25:27 the voices in my head arguing at 2 am

Almost 90% of enemies in Vengeance have Slow movement speed as listed in the in game Encyclopedia. Let that sink in as to why each wave feels like a slog.

25:40 Me arguing against myself in my head during a shower

i appreciate how you make content for such a niche audience without getting discouraged, bless up

I don't know if it was mentioned, but I experienced the funny bug of if a Frozen Soul gets possessed by a Spectral Mausoleum, then turns back into a Frozen Heart, it stays on your side until the Frozen Soul form dies. This is especially funny in the Winter Queen fight, since she deals physical damage, so she can't kill the Frozen Soul, completely walling her with one of her own units.

Ironhide did make a game that was supposed to be a framework for non-stop updates and replay value. But Junkworld bombed so hard.

I like how u included all the kingdom rush science episodes into this

I have played many tower defense. What I love most about Kingdom Rush is the artwork, animations & Easter eggs. Forgot which level it was but there is Barney from Simpsons having a beer.

This right here is an underrated gem. Best, most useful critisism on Vengeance. So spot on I couldn't agree more. Keep up with the great work!

One of my favourite vengeance bug was a glitch where you could get infinite raptors to fight for you. Basically you used possession on a raptor and have it kill another unit. It then spawns an egg and the raptor from this egg will always be on your side. Repeating this process allowed for an army of raptors, however, they patched it by making possessed raptors unable to lay eggs. It took them only 3 days to patch it after I discovered it.

After listening, i have to say, i really appreciate the fact that you focus on games, and especially specific aspects of games, that will get you less views than focusing on others. Its not something most people would do, but damn am I thankful for it. Thanks Necromancer tower is the best, i mean voduke.

Very nice video. I'm especially happy that you addressed the shift of how games are switching more and more away from a stand-alone product to a pay-to-play/win service. Me and King Rexy had done a livestream awhile ago discussing the problems and possible solutions for the franchise (mostly centered around Vengeance tbh) and it would've been great to have featured you, and other Kingdom Rush content creators to hear your perspectives. I'm saddened by the direction Ironhide is going as of now, and I sincerely hope they change the way they've been doing things.

As a f2p vengeance player, I'd be more than happy to pay 2- even 3000 gems for a new tower

Makes me sad to think what vengeance could have been and good luck with the new era of the channel !

I really missed the star upgrades :/ Could have increased the difficulty, but you can get extra stars for the challenges. The tower system I liked a lot. I thought a lot of them were interesting, conceptually. Most of my favourite towers in the series are from this game. Heroes were also great, probably the best roster after origins, but the variance was too much. Eiskalt is far too op, and the difference between him and the free heroes (other than Asra) is too high. In the other games, sure, Phoenix and Boneheart etc were extremely strong too, but you could not just solo with them haha

Lets hope they listen!

I love this video. It brings up every problem I have with this game that I thought nobody else did

25:27 why is this super funny 💀

very excited to watch the video voduke i just want to thank you for the dedication you are putting in the game you love!

Great job, you really put your heart into the video

Also I want to add some of my own takes on this game. I just finished it on Apple Arcade in less than 1 month and collected all achievements and beat every stage on impossible difficulty with no items or lives lost. First, this game is so easy (most of the time, more on that later). Even on impossible, I’m not challenged. Second, when it comes to towers, less is more. Vengeance has too many towers for a kingdom rush game and not all of them receive decent treatment. This may be due to the fact that some towers cost money and others don’t, but that only brings up another issue. Why premium towers? KRV already costs money to download as it is, they could’ve just upped the download price if they wanted to. This causes one of the worst things possible in a kingdom rush game: a meta. I know it is mathematically impossible to achieve perfect balancing, but some stages feel like a “do or die” meta. For example, in the frog stages, using any kind of barracks or artillery means you’re basically screwed. You are encouraged to spam meta options. All of what I said above applies to heroes as well. Third is the lack of variety. There’s no endless mode, less extra stages than expected, and a not very compelling campaign story. You don’t even fight all of the heroes (Alleria, Magnus) as bosses. That’s my two cents on vengeance. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

To be honest I kinda prefer stars no longer being used for upgrades because 3 stars made the game easier for skilled players while 1-2 stars made it even harder for bad players. Which I don't think is good.

