Best Kingdom Rush Frontiers Hero

[Niobe Hennigan]

Just like the original, Kingdom Rush Frontiers is set in a fantasy world where you'll battle cartoon-like mythical monsters hell-bent on destroying your kingdom. As a fixed-path tower defense game, you'll be required to choose from four different types of upgradable buildings with varying damage types to keep the evil invaders at bay. Each level has a set number of available emplacements, so it's important to choose your towers wisely.

In between levels, you can upgrade various attributes of each tower to make them more powerful, fire faster, and decrease training time for deployable units. As an extra line of defense you also have three special abilities you can upgrade (that you'll unlock as you play) for when the towers are not quite enough. You can deploy units on the ground to back up your knights or you have a "nuking" ability for emergencies (like a flaming meteor). Both have a cool-down time (more so for the nuke ability) so you'll need to pick the best time to use them. Your third instant special ability is yours to choose, by buying items in the in-game store. Each stage you'll earn a number of gems that can be used to purchase items in between stages. I've had some luck using an ability that lets you drop a potion to freeze enemies for a short time, but, if you have the gems, there's even a "Fat Boy" nuclear weapon that clears the map.

Another cool element of the game is the ability to use and upgrade a hero; a single named unit with special abilities that you can direct to any area of the battlefield. The hero comes in handy in particularly difficult battles, and you'll have three different types that unlock as you play. Kingdom Rush Frontiers (like the original) also has several heroes you can unlock for up to $6.99 in real money, but the three you get simply from playing are quite powerful on their own.

There are some new towers you can unlock once you get into the fourth tier that have upgrades to let you focus on specific abilities. The Archer Tower, for example, lets you upgrade to a Crossbow Fort. From there you can choose from two abilities, including one that increases range and another that shoots a barrage of powerful arrows. Each game you start fresh at the lowest tier, so upgrading the correct towers to the highest level is part of a winning strategy.

Like many games these days, you also can buy more gems with real money, but I found I can do just fine without ponying up any extra cash. Even when a level seems like it can't be beat, you usually only need to rethink your strategy, so think twice before deciding to spend any real cash.

Update: Attack from the sea
The latest update brings three new stages with a coastal invasion by an army of sea devils. You'll have to defend against six new enemies and endure a boss fight from Leviathan, the god of the deep sea. Fortunately, you also get two new heroes to choose from to help you in the fight.

It's true that Kingdom Rush Frontiers has mostly the same features and gameplay found in the first game, but the gameplay is so tight in this series that just playing on new maps with new monsters and a couple new features is still endlessly fun. If you were a fan of the original or want to play possibly the best game from the tower defense genre on iOS, Kingdom Rush Frontiers is the game to buy. And if Ironhide Game Studio keeps rolling out updates like the latest one, there's even more reason to keep coming back for more.

Kingdom Rush (2011), Kingdom Rush: Frontiers (2013), Kingdom Rush: Origins (2014) and Kingdom Rush: Vengeance (2018) are a series of Tower Defense games developed by Ironhide Game Studio. On the 29th February, 2024, a fifth game, title Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance, was announced to be under development. It is set in a fantasy world, where you play as a general trying to stop the evil from taking over the world in the first three, and trying to take over the Kingdom for Vez'nan in the fourth. It involves placing towers in allocated positions along set paths. There are four types of towers in general: Barracks, Artillery, Archers, and Mages. Each tower comes with their own advantages and disadvantages. In the first three games, each tower can be upgraded 3 times with two branching 4th upgrade levels.

• The 4th upgrade options in Kingdom Rush are the Rangers and the Musketeers.
• The 4th upgrade options in Frontiers are the Crossbow Fort and the Axethrowers.
• The 4th upgrade options in Origins are the Arcane Archers and the Golden Longbows.

• Barracks are used to slow foes down by engaging them with soldiers while other towers pick them off. A player may control where the soldiers spawn by changing their rally point. They are capable of attacking ground and (depending on what your 4th upgrade option is) flying forces. Barracks are especially good when combined with Reinforcements (see below) to stop the maximum amount of foes.

