Review Insights · App Store
Kingdom Rush Origins TD
Ironhide S.A. · 13,613 ratings · ★ 4.9
4.9
★★★★★
13,613 ratings
🎯 Build a better version
Top complaints - extracted from 11 negative reviews
Recurring phrases mined from 1-2★ reviews. The bigger the percentage, the more users have the same problem. Fix the top 2-3 in your version and you have product-market fit on day one.
1
"game"
6 negative reviews mention this · 55% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unbalanced, Doesn’t respect your time. The game isn’t so bad as to only warrant one star, but it also doesn’t deserve the 4.9 rating it has in the app store, and needs to be offset. The biggest issue is the terrible balancing. The game devs obviously wanted to make it harder…" - ActualUser1
2
"actually"
4 negative reviews mention this · 36% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unbalanced, Doesn’t respect your time. The game isn’t so bad as to only warrant one star, but it also doesn’t deserve the 4.9 rating it has in the app store, and needs to be offset. The biggest issue is the terrible balancing. The game devs obviously wanted to make it harder…" - ActualUser1
3
"doesn"
3 negative reviews mention this · 27% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unbalanced, Doesn’t respect your time. The game isn’t so bad as to only warrant one star, but it also doesn’t deserve the 4.9 rating it has in the app store, and needs to be offset. The biggest issue is the terrible balancing. The game devs obviously wanted to make it harder…" - ActualUser1
4
"spend"
3 negative reviews mention this · 27% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unbalanced, Doesn’t respect your time. The game isn’t so bad as to only warrant one star, but it also doesn’t deserve the 4.9 rating it has in the app store, and needs to be offset. The biggest issue is the terrible balancing. The game devs obviously wanted to make it harder…" - ActualUser1
5
"enough"
3 negative reviews mention this · 27% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Unbalanced, Doesn’t respect your time. The game isn’t so bad as to only warrant one star, but it also doesn’t deserve the 4.9 rating it has in the app store, and needs to be offset. The biggest issue is the terrible balancing. The game devs obviously wanted to make it harder…" - ActualUser1
6
"other"
3 negative reviews mention this · 27% of all complaints
★★★★★ "Play Frontiers or Vengeance Instead. Greetings, Be prepared to spend a descent amount of $ in this game to justify having bought it. I’ve played all the Ironhide games and Origins is pretty disappointing and frustrating by comparison. I’ve seen Ironhide at their best and O…" - Vengeanceer
📋 All 11 negative reviews
Every 1-2★ review we fetched. Use the copy button to grab them all for your own analysis (paste into ChatGPT/Claude with a prompt like "summarize core user problems, group by theme, ignore bugs, focus on missing features").
Unbalanced, Doesn’t respect your time
The game isn’t so bad as to only warrant one star, but it also doesn’t deserve the 4.9 rating it has in the app store, and needs to be offset.
The biggest issue is the terrible balancing. The game devs obviously wanted to make it harder than previous titles, but they use a variety of cheap and unfair tactics to accomplish that, and obviously wanted to incentivise people to pay for the myriad of pay-to-win feature built in, which is just disrespectful and dishonest. You could possibly win each location without paying, but the amount of time you’d have to spend grinding to make sure you have just the right hero levelled up enough to have the powers needed, as well as purchasing all the bonuses you need from the in-game store, is just not respectful of our time as players.
This is a phone app game. I’m not trying to spend my entire life playing it, or even hours at a time. Stop trying to be a console or PC game, unless you’re going to actually BE that.
The biggest issue is the terrible balancing. The game devs obviously wanted to make it harder than previous titles, but they use a variety of cheap and unfair tactics to accomplish that, and obviously wanted to incentivise people to pay for the myriad of pay-to-win feature built in, which is just disrespectful and dishonest. You could possibly win each location without paying, but the amount of time you’d have to spend grinding to make sure you have just the right hero levelled up enough to have the powers needed, as well as purchasing all the bonuses you need from the in-game store, is just not respectful of our time as players.
This is a phone app game. I’m not trying to spend my entire life playing it, or even hours at a time. Stop trying to be a console or PC game, unless you’re going to actually BE that.
Please learn what CASUAL means.
It doesnt mean to pull your hair out in frustration, fail over and over, and quit because its impossible. A waste of money.
Juego aburrido
Después de 14 mapas se pone imposible, parece que quisieron promover la venta in-app complicándolo.
Le falta alma.
Dejen que los escritores y los creativos hagan su trabajo.
Le falta alma.
Dejen que los escritores y los creativos hagan su trabajo.
Fails in basic ways
Has a lot of potential bit some epic fails:
1) You have 4 defenders with air attack ability and they focus on the lesser threat as a simple enemy flies through the middle of the defenses… really?
2) You purchase (with items earned in app) weapons and the enemies adapt to how much you purchased. Clearly they are trying to monetize the need for more.
3) You use a weapon and enemies exit the map as if you didn’t use it - but you lose the weapon…
4) No ability to increase game speed
1) You have 4 defenders with air attack ability and they focus on the lesser threat as a simple enemy flies through the middle of the defenses… really?