I feel dejavu

The nerd king is back!!! Time for some nerdy asmnr. Thanks so much for the vid!

Great job! KRV has many flaws. I personally am most offended by how slow it is. If it was fast, hard, engaging, it would automatically be far better. I’ve been playing KRRV so long that I forgot about vanilla. Therefore, just play the KRRV mod!

kingdom rush is my favorite franchise next to Yu-Gi-Oh. i really hope it grows better and bigger

14:50 I love using harassers and it never occured that the wraith skill delayed their respawn. In fact, I witnessed a lot that when the wraiths fought for the full respawn duration, they just despawned and a harasser respawned at the same time. Keeping in mind that I play on mobile, this could be a bug only present on steam version I think.

Wow, such big vid. Thx!

Wow, Mr. Voduke, this makes vengeance look even worse, as if they had to spend so e more time on development and balancing, bit they did not. Thank you for this deep dive!

Level layout.. too wide of a lane and too small of an area of effect for towers makes some towers outright worthless on certain maps. Such as the trees and the town, second to last and last level. The game devs wanted you to use specific towers it's very obvious. Using anything but those, nets you at a disadvantage.. and I agree with you the net ability was stupid.

LETS GOOOOOOOOO, long vodule videoooo

My nose itches

Another great video Voduke! Just letting you know, around 25 minutes in the voiceover audio is overlayed with another clip, so there are two of you talking

it's so satisfying to hear voduke say satisfying I mean not only satisfying things but the word satisfying itself because it makes the game so satisfying

Why is there no encyclopedia in mobile version 😩

Here's hoping to KR5 setting things right. I did notice that at least like half of these have been fixed since this video

i know i am commenting alot but oh well. in terms the of tower system. i think a hybrid between the two works the best. you have your regular four main towers but you can swap the specialisation of the level four outside of gameplay. now you have up to 8 towers in a level and a bigger rosters to choose those 8 towers

I really enjoyed the music. Them horns be powerful

Vengeance should've featured a hero called 'The General' it would've been the perfect time to play as one in-game. Hell, I even thought at first during my very first playthrough, Paragon, was THE General we the player were referred to as in the first two games. The idea of playing as the character of Veznan's General would've made the game at least more thrilling imo

I fell like like vengeance and origins are 2 opposing sides on the extreme of it. Origins favors a more fast action paced "combat", a lot of enemies have "medium" speed whit some respectable ones as fast and 2-3 enemies at most being slow. And then there is impossible mode and now most enemies gain a speed buff, great. Meanwhile in vengeance like someone else mentioned 90% of enemies are slow , 2-3 are medium and 1-2 are fast. No wonder it leads to slow/boring waves.

Great video Voduke, you really covered most of the things but I'll add a couple more points. Firstly in terms of the soul impact recharging, I noticed it only recharges on the impact itself, meaning that the souls that fly out to deal extra damage will not recharge your spell despite them being part of the overall ability. This is especially a problem because 1. The soul impacts are very spaced out so the little souls will kill enemies in between and 2. The soul impacts most of the time will bring down the enemy to a very low amount of health, allowing the flying souls to finish it off easier, thus not recharging your soul impact ability. Also another problem I have is actually, this may be controversial, the fact that I think there are TOO many levels. I think it would have been far better to leave it with the frogs and winter campaigns, then maybe 2 levels for rotten forest and 1 level for the ancient and primal campaigns. KR1 does this very well, with a bunch of 1 off levels as well as 2 and just one but very fun 4 stage campaign. Not to mention the postgame in Vengeance is worse than the main campaign, at least the main campaign was unique with its bosses. Also the enemies in the main campaign I find interesting cause i liked seeing how they handled the characters that you used to play with in KR1, but postgame is very bland. Anyways good job and also good attempt to justify the failures of Vengeance a little bit by looking at the development problems, because it means that this is not really the fault of one singular individual, just bad circumstances. Perhaps Vengeance was just a slip-up due to unfortunate circumstances and Ironhide will go back to making great tower defence games maybe with new concepts. Ooh can you imagine a game with like scrapyards and machines and stuff? Hmmm...would be amazing I'm sure. Yes I'm sure Ironhide wouldn't come up with something so silly as an energy system. (on a real note, I was so disappointed with Junkworld, but boy is that a topic for another time).