• The 4th upgrade options in Kingdom Rush are the Holy Order and the Barbarian Hall.
• The 4th upgrade options in Frontiers are the Assassins and the Templars.
• The 4th upgrade options in Origins are the Bladesinger Hall and the Forest Keepers.

• Mages generally have the strongest individual attacks and their primary role is to take out armored enemies. Mages have a slow rate of fire, thus they are best used in conjunction with Barracks troops. They are capable of attacking ground and flying forces.

• The 4th upgrade options in Kingdom Rush are the Arcane and the Sorcerer.
• The 4th upgrade options in Frontiers are the Archmage and the Necromancer.
• The 4th upgrade options in Origins are the Wild Magus and the High Elven Mage.

• Artillery is the main Area of Effect tower. It deals high amounts of damage to high amounts of enemies using Splash Damage. Artillery have a slow rate of fire, thus they are also best used in conjunction with Barracks troops. They are capable of attacking ground and (depending on what your 4th upgrade option is) flying forces.

Kingdom Rush Vengeance does away entirely with branched fourth-level upgrades, instead having 18 tower types of which you can bring five of into a level. Each tower can be leveled up three times, unlocking special abilities on the final tier.

Like most Tower Defense games, Kingdom Rush has a feature known as the Upgrades system. Depending on how well a player does, he/she may earn (up to a maximum of three) stars on each stage. These stars are translated into upgrade points, which you may use to upgrade your towers to make them stronger.

In addition, the player also has access to the Hero Room, where hero units may be selected. Each hero unit has different special abilities to reflect what they're good at whether it's tanking, healing, DPS, AOE, crowd control, etc.

• In Kingdom Rush each hero has two special abilities which get stronger each time the hero gains a level.
• In Kingdom Rush: Frontiers, Kingdom Rush: Origins and Kingdom Rush: Vengeance each time a hero gains a level they gain upgrade points. A player must decide which of the 5 special abilities to allocate points to.

The first two Kingdom Rush games are free to play and can be found here and here. All four games are available to purchase for iPhone/iPod Touch, iPad, Android, and Amazon Apps. In addition, all of them have also been ported to Steam, and a turn-based tactical RPG Sequel in Another Medium with Roguelike elements released on 2021, Legends of Kingdom Rush, is also available from the iOS App Store through the Apple Arcade subscription service and is made available on Steam a year later. Legends chronologically takes place after Vengeance, where a successful villain must assist the good in defeating an even worse villain. You can also visit the developer's website here.