2) You purchase (with items earned in app) weapons and the enemies adapt to how much you purchased. Clearly they are trying to monetize the need for more.
3) You use a weapon and enemies exit the map as if you didn’t use it - but you lose the weapon…
4) No ability to increase game speed
Lettuce
Good game
Just bad
Ain’t no fortnite
Upload
My progress on my iPad won’t upload to my phone
Good tower defense, not enough content
Perhaps one star is unfair since I have actually enjoyed the game, but it loses a lot of points by being just long enough for me to feel like I’m getting into it and then it ends with most of the game locked behind micro transactions larger than the game itself. I would rather spend $30 up front for a complete game than feel like this. There are only 5 heroes you can get through the story, one of which you get just as you’re wrapping it up. There are tons of other interesting looking ones that cost $5 or more to unlock and for what? There’s very little game to play through? I got this less than a week ago and I have already gotten max stars on most levels. The game feels done and I feel ripped off because it felt like it was building up to a great game.
Nerfed blackwater endless
The blackwater endless map has been nerfed. Why nerf something this old. The map used to be fun and still challenging enough and good way to earn store credits to keep me interested. Now the difficulty is ridiculous after just 10 waves.
Play Frontiers or Vengeance Instead
Greetings,
Be prepared to spend a descent amount of $ in this game to justify having bought it. I’ve played all the Ironhide games and Origins is pretty disappointing and frustrating by comparison. I’ve seen Ironhide at their best and Origins isn't it.
Enemies-The enemies are WAY overpowered relative to the other Ironhide games and tend to win by hitting you with cheap shots (shutting down all your towers/freezing your guards and just walking right past) and the frustration lies in the fact that even varying your strategy and spending $ on the game doesn’t really change the end result. Seriously... it’s a sarcastic joke how many enemies have the ‘roll right past your soldiers’ ability.
Towers-Even fully upgraded towers are aggravatingly slow and weak (and frankly boring). Tower upgrades are VERY expensive relative to the other games and killed enemies will give you less gold in Origins. To get further down in the weeds, there are scant options for area attack damage (this game’s version of the mortar is weak weak weak) and the game sends large waves earlier than you’d think. So again, they run right past you and tend to win with cheap shots that you have little ability to guard against.
Heroes-The $7 heroes are basically necessary to even stand a chance on normal difficulty. Even fully upgraded they are surprisingly weak for the price. They are also boring.
Magic Items-there’s no ‘extra gold’ or ‘extra hearts’ items that you can purchase, so there’s no way to even the odds. This makes the enemy waves and tower upgrade prices even more of a rage quit motivator.
Go play Kingdom Rush Vengeance instead of this game. Vengeance is a seriously awesome game and Ironhide does amazing work when they hit their stride. If you drop some coin on Vengeance you will actually have fun. Origins makes you drop coin because you feel you have to in order to justify having paid for the game in the first place. After all, I’m writing this review because I found myself at a point where playing Origins was a chore and wasn’t fun anymore.
Be prepared to spend a descent amount of $ in this game to justify having bought it. I’ve played all the Ironhide games and Origins is pretty disappointing and frustrating by comparison. I’ve seen Ironhide at their best and Origins isn't it.
Enemies-The enemies are WAY overpowered relative to the other Ironhide games and tend to win by hitting you with cheap shots (shutting down all your towers/freezing your guards and just walking right past) and the frustration lies in the fact that even varying your strategy and spending $ on the game doesn’t really change the end result. Seriously... it’s a sarcastic joke how many enemies have the ‘roll right past your soldiers’ ability.
Towers-Even fully upgraded towers are aggravatingly slow and weak (and frankly boring). Tower upgrades are VERY expensive relative to the other games and killed enemies will give you less gold in Origins. To get further down in the weeds, there are scant options for area attack damage (this game’s version of the mortar is weak weak weak) and the game sends large waves earlier than you’d think. So again, they run right past you and tend to win with cheap shots that you have little ability to guard against.
Heroes-The $7 heroes are basically necessary to even stand a chance on normal difficulty. Even fully upgraded they are surprisingly weak for the price. They are also boring.
Magic Items-there’s no ‘extra gold’ or ‘extra hearts’ items that you can purchase, so there’s no way to even the odds. This makes the enemy waves and tower upgrade prices even more of a rage quit motivator.
Go play Kingdom Rush Vengeance instead of this game. Vengeance is a seriously awesome game and Ironhide does amazing work when they hit their stride. If you drop some coin on Vengeance you will actually have fun. Origins makes you drop coin because you feel you have to in order to justify having paid for the game in the first place. After all, I’m writing this review because I found myself at a point where playing Origins was a chore and wasn’t fun anymore.
Tapping doesn’t always work
I have an iPhone 10 and tapping the screen to add reinforcements, an arrow volley, or lightning usually requires that I tap the screen furiously 6 to 8 times before it actually works. The game is essentially unresponsive in regard to the controls. Pretty disappointed really. All the other kingdom rush games have worked perfectly on my device, and are great games. This one is basically unplayable for me on my device :/
Sentiment summary
98%
Positive (4-5★)
1%
Neutral (3★)
1%
Negative (1-2★)