38:15 I have played btd6 before, and I may not agree with this. On harder maps (starting from advanced maps), the RNG is just so awful making you lose almost all times. And then if you reset the round, you are locked out from getting the black border on the map unless you restart completely the mode in which you failed because of such RNG. In KR, you can restart if screwed by RNG but it's not as big of a time loss than if you are trying to black border a map in btd6 (especially since chimps mode in btw6 is 94 rounds with everything restricted and you are required to beat it without resets to black border). This is without mentioning that some maps require pixel perfect placements of monkey towers in btd6 and you still have awful RNG to deal with

i love your videos!

Make a feature to make custom towers and levels!

Always odd to me how beating a level without losing a single life meant nothing. 3 star rating should be reserved for losing no lives, you can still get 3 star with 17 or 18 I believe. Also need several endless levels, and our own level / wave editor

Kingdom Rush Vengeance aside, Did I just see Dragon’s Dogma footage at the end of the video?

0:21 That radioactive dog looks familiar good video btw

I do think the difficulty and pacing is the biggest issues. Bugs and QOL I can work around but I really miss that constant stress that I had with the older games. Enemies that seem almost unkillable like the demon dogs from the original or the saurian brutes or twilight golem getting so close to the exit, managing to kill them only to realise there's another one half way through the path that I have to deal with made for such a fun experience that I didn't get in other tower defence games. In vengeance it really felt like I could just set up before a wave and watch it play out

Thanks for making this video. I had played this game when it first came out years ago, forgot about it and recently downloaded it again. I was wondering why I didn't play it more until I went to the tower selection and saw that they were charging $3 bucks or more for each additional tower. Not even an option to pay with gems, real money only. I've already paid for the game, and while I wouldn't mind paying for heroes I think it's just greedy to make people pay for more towers. Sad that so many companies are going this route.

Alright you got a sub from me. That was really good content. And I want to get carried for btd 6 boss fights and do some crazy farm eco.

voduke upload = good day

bringing up bloons was a based move, we cultured over here!

mad that I'm more excited to hopefully get my hands on that chinese mod than I am to play any upcoming vengeance update

First of all i appreciate Voduke a lot. I like the video, the channel and ofc KR frenchise. I played KRV only on steam and love it. Yes, game is rushed a little bit and creators wanted to monetize it. Yes there are some bugs which can be annoying. However i want to point out some new ideas which i very like: 1- Tesla Coils (without some minor bugs) are innovative which believe it or not i was thinking in earlier KR games. Because in my childhood i played CC RedAlert a lot. 2- Critics of remaking upgrades about companion is true but still changing the strategy allows you to use different towers or heroes. 3- In KR1, KRF and KRO in order to make the perfect stage in veteran/impossible, you have to idealize the strategy best as possible and practice it over and over. However KRV brings a new option: Ability to change towers, companions and heroes. In some stages with some unique ideas you can beat the stage very easily which you would probably tryhard with sticky. This was truely what i wanted. Innovation. 4- In my humble opinion: RNG(randomness) brings a new taste to the game. I am a Dota(1 and 2) player also. So i like the RNG system. Keep it. Let me try to explain why this is important: If you play like a robot and you are repeating same actions then getting same or very similiar results in earlier versions of KR. This is the problem of 21 century which Allows AI to our daily lives. We are not machines. We are human beings. I think RNG system brings another dimension to react encountering the waves. Every game is different a little bit than previous even your skill points, hero, towers and even positioning (alignment, placement and arrangement of all things on the map) are the same. Life is also RNG folks. As the game should be. 5- One of the best things about the game is playing as Veznan's forces. This made me so happy. Creatures we used to see as foes are now on our side, and vice versa. 6- And finally KRV can be a jumping pad for the ultimate KR game. Creators should watch this epic video and fix these major bugs and listen to us (forever fans of KR). Thank you all.🔱

Vengeance has no necromancer

top 10 youtuber

33:49 A moon walking Apex Shard looks goofy as hell.