Whole Series

• Airborne Mook: All of them fly over Barracks units and cannot be targeted by Artillery (but are still harmed by Splash Damage), but upgrades can allow Barracks and Artillery to take them on. Furthermore, every game in the series will alert the player if a wave contains flying enemies by using a winged wave marker:
• Gargoyles, Rocket Riders, Demon Imps and Black Hags in the first game.
• Giant Wasps, Giant Wasp Queens, Poukai Riders (and their mounts), Saurian Razorwings and Saurian Quetzals in Frontiers.
• Perythons, Gloomies, Cloud Stalkers and Screecher Bats in Origins.
• Cyclopters, Blue Wyverns, Hunting Eagles, Gryphon Bombardiers, Crystal Amphipteres, Screecher Bats and Desert Eagles in Vengeance.
• Patrolling Vultures, Corrupted Stalkers, Tamed Stalkers, Void Blinkers and Lesser Eyes from Alliance.
• Downplayed with Gulaemons from the first game and Leap Dragons from Vengeance, grounded mooks that can fly for a short while before landing.
• All There in the Manual: Much of the background information on the setting is only known from their website.
• Anti-Air: Initially, only Mages and Archers can tackle flying enemies, as Artillery can't hit them (although they still take splash damage when artillery is firing on ground enemies) and they can simply fly over Barracks soldiers. This can be rectified with upgrades, namely the Barbarian's Throwing Axes and Big Bertha's Dragonbreath Launcher in the first game; the Battle-Mecha's Wasp Missiles in the second game; in the third game, the level 2 Warden Barracks can attack flying enemies with bows (but these bows will be lost if they're upgraded to Bladesingers); while in the fourth game, the Elite Harassers have bows to hit flying enemies.
• Anti-Frustration Features: Several enemies with an ability that lets them get an unhindered bypass (Saurian Nightscale invisibility, Saurian Darter teleportation, Blacksurge shell retraction, Razorboar Charge, Quarry Worker digging) are unable to use this ability near the exit.
• Area of Effect: The main point of artillery towers is to deal splash damage to foes within a radius.
• Armor-Piercing Attack: True Damage ignores whatever armour and magic resistance the enemy might have.
• Art Evolution: The series' art gets more detailed throughout the games, and there's an improvement in special effects too.
• Big Boo's Haunt: The undead-themed Curse of Castle Blackburn (in the first game) and Shadowmoon (in the second game) campaigns.
• Boring, but Practical: Reinforcements can really save your ass if used correctly.
• Brutal Bonus Level: All the games have bonus/extra levels that unlock after beating the main campaigns. All of them have tough enemies and levels that require very careful planning and strategy to succeed in beating.
• Clown-Car Base: All of those soldiers were in that one barracks?
• Contractual Boss Immunity: All bosses are immune to instant kills (including Polymorph), stuns and forced movement.
• Endless Game: In Endless Challenge mode, enemies will spawn and attack until you run out of lives. The point is not to win, but to accumulate enough points for bragging rights rewards.
• Flunky Boss: Every single boss is assisted by minions that will approach from various paths.
• Friendly Fireproof: Your hero(es), troops, reinforcements and even mercenaries can stand right in the blast radius of all sorts of various AOE attacks from your other towers and powers without having to worry about taking damage from them. Given that their role is to stall the enemies so that they stay longer in range of your ranged towers, it would be self-defeating if friendly fire was implemented.
• Good Animals, Evil Animals: Linirea's forces as well as the forces of the villains use various animal types.
• Good: Bears, Big Cats, Horses, Eagles and Falcons, Gryphons, Sasquatches, Dogs, Sheep, Camels.
• Evil: Hell Hounds, Hyenas, Boars, Gorillas, Poukai, Spiders, Scorpions, Sand Worms, Beetles, Centipedes, Lizards (Saurians), Bats, Rats (and were-rats), Yetis
• Both: Dragons (Good: Ashbite, Bonehart, Faustus, Blue Wyverns, Leap Dragons. Evil: Beresad, Eiskalt, Murglun, Dianyun), Crabs (Good: Karkinos. Evil: Bloodshells), Wolves (Good: Glacial Wolves. Evil: Wulves, Worgs, Winter Wulves, Sand Hounds, War Hounds)
• Giant Mook: All games have giant enemies which are slow but can dish out damage and take it; they are usually among the most dangerous enemies.
• The Goomba: The first enemies encountered in each game (Goblin, Desert Thug, Gnoll Reaver, Dwarf Bruisernote tutorial excluded, Hog Invader) are also the weakest and pose little threat even in large numbers.
• Guest-Star Party Member: Special towers and units are not buildable and only appear already pre-placed on specific stages. Some levels also feature a secondary hero, who fights alongside your main hero and towers for the duration of that stage alone.
• Hero Unit: You can use Heroes in battle, who have special skills to make a fight easier.
• Instant Gravestone: Every time your hero dies and needs to respawn, their body gets replaced by a gravestone where they fell (except in Vengeance, where the gravestone is replaced by their body or weapon).
