Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance is a fantasy-themed tower defense game and Ironhide Game Studio’s latest addition to their long-running Kingdom Rush series. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance Review Overview
What is Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance?
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance is a tower-defense game from Ironhide Game Studios and their latest entry to their acclaimed and long-standing game series. Hot off the heels of the previous game, Legends of Kingdom Rush, Alliance sees the armies of King Denas and Dark Lord Vez’nan joining forces to fight back against a newer, more powerful threat. In typical Kingdom Rush fashion, new towers, heroes, and upgrade trees await. New to Alliance, however, is the tower loadout system, which limits the player’s arsenal of towers to five, but grants a whole gallery’s worth of new towers to defend your base with.
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance features:
⚫︎ 15 new towers to build and unlock
⚫︎ 12 new heroes, each with a unique skillset
⚫︎ 32 unlockable upgrades spread across an expansive tech tree
⚫︎ 16 campaign stages with 48 mastery stars to collect
⚫︎ Elite, and Iron Fist challenge modes for each stage
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance's gameplay and story.
 Steam |
 Google Play |
 App Store |
| $19.99 | $6.99 | |
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Way More Towers, Just Enough Heroes Better Difficulty Balancing |
Notable Power Creep Sensory Overload Hazard |
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance Overall Score - 80/100
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance is a testament to the series' deep understanding and continuous innovation of a formula that has stood the test of time for over a decade. This game stands at the zenith of the series' evolution, offering an impressive arsenal of towers and a legion of playable heroes that honor its predecessors' legacy. Despite its narrative shortcomings, this installment represents the best Kingdom Rush has ever looked, sounded, or played, and I don’t expect that to change anytime soon.
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance Story - 6/10
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance initially captivates with the intriguing premise of joining Denas’ and Vez’nan’s forces, but the narrative quickly loses its luster. The straightforward plot fails to deliver depth, making the storyline feel more like a pretext for another game rather than a natural progression. The tower-defense gameplay, while engaging, offers little space for nuanced storytelling, leaving this installment a bit light on story, but that’s never been Kingdom Rush’s strong suit anyway.
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance Gameplay - 9/10
There's a reason Kingdom Rush has outlasted almost all other games from its era: its robust and effective gameplay loop. While it's not the first or only tower-defense game, Kingdom Rush is undoubtedly genre-defining. The latest installment brings this winning formula into the future with innovative tower loadouts, dynamic level design, and a dual-hero setup, ensuring it remains at the forefront of the genre for years to come.
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance Visuals - 8/10
Kingdom Rush offers a unique perspective on a series’ progression through its evolving aesthetic design, with each new game building on its predecessor's strengths. Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance is currently the pinnacle of this evolution, showcasing the best character, tower, and level designs seen in a 2D tower-defense game. The series has come a long way from its Flash Player days, and it certainly looks the part.
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance Audio - 8/10
The audio in Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance is surprisingly effective for a game that relies so heavily on its visuals and mechanics. Despite the limited voice acting, the short blurbs are delivered with such emotion and talent that they enhance the overall experience, making the game's heroes, towers, and units more engaging and memorable.
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance Value for Money - 9/10
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance is priced at $20 on Steam and just under $7 on the App Store and Google Play. While the game’s 16 stages might seem a bit short for the price compared to most games, Kingdom Rush's pedigree and rich history justify the cost. This is also the biggest Kingdom Rush game to date if you’re counting all the heroes and towers, so a meager $20 for that much value is practically a steal.
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance Review: The Only TD You Should Be Playing
The Kingdom Rush series has always been a curious case for me. It's one of the few game IPs from the Flash Era that survived into the 2020s, even if it isn't as popular as it once was. I remember the mid-2010s when tower-defense games were all the rage, with Kingdom Rush leading the pack alongside other juggernauts like Plants vs. Zombies and Bloons TD. Those days have long passed. PvZ is dwindling with increasingly disappointing releases, and Bloons is fading into obscurity just as quickly. But not Kingdom Rush.
Now, at the advent of its latest installment, we’ll come to understand how and why the series remains as beloved as it is, with Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance serving as the pinnacle of its decade-long evolution.
