walk past, or 3) big golems who smash soldiers quickly, causing you to have to call-down on them and juggle with rax/hero to buy time for thunderbolts.
There's also a notable uptick of "annoying" achievements to chase in this one. Use X ability Y many times. Kill X enemies while they're under Y affect. While the previous ones had maybe 5 or so maps I had to go through to click on some things for completion, they decided to make the worst installment the one where you have to chase after more things. I don't know if I care to 100% this one. I've been looking forward to wrapping it up.
One last note before closing - the actual animations and the "feel" of the gameplay is somehow getting worse for each game. It's getting floatier.
So... I've finished the game and got all my stars... time to move along, perhaps. If this is where the franchise goes in the sequels, I may end up quite happy that I didn't buy the collection.