2021 has seen some incredible new game announcements and launches, and Legends of Kingdom Rush is right up there with the best of them.
Ironhide Game Studio’s immaculate strategy series has been earning rave reviews ever since the original Kingdom Rush hit the app stores in 2011. Since then the studio has followed up its masterpiece with Kingdom Rush Frontiers, Kingdom Rush Origins and Kingdom Rush Vengeance. There’s even a Kingdom Rush board game.
Legends of Kingdom Rush is the greatest leap yet for the series, taking it in a bold new roguelike tactical-RPG direction.
The gameplay sees you leading a party of heroes against an “extraplanar menace of unprecedented proportions”. There are Legendary Heroes to recruit, as well as Companion Heroes with a wide variety of skills and powers.
The combat, meanwhile, takes place on a hex grid for maximum tactical depth, and the game boasts 100 narrative events set against a stunning array of backdrops.
Legends of Kingdom Rush is fairly easy to pick up, but it layers on the difficulty with new tools, Heroes, game mechanics, and so on. As your arsenal grows, the tactical options proliferate dauntingly.
The best way forward is simply to keep experimenting with different characters and parties. Nothing beats just rolling your sleeves up and running headlong into the fight.
That said, here are ten sage nuggets of wisdom to get you over the hump.
- Relax: it’s supposed to be hard. Legends of Kingdom Rush has plenty of roguelike DNA in its source code, which means dying is part of the process, and not a catastrophic failure to be avoided at all costs. Embrace the darkness!
- Don’t try to memorize a path to victory. Every adventure in Legends of Kingdom Rush is different, with new combat encounters, map visuals, and events, so there’s just no point. Instead, concentrate on learning the fundamentals so that you’re ready for whatever the game throws at you.
- Legends of Kingdom Rush gives you a killer advantage over your hapless enemies: you can check the initiative bar for intel on their stats and skills, letting you know exactly how to overcome them. Over time, of course, you won’t need to check on your enemies’ stats because you’ll know their weaknesses like the back of your hand.
- Progress through Legends of Kingdom Rush is not linear. You’ll encounter mismatched enemies all the time, and so you’ll do well to remember that discretion is the better part of valor. Depending on the situation at hand, sometimes it’s better to swerve a fight.
- Don’t forget to promote your Heroes. This improves their stats and heals their war-weary bodies. And look beyond the strongest Hero. Sometimes the one to go for is the Hero who needs the XP most.
- Merchant and upgrade vendors are your friends. How do you know they’re your friends? Because they supply you with damage and armor boosts, and that’s what friends do. These upgrades eliminate your Heroes’ weaknesses and buttress their strengths, and can be devastating if used effectively. Hint: try increasing the attack damage of a hero that deals area damage.
- Plan your strategies around your Heroes’ powers, ensuring that the Heroes in your party complement one another. For instance, if one of your heroes is too slow (that’s right, Sasquatch, we’re looking at you) then make sure you’ve also got a Hero who can teleport (thanks, Asra).
- Friendly fire is only a bad thing if you do it to yourself. In Legends of Kingdom Rush, you can bamboozle your opponents into attacking other foes, which is as satisfying as it sounds.
- Don’t duck the early tests. Your progress in Legends of Kingdom Rush stays with you from fight to fight, and if you experience some bruising encounters early on you’ll be in a better shape to handle the scrapes that come later.
- There’s no one definitive playing style in Legends of Kingdom Rush. Instead, there are as many strategies as there are players to come up with them. Keep experimenting and you’ll develop the approach that’s right for you.
So what are you waiting for? Pre-order Legends of Kingdom Rush via Apple Arcade by clicking this link.
