The Kingdom Rush series is no stranger to the Switch, though it’s certainly more popular on mobile devices. Kingdom Rush Origins follows the footsteps of its predecessors, delivering straightforward, accessible tower-defence gameplay with pleasant visuals to boot. It’s surprisingly engaging once you get to grips with the mechanics, but whether you pick this up on Switch as opposed to your mobile device is ultimately dependent on your overall affinity with the genre.
Taking place in a high-fantasy setting, you control a legion of warriors defending their kingdom against the brutish Gnolls. The gameplay cycle is fairly simplistic; you spend coins to build towers at designated points on the map. As you take out enemies, more coins will be added to your stash, allowing you to build more towers and upgrade your current builds. It’s so easy to get to grips with, and with both the touch screen and face buttons available as input options, it’s a really intuitive game to pick up.
The towers themselves come in various forms, and where you place these on the map can turn the tide of the battle. The archers are really good for picking off smaller enemies from a distance, and the boulder-throwing tower is great for damaging bigger, more resilient enemies. Each tower can be upgraded numerous times, adding more troops or bolstering their overall attack power. In between battles, you can also spend points to apply permanent upgrades, making later levels more manageable.
You also have your own hero to deploy amongst your regular troops. You can command these characters to move towards any point on the map, adding a mild element of real-time strategy to the game; we often found that leaving them as the last line of defence against more powerful enemies to be the best use of their skills. You also have the ability to unleash special attacks against enemies, which can change depending on which hero you’re using. These can get you out of sticky situations, but their cool-down can often leave you vulnerable if you’re not careful.
Kingdom Rush Origins does a lot right, but it’s also got one major flaw that sours the experience. The gameplay is really slow overall; there are frequent moments where you’ll just be staring at the screen for extended periods of time, waiting for the enemies to waddle their way across the screen. It’s only until you get to the later waves of enemies that the flow of gameplay starts to pick up a bit. It’s a lumbering experience, and we reckon shorter, more intensive levels would be extremely beneficial.
Comments 15
I enjoyed this on my samsung years ago. Not gonna double dip but its a good one.
So, Kingdom Rush Frontiers remains the best tower defense game on Switch?
Switch seem to really lack good tower defense games, as I haven't heard much about new games in the genre and can't even find a list of best Switch tower defense games anywhere.
The pricing is insane, especially for older games in the series.
I remember when the series was just a free game on Kongregate. Back in those days the speed was not a problem, you were here to lose some time anyway.
This port looks rather.... phoned in.
Too phony for my taste.
I love this series on my phone. Highly recommend it.
@ramberk same, highly recommend it too. Looking at the review, apparantly not on switch, but I’d recommend it on phones then
So it's not a bad game...it's just better on mobile...
@neufel agree that is crazy money. no doubt it will be on 0.99 sale a month after release every second week
@Anguspuss If it's like the other Kingdom Rush games, far from it. The first one released in february and was 7€ for a week, that's as low as it's been.
I believe they're trying to hold to the value of their games more than other publishers.
It's a very good game. It's my favorite tower defense game on mobile and I'd totally would get this version if I hadn't played the hell out of the mobile version.
I can't really understand all the complaining about this game. In my opinion Kingdom Rush is one of the best tower defense games of all time. And the eshop version is not that expensive at all ( if you buy it from the eshop mexico at least ). The mobile version is "cheaper" only if you buy the base game, as each hero must be bought individually and they are really expensive on the mobile devices.
This switch version is the complete version of the game, with all heroes being unlocked just by playing the game.
Overall, I like all the games in this trilogy the same amount, as they all have something distinct from each other.
I highly recommend it!!
The first Kingdom Rush is free on iOS. Try it! It's addictive. The devs are smart, giving the first game out for free to entice people to buy all the sequels.
When the phone app runs at even higher resolutions on a phone, and the game is designed for a touch screen interface. On Switch this is over twice as expensive and has controls that aren't very intuitive. If it ever goes on a huge sale I might pick it up.
Never heard of but just downloaded kingdom frontier for 7 pound. Don’t have a super Phone! Mite play 2 nite before Mario day xxxx
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