The alck of ENDLESS MODE

What a great breakdown

No! Don't advertise my mediocre review, it has enough views now damnit

Bit late to this but I do think you are spot on for the positives and the negatives and this is what Ironhide should build on for a 5th Kingdom Rush Game!!!!!!! Origins is definitely way harder but I think the multiple different towers idea for Vengance was much better then the 8 in the other games!! The more towers the better!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (free though)

I love this man. In one video managed to address all my gripes with this game, the mad lad. I also do not feel like replaying any stages cause of the boredom that it induces upon me. There is nothing alluring about this game that would encourage me to replay it. Theere are meta heroes, but combined with meta towers it's boring. Like, yeah omg so cool, I get to choose between a plain, useless archer, even more useless goblins or some wacky skellies. Great diversity in choice. Much more preferred the option to choose between 2 maxupgrade trees. That way I didn't have to replay and learn the waves and I could adapt, adjust and improvise on the fly.Devs tried to convince the player base that there is MORE of what they love about the series, MORE towers and More... Wait no that's it. The enemies are also boring, or annoying. There isn't 1 interesting enemy in the whole game. They try to with the Chinese dragons, frozen hearts but they are just plain damage sponges. Nothing fun about that. Wave skipping is in fact suboptimal as of the threat of being overrun. The bosses are also huge sponges with nothing interesting about them- oh, this one is resistant to magic, and this one to physical- so cool! Try to guess which boss I'm talking about-level impossible: they have a lot of hp and traverse down the path veery slowly. So on the surface it appears to be the best one, as of being the most recent one and having more towers. But that is as shallow as it gets. Devs are like a siren that tries to lure you into the water by singing "more towers, more veznan, the old kingdom rush map revisited" and when you get close enough they drown you in boredom, tediousness and many flaws that this game has. It is objectively a downgrade from its predecessors and they had like 5 years break in-between their last kr game. I was more hyped about the origins port coming to steam than the vengeance expansions.

I want endless mode in vengeace

Hey voduke, can you discuss Iron marines and it's sequel.

VODUKE i love your videos kingdom rush is one of my favorite game series

I’m short: play KRRV instead. It does everything that KRV doesn’t!

25:58 can you mute the audio from the footage so I can hear you clearly? Oh god, now I paused the video to type the comment, I lost track of which one was supposed to listen to LOL.

they should make locked heroes and towers for gems, it would add so much to the game, if they are scared about losing money, you can still buy gems

For me, I think the lack of tower spots, and therefore the inability to combine different tower's fields of fire, was probably the biggest fault with Vengeance. The blocking of soldiers didn't feel great either, just quite inconsistent. And finally, perhaps something in the animations, or maybe the overall balance, made me feel like the impact of the towers' shots just didn't look or feel as good as it did in earlier games. Cheers for your analysis

And here i was gettin all excited about the 5th tower type and your tellin me they took the specializations away ;(

After nearly 2 years, i wonder how many of these issues has been fixed.

@Voduke - did Ironhide fix any of these or is the game still horrible? It's the only KR game I just couldn't complete much less 100% on multiple platforms.

Monke jumpscare 😱

8:38 You triggered me

It would be nice if armor hide could make a kingdom rush game with the amount of content btd6 has including multiplayer features like a co op mode. They really don’t seem to understand the amount of potential a fleshed out kingdom rush game really has. Its unfortunate that they don’t seem to care.

So, I did watch the whole video. What do you think about making a top of TD games, that everyone should play?

