Last Hope - Tower Defense Reviews

This is five smackers well spent. I love killing zambies and, what do you know, I also love my tower defense games. Throw in a cool as a cucumber price of five dollars and you have the possibility of a good transaction. The progression in the form of story, multiple upgrades for towers and your heroes, your heroes' gear, makes for, so far at one hour in, a game I know I'll come back to for replay-ability and to see where the game progresses towards. If you're a fan of tower defense games and/or zambies, then you have nothing to lose by spending five bucks on this one. Unless five dollars is heavy in your pocket. In that case, spend it on a bill or food or something instead. Otherwise, so far, so good.

The short: Fun little tower defense with awesome depth,upgrades and hero game play. Awesome price point. At 4$ you cannot go wrong. The long: If you like Kingdom Rush you will absolutely love this game. It takes upgrading way deeper including hero upgrades in both skills and gear. There are multiple heroes to choose from all with their own individual skill sets,equipment and playstyles. You can even control multiple heroes, if you wish. The towers are filled deeply with upgrade trees of their own and there is a decent selection of towers currently to choose from. The game is in early access and the devs behind this not only listen to their customer base but implements what they have asked for. It's nice and refreshing to see an early access project where the devs don't crowd source just to end up abandoning the game.These guys are actually serious about Last Hope and it's clearly reflected in the state of their current product. Highly recommended.

This game has potential, feel much fun to see various towers and heroes wreck zombies. They are all interesting. Why thumbs down? Because this Steam version has lost support, it feels lack of revolution as a modern TD. A F2P mobile releases afterwards, with more updates. Even though mobile has stupid research time mechanic, which can be speed up via coins. Purchasing this doesn't seem to do anything good especially when developers admitting that they will stop supporting Steam version due to "poor sales". Expecting PC version of a mobile game to be "Premium"? It is kind of opposite for this game. ----[1. Lack of PC feeling & polishing]---- The performance is good, stable FPS. Problem is control, very clunky. You can't modify them, have bugs pressing ESC. Heroes pathing can be buggy especially ordered to kill enemies and they just walk to nowhere. The default hotkey is not something I'm comfortable with. It seriously lacking customization, such as normal panning speed even when selecting tower, different control scheme, ability to select group of towers under a hotkey, etc. It feels like they never play top-down styled strategy game. ----[2. As grindy as mobile version, just better]---- Even though Steam version has more unlocked hero, it is still very grindy. (Why would community suggesting using Cheat Engine?) Basically keep repeating same level all over again. Can't they at least add something like "featured level" for limited time plus extra rewards? Finishing most maps to 3 stars aren't enough for coins. Even so, the starter 2 Heroes plus spamming basic tower could lead to a win in all Normal stage. Kind of a joke. ----[3. "Grind to Progress" don't work well past year 2015]---- Nightmare is where strategy and Hero choices could start to be matter, but because due to the grindy nature, it's just feel like "tower X is so poorly performed" or "tower y just not worth the 2x2 space". I am distracted on which upgrade I should focus. Bloons TD 6 don't have this issue because Tier 5 is easier to unlock, Monkey Knowledge are optional bcs not only towers keep getting revised, but also the whole game is mostly balanced to be played without Knowledge. Last Hope is just too rely on stats and upgrades, this approach doesn't work well past year 2015, where grinding is more than learning the game. ----[4. Tower balancing is not just "premium" update, they're essential]---- Both versions have the same problems. Towers don't feel like they are all fun to use afterwards, especially due to old school "first target priority". Like Cannon tower, overkilling a weak zombie, wasting its precious shots. Arrow tower is better than Sniper tower due to lower cost, but most strongest zombies have fire weakness. So why spend expensive Sniper tower that could overkill a target, and spend expensive upgrades? Where most levels could be done by just Arrow and Stomper... ... It's just a mock to the other "cool" towers. The Farm is a disaster due to Zombie Runner. Guess what is the counter? Mortar, Sentry? Wrong. The Poison Arrow with Toxic Explosion upgrade, woah. Due to easier to hit group of runners. In my eye, Mortar's only purpose is early game maggots killer and then stunner, further upgrades are meaningless. ----[5. Hero is fun but add more grind]---- Heroes are much better than Kingdom Rush due to better control, but also more grind due to their items, not much about level. Bothering about focus on tower or trying out new Hero? It's just too much distraction, for a paid game. A PAID GAME where mobile version has update. It hurts. Mobile version has more Tier 3 items. More worth to grind for endgame... new melee Hero with dodge, woah. The game itself is more suited for mobile market with more casual gamers, anyway. Guess that's why Steam version kind of dusty...