• Instant Militia: You can instantly spawn reinforcements to the field with the spell appropriately called Call Reinforcements.
• Mercenary Units: Mercenaries (Sylvan Elves in the first game; Legionnaires, Genies, Spear Maidens, Corsairs, Buccaneers and Boatswains in the second; Awoks in the third; Trolls, Troll Champions, Brigands, Marauders and Mummies in the fourth), unlike soldiers, must be individually hired from special towers. Most (especially the elite 150-gold ones) are very effective in combat, but do not respawn and will have to be repurchased if they die.
• Meteor-Summoning Attack: Rain of Fire, a major spell in the first two games, rains down several meteors on the ground, dealing very high damage offset by a long cooldown.
• Mini-Boss: In Endless Challenge mode, mini-bosses spawn once every 10 waves. Unlike standard bosses, they are not one-of-a-kind (each Endless stage only has one mini-boss type, and up to three might spawn in a wave) and lack special abilities, but otherwise are as strong as any true boss (relative to the amount of money you possess by that point) and take away 20 lives upon leak.
• Recurring Element: There's always at least one spider enemy in each game's campaign stages. To name one from each: Giant Spiders from the original, Jungle Spiders from Frontiers, Sword Spiders from Origins, Clockwork Spiders from Vengeance, and Glarebrood from Alliance.
• Resistant to Magic: Magic Resistance is a stat which dampens damage from Magic Towers depending on how high it is. Magic resistant enemies usually tend to be wolves, spiders, spellcasters and magical beings.
• Sequel Hook: Once per game. Overlaps with Wham Shot.
• The original: Vez'nan is defeated while someone (later revealed to be Lord Malagar in Frontiers) seizes his staff which was lying on the ground.
• Frontiers: Both Lord Malagar and Umbra are defeated while the Hammer of Ages has been retrieved. Too bad no one thought to check for the gem that was from Vez'nan's staff in their celebration, which allowed it to be picked up by what is presumably an alien. It is revealed later by Word of God that it is Sha'tra.
• Origins: The Tear of Elynie was corrupted despite the heroes' efforts. The heroes decide that it must be destroyed by having it cast into the Rift of Cinders. Cue Vez'nan being the "volunteer".
• Vengeance: Linirea is conquered while Vez'nan personally throws King Denas through a portal. While his troops loot the castle, he enters the castle's basement stating that King Denas is a fool for not heeding his warnings. Cue the appearance of an Eldritch Abomination while Vez'nan states that the true battle begins now.
• Legends: The Overseer is merely banished, not killed, and will likely return. Vez'nan has a plan to destroy it for good, but he needs Magnus Spellbane's help to do it.
• Alliance: Vez'nan gives the throne of Linirea back to Denas, but The Stinger shows him taking the Overseer's power source from its corpse, heavily implying he's not done causing problems for the kingdom just yet. Furthermore, said power source is heavily implied to be the corrupted Tear of Elynie.
• Shared Universe: Kingdom Rush and Iron Marines take place in the same universe, considering that Sha'tra returns in it, and also has an ability called Linirea's Gem. It's said to be a red gem that gives him power and is strongly hinted to be the corrupted Tear of Elynie taken by the alien in the ending of Frontiers.
• Shoot the Medic First: Mook Medics tend to be priority targets in all of the games, most notably Sand Wraiths who can also summon Fallen, Blood Tricksters and Valkyries who revive enemies from the dead as zombies, and Smokebeard Engineers who can revive machines including MechaDwarf MK.9s.
• Signature Line: One uttered by every final boss of the franchise (in Vengeance, Vez'nan says it in level description): "It is good you made it this far... "
• Sorting Algorithm of Threatening Geography: Most of the games have levels that start out in a rather peaceful landscape, followed by a less peaceful one, and followed by a dark, foreboding one. Inverted in Vengeance, where the tutorial level takes place right outside Vez'nan's Dark Tower, and the final level takes place in Linirea itself.
• Splash Damage: Artillery towers are usually valued for their ability to wipe out Zerg Rushes with splash damage.
• Stone Wall: The role of the Barracks troops in general, but this especially applies to the Paladins in the first game and Templars in the second, who start off with high armour and have access to various upgrades which further increase their durability.
• Taken During the Ending: Happens twice in a row in this series. The Stinger of the first Kingdom Rush has the scepter of Vez'nan being taken by an unknown figure. In the next game, Kingdom Rush Frontiers, it's revealed that the person who took the scepter was Lord Malagar, a former servant of Vez'nan who became the new villain. After attempting to summon Umbra to use their power to conquer Linirea, but failing, the scepter is left lying about at the end of a game, and a new mysterious figure takes the gem from the scepter.
• Zerg Rush: Sort of the entire idea behind the game, and Tower Defense games in general, is stopping Zerg Rushes.

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