We'll begin with the aspect that defines this game and its series most distinctly: gameplay. Kingdom Rush has consistently adhered to the same formula since its inception in 2011, and Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance—henceforth referred to as "Alliance"—is no exception. Each stage features a main pathway for enemies to traverse and a scattering of empty plots to build towers on. Players must strategically build towers to prevent enemies from reaching the end of the path, with each tower having unique strengths and weaknesses against specific enemy types. For instance, archer towers are cost-effective and dependable but deal low damage and struggle against armored foes. In contrast, mage towers deliver massive damage to armored enemies but fire slowly and have limited range.
Killing enemies generates gold for tower construction and, generally speaking, careful tower placement and budgeting are paramount to a successful stage clear. There are also playable heroes in each stage that lets the player have a more direct role in clearing the passing waves. Heroes have the unique ability to attack enemies on the path itself instead of being limited to the sides and can unleash powerful, map-wide effects that can turn the tide in an instant. Together, these make up the game’s core loop. Where Alliance starts to deviate is with how it presents the towers and heroes available for each stage.
Unlike in previous Kingdom Rush games where all towers were available at all times, Alliance introduces a loadout system that allows players to choose up to five towers to bring into each stage. Additionally, towers can no longer be upgraded into branching specialty paths. Instead, each tower now has an extra upgrade tier and a suite of abilities that can further enhance its effectiveness. The game’s variety now lies in its expanded selection of towers. While previous Kingdom Rush titles featured four basic towers with two specialization paths, Alliance offers 15 towers, each with four upgrade tiers and two purchasable abilities.
This expanded catalog is certainly a welcome change. The branching upgrade paths from previous games felt limiting, locking your tower into a certain specialization, and at a pretty penny at that. Now that all towers can be upgraded further and can get powerful abilities on top of that, predictive tower placement isn’t as important, allowing you to demolish and rebuild towers as necessary for each wave. The loadout system also allows the player to encourage a certain playstyle, as the 15 towers have some overlap in their specialties. If a player wants to finish a stage with quick-firing, low-damage towers only, now they can.
The hero system has also received an overhaul. Previously, only one hero could be brought into each stage at a time, usually due to their immense power as a single unit. Alliance allows the player to bring in two heroes in each stage, with each hero also providing the player with a powerful combat spell that can be cast indefinitely after a short cooldown. This, along with each hero’s upgradable array of combat skills, grants the player more coverage of the map, as well as some much-needed versatility and synergy. I’m particularly fond of this change because, as powerful as singular heroes are, I always found their coverage of the map to be lacking, if not outright disappointing.
Now, let's look into Alliance’s stage design. The design of each stage has always played a crucial role in determining a strategy. While Alliance retains the series’ signature stage design with branching paths and intersections, it significantly expands the dynamic deployment of enemies. Enemies can now appear from random areas on the map, encouraging counterplay and rewarding strategic foresight. They can also gain bonuses from specific parts of the map at certain times, requiring players to adapt their strategies to address these new challenges.
Overall, this creates a far more engaging and dynamic stage progression, addressing the late-game monotony of previous Kingdom Rush titles. Now, even the most impenetrable tower arrays can be brought down by a well-placed wave of fast-moving enemies. Additionally, enemy variants are more inspired this time around, with modifiers extending beyond just armor, magic resistance, or speed. For instance, some enemies can’t be attacked until they’re engaged by a melee unit, while others become untargetable once they are.
There’s also something to be said about the game’s humor, as most of it is expressed through its stages. In the background of most stages, random stage elements can be clicked to achieve random effects. These interactions are often comedic, with many background elements referencing popular games, movies, and people. Alliance takes this a step further, offering strategic bonuses for interacting with the background. While previous titles had obscure easter eggs, Alliance rewards players with actual benefits, such as extra money or additional characters to attack with. Such interactions not only enhance the game’s humor but also add an extra layer of strategy to the player’s approach.
And now we arrive at what solidifies the Kingdom Rush series as a mainstay in the tower-defense genre and positions Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance as the pinnacle of that legacy: careful innovation. Each new installment builds on the success of its predecessor, adding only what is necessary while preserving the core gameplay that fans love. New content is always introduced, but the essence of the game remains largely unchanged, with a few well-placed tweaks. Alliance's changes, compounded by innovations from previous titles, create a seamless string of improvements that feel like a natural evolution of the series.
This also applies to the game’s aesthetics and audio, as Alliance is the best the Kingdom Rush series has ever looked or sounded. The featureless humanoids of the first game eventually gave way to Alliance’s intricately detailed heroes. Standard monsters became defined eldritch abominations and blocky towers became instruments of pure destruction. Even the stock-sounding combat noise from the first game eventually became Alliance’s well-mixed, well-voiced audio suite of heroic blurbs and tower sounds.