Update! The devs have promised a patch to overhaul the whole control scheme. As that was my biggest gripe with the game, I'm considering giving it another shot once this patch hits, as I still think some of the ideas on display are interesting. Looking forward to a second chance for this title. I'll reevaluate my opinion on the grind of the game once I can play the levels without control frustration. Review: ***[Beta PATCH to address CONTROLS ISSUE out, haven't played updated game yet though.]*** There are a lot of things I don't like about this game, but the thing I like the least is that it's a frustratingly poor mobile port. Most things you'd want to "tap twice" to do on a tablet or phone still require two inputs, but it's ridiculous here - double type? Ok... And the control scheme is kinda garbage. There will be moments when you want to respond quickly to changing situations, but can't, because the controls inhibit your intentions. The awkwardness of the user interface will be most noticeable when you're trying to do anything quickly. You'll be frustrated trying to place towers suddenly when a level's spawn layout changes after no prior warning (which is a mediocre design choice in my opinion, and forces you to build from the red line at the end of the level outward unless you want to get screwed on mobs slipping through your suddenly compromised defenses). The controls also suck when trying to get your hero to target enemies, either for their regular plink damage attacks or for their timed abilities. Also, the timed abilities are a little random in how they deal damage sometimes, which is difficult to square with the "Tower Defense" genre concept in my opinion. Shouldn't be very luck based at all. There are a lot of things to grind out that make your towers or hero suck a little less, but at least in the early game it's just a grindy slog. Nothing in what I played so far to give you that "oh hell yeah" feeling some other games give you when you unlock a new tower type, no real decisions to make about how to specialize anything - just basic upgrades to basic attributes. I'd love this system if it had more choices in customization, maybe some exclusive choices to specialize a tower more. I dunno, I like that in other games of this kind and feel it might add some legs to the upgrade system to have even just one branching option at the end of an upgrade tree - make a choice, player, and enjoy the rewards. Why am I bothering to make suggestions for a game I didn't even really like the first time I owned it? Well, the devs responded, and appear to be making a genuine good faith effort to work on areas that I personally found frustrating, and their communication with this review chain has given me some real faith that what we have here isn't a bad mobile port, but the makings of a Good Mobile Port, maybe even something that can find unique excellence on the PC platform if they continue to develop it and continue to pay attention to player response.

A very good tower defense game! Lots of towers and lots of options. It gets easy by the end due to leveling up of towers and hero characters, but there's a lot of fun to be had.

This is actually a very good TD game that adds a truly interesting and new perspective to the genre (although, yes: you'll be shooting zombies)! It may look like a slower-paced game at first. But trust me, you'll get busy-busy real quick...And even more so in the later levels! A mix between classic TD and TPS, I really like the so many levels you have out-there and the immense replayability. Adding an Arena and other side-games within the game like that was also a brilliant idea, adding extra play time and more ways to pile-up some more cash for upgrades! You also have so many ways to play it, with so many possible tower upgrades and characters that you can chose from and upgrade too, that your next play-through and your strategy can be completely different than the previous ones. You'll have to put-up with weird zombies sounds, right between vomiting and dying (!) But outside of that, the game looks great, runs great, and has LOTS to offer to TD games fans! The Chief has spoken: It's a Thumbs-up!!

Keep in mind: if this were more expensive, this would be a negative review. That being said, this game is definately good for at least the $1/hour expectation. However... if you're looking for a good TD that will make you feel challenged, this probably isn't it. While the hero system has some merit with six different heroes (with a seventh available waaaaay too late to be worth mentioning), with both talents and gear to help you customize your play,,, that works as both an advantage and a disadvantage. In many cases, you'll have to farm excessive amounts of currency to unlock a hero, then unlock his/her gear, then upgrade said gear... only to THEN have to level up that hero to be useful. Given how slow leveling is, and how dull farming currency is, that's a monumental task. Especially given that some heros don't work the way you'd expect them to just reading their stats. But the real crime here is the towers themselves. Often times towers will fail to target correctly - either focusing on a slow mob that moved into range first while letting one or more faster ones slip by, or simply not hitting mobs because of strange line-of-sight issues. For instance, an AoE tower might hit one mob at the back of a pack, but not hit the rest of the pack at all. Worse still, however, is for the many tens of thousands of currency you might sink into fully upgrading a tower... most of the game can be dominated with two tower types. And no, they're not the advanced ones. The most powerful tower seems to be spamming a certain, fully upgraded basic tower... and then adding in an anti-air turret if you have flyers. For the most part, after about 5-6 hours, the game starts to feel repetitious... and I'm wondering if I have the fortitude to actually finish it.