I had vengeance on my computer, then it stopped saving my progress, so now I’m on mobile and even if I wanted to (which I do, I’m a big fan of the series) buy the towers and hero’s, it just doesn’t let me.

i like Vengeance, i just didn't know it had so many flaws

Hey man i have some REALLY good ideas on what would be a perfect tower defense battle game like kingdom rush. Problem is im neither a game designer nor a game developer. Im a lawyers assistant with the plan to study law.... Idk what to do man... But i feel like at some point in my life i have to release a video game like kingdom rush just with my (100 times better) ideas. Do you know how much it would cost if i pay someone to make the game xD

It's true, this game is really really slow. Even from the first few levels it's noticable. I was nearly falling asleep in the first boss stage

Is it really even worth buying if I don't buy and dlc on it ?

Think you will you do a tower tier list? If yes I better see Melting Furnace, Sorserc Mage, Tesla, Dwaarp, Necromancer, Wild Magus on top 10....or else 👹

They buffed the orc shaman and infernal mages min damage I think. Was just playing a few days ago and level 4 orc shaman damage was: 104-154 or something like that.

For me the game on Android are ported with lackluster effort. Some map tower can ignore monster on the far side of the lane, the tesla tower (charged) can ignore monsters, missing encyclopedia, paid tower can be significantly stronger, oh and waves are extremely stupidly slow on some map and extremely fast in some

Are there mobile mods for kingdom of rush frontiers?

Very big video good.

Im on my 3rd reset rn and I feel like cheating bc I bought the 2 dragons as a pack that came out with the frozen throne update(not sure if that's the name, but the one with the ice queen) and Eiskalt is now my crutch againts everything bc aoe true dmg go brrrr😂

i just started playing krv and after most of these bugs and mistakes have been fixed i am surprised that it was that bad

But what about iron marine invasions?

where to get the mod

around 26 min in.. what the hell. is with the double audio? I can't even understand you because I can't listen to two voices at once.

Honestly, I think I might like vegeance the most for a couple reasons. I like being a villain and with that stuff like undead and shady stuff. Graphics, we can all agree vengeance is a big step up from the rest. Towers, I like having the choice of different loadout. Yes, you can only take 5, but there is almost uncountable combinaions, while the other games have 1 game. Again, maybe I’m oblivious for minor details, but sill, this game is not as bad as mos people say in my opinion

good Lord imagine if ninja kiwi bought Ironhide, the unstoppable force of TD.

Still it is a quality game! I like it so much. They tried to add more changes after 3 more or less similar successful games in series. Changing things is risky, but it worth while.

That was a great critique of vengeance. The one thing I dont like is the music in the game.

I swear vengeance is the most easiest game I beat the game no lives lost 3 star in my first time playing I don’t even remember if I even lost to the game or even lost a life and the towers are freaking overpowered I remember beating denas’s castle with just 2 towers in wave 1 to 8 and didn’t lost life or lose I even win in my first I thought I lose but I didn’t I even played the whole game in impossible and I won how and I agree with everything and I love your videos and then ten shi that you made is actually the video I saw and got me to the kingdom rush community or ironhide community whatever you want to call it if you didn’t exist or I didn’t see your videos i would have never comeback to kingdom rush btw I been playing the game for 9 years :)

37:47 I was laying back in bed as you started talking about "another tower defense game that managed to live up even more to the standard than vengeance" or some such, and was like "it's obviously bloons tower defense 6, that other TD game I've been playing lately that *oh it released in 2018 that sounds about right OHHHHH* and then I freaked out and sat up and yelling "fucking CALLED IT" Anyway, this is a great video!

I don't agree about the archer crow ability. It ain't 2 DMG per second. It's per hit. The crow hits about 2.5 times a second

I had had fun playing vengeance but it sure felt a bit worse then the other 3 for the reasons mentioned. Specially since i though origins was awesome. Them bringing a balance patch also with the dlc was really nice to see but they left too many stones unturned and even buffed some towers that are just fine. If we get a 5th i hope it will be more like the first 3 but i dont think the new tower system was bad. Just not executed that well.

Good video. Well made point. Only complaint would be the length. It's almost an hour long which i usually don't have the time to watch in a single sitting. Greatly paced, nice audio quality and no noise in the background which is really good.