Unfortunately, evolution can be difficult to direct, and sometimes, things don’t improve no matter how hard you try. Kingdom Rush has never excelled at storytelling. While the series has attempted to enhance its narrative over the years by sprinkling in lore and world-building, the core gameplay's limitations have always relegated the story to the background. Despite all its improvements, Alliance couldn't resolve this issue. Apart from the initial story hook of Denas and Vaz’nan teaming up, the narrative lacks a compelling throughline. This remains the game’s weakest aspect, and it's likely to continue being a challenge for the series.
And that’s about it for Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance. This is the height of the series’ decade-long run, marked by smart innovations and a steadfast commitment to what made the original game great. While it’s disappointing that Alliance couldn’t resolve the long-standing narrative issues that have plagued its predecessors, it still stands strong as the fifth installment in a series that began in the Flash Era. Overall, Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance is doing quite well for itself.
Pros of Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance
| Things Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance Got Right |
|---|
|
Way More Towers, Just Enough Heroes Better Difficulty Balancing |
Way More Towers, Just Enough Heroes
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance boasts more towers than any other game in the series, even when considering the branching upgrades of basic towers as separate entities. While the sheer quantity is exciting, the creativity infused into these new towers is equally impressive. Instead of simply offering slightly varied versions of the starting towers, each new tower introduces a unique gimmick or mechanic. One of my favorites is the Demon Pits, an infantry tower that doesn’t spawn units until enemies are in range, and whose infantry explodes upon dying.
This change is a smart move, as it addresses the power creep that plagued previous installments. By focusing on a smaller, more distinct roster, the game offers a more varied and versatile lineup that, alongside Alliance’s tower loadout, compliments more distinct playstyles.
Better Difficulty Balancing
Kingdom Rush has always been a difficult game, as the core mechanics naturally require some semblance of planning, forethought, and critical thinking. In Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance, the difficulty balancing has been greatly improved. The game now offers four distinct difficulty levels, each providing a unique experience. This approach allows newcomers to gradually ease into the tower-defense genre, while seasoned players can enjoy the intense challenge they crave.
Cons of Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance
| Things That Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance Can Improve |
|---|
|
Notable Power Creep Sensory Overload Hazard |
Notable Power Creep
While Alliance's smaller hero roster has reduced most of the power creep, it hasn't eliminated it entirely. In fact, the opposite has occurred with the game's towers. Some towers and heroes are simply better than others in nearly all situations. For instance, I would never choose the Dune Sentinels over the Royal Archers, even though they fill the same strategic niche. The same issue exists with the heroes Vesper and Grimson, where Vesper pales in comparison to Grimson in almost every respect.
Sensory Overload Hazard
Due to the game’s countless weapon and spell effects, sound prompts, voice clips, background elements, and moving parts, Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance is a veritable sensory overload hazard. While fans of the series may not find this an issue, it's important to note for those who are sensitive to flashing lights and loud sounds or have related conditions.
Is Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance Worth It?
Worth Every Penny
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance is worth every penny, whether you’re buying it on the PC for $20 or on mobile for $7. It offers a treasury’s worth of content and replayability, delivering both style and strategic satisfaction. With the esteemed history of the Kingdom Rush series, you can trust that you're paying for quality. Although you might need to spend a bit more on mobile to unlock all the heroes, the game remains thoroughly enjoyable and playable without them.
| Platform | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Steam |
Google Play |
App Store |
|||
| $19.99 | $6.99 | ||||
Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance FAQ
When Do The Events of Kingdom Rush: Alliance Take Place In The Series’ Timeline?
According to the game’s developers, Kingdom Rush: Alliance takes place shortly after the events of Kingdom Rush: Vengeance, but also overlaps with the events of Legends of Kingdom Rush.
What Heroes Are Available To Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance’s Mobile Version?
Of the game's 12 heroes, only four are free to use on the mobile version, with the remaining heroes unlockable through in-game purchases. The four free heroes are Vesper, Raelyn, Niru, and Grimson.
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Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance Product Information
 |
|
| Title | Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance |
|---|---|
| Release Date | July 25, 2024 |
| Developer | Ironhide Game Studio |
| Publisher | Ironhide Game Studio |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam), Mobile (Google Play, App Store) |
| Genre | Action, Strategy, Indie |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | RP |
| Official Website | Kingdom