Very nice Tower Defense game, it reminded me a lot of the Kingdom Rush series, which is great, as I love that type of TD. I'd recommend it to any fan of the genre.

This game had a lot going for it. The first 5-10 hours, it was a fairly enjoyable Tower Defense game. As you are leveling, and buying new things, everything feels OK. Challenging levels, many different variants of levels including several "arenas" where you can try your luck on a single map where other variables will change. The story is pretty decent as far as games go. They aren't going to win any pulitzer prizes, but it's serviceable and progresses the game. Towers, the heart & sole of Tower Defense, come in many varieties, but you'll find yourself using such a low number of these, because of the upgrade costs, that all the spots they give you maps will go empty. Pathing is a big problem in this game. You aren't told the paths that enemies will take, and you will constantly be starting over levels because of a new path that the zombies will take around your defenses. I hate games where I have to play several times just to memorize the paths. So many TD games give you the paths they will take with a simple key that I'm surprised they didn't include this. I guess they consider this a game mechanic. Oh, and levels will change on you from one try to the next. Where the game falls apart is the end-game and the leveling mechanic for the heroes. It's quite obvious this game started out as a Free / low cost with a store to buy yourself credits for additional $$. The problem is when they ported this to Steam, while they removed the store, they didn't adjust any of the exponential cost / experience required for leveling heroes. So I went through all levels on Normal, then again on Hard, and I've done about 15 levels on nightmare. I have 2 heroes leveled all the way to 25, and two more that are level 23. I just don't see the point of continuing. I'm close to getting to level 25, but the repetition is absolutely killing me. It's not fun. With the upgrade paths for both towers and heros, you can just grind yourself through the game. You don't have to try any new strategy, you just need to level up your hero and towers. This is a flaw IMO because lack of repeatability means I'm not sure I'm doing good or not. Also, it's impossible to give any specific advice to people because of the variation of heroes and towers with the leveling mechanic means that you and someone else will not have the same things, so any advice on levels is just not going to work. Another negative is the implementation of the endless levels - if I could pick a game with the absolute worst endless mode, Last Hope would be that game. Every 5 levels the game wipes half your towers. It's absolutely not recoverable from and the randomness of it really is super frustrating - I never did play any more levels after the first few forays. If this game is on sale for $1.99 or cheaper during a steam sale, go for it, but don't get hung up on the hero leveling or upgrading towers. Just pick a few towers (poison, sniper, farmer & air defense) and that's all you really need.

A nice TD game with Kingdom Rush type gameplay. It seems bad at starts, but the game gives you new features every new level, so it's getting pretty fun to play. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1388262551 You command princess of some Indian tribe. They were fighting with zombies long time. But suddenly there appeared too much zombies, so they were forced to move out from the village. It's a plot. You need to save your tribe and after that find the reason of this massive attack. The story is nothing exceptional, but interesting to read/watch. This TD is like Kingdom Rush. You have buildfields where you can place towers. There are several entrances and exit points. You have 2 heroes which you can control. You can build barracks which summon guards who stop enemies. You have some special abilities and a lot of tower to construct. Missions are short. Using FF button it can be passed in 3-5 minutes. So, you can't get boring. After completion of every mission you get coins which can be spent on several upgrades. You can improve towers, guards or buy useful items for heroes. There are 45 missions in the campaign. Each mission has 2 modes. Also, there are several Infinite missions which contains 20-40 stages. So, you can spend more then 50 hours on this game trying to complete all missions. The game at all is fun to play but after you power up Arrow tower to the maximum you can pass every level just massing it. I prefer more strategy games, but I am pretty sure casual TD fans will like this game. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1388262506 Pros - Unusual setting. You play for Indians tribe on 21 century. You start with axes and bows and finish with Mortar and Tesla towers. - There are 45 small missions with a story. Not a great one, but OK. Better than nothing :) - There are a lot of towers with a lot in-battle upgrades. But mostly, you will just mass one tower :D - A nice tech tree mechanic. Every tower/building has a lot of upgrades which can be bought using coins. - You use up to 2 heroes in battle. Each one has 1 active and 2 passive abilities. Heroes get level up. Also they have 4 item slots. - There are a lot of side kinda endless levels. So if you will like this game you can spend a lot of hours here. Cons - Free-to-play past - The game is hard at the beginning and got extremely easy in the middle. You can upgrade just one tower and mass it in the every battle and win with no doubts. So... this is more arcade TD then strategy TD. - Not enough diversity in enemies. No special abilities or other cool things except 1-2 mobs. - There are bugs. Heroes sometimes get stuck and refuse to move and attack. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1388262531 [h1]Resume[/h1] A nice game. Kinda repetitive, but ok. Can recommend this game for all casual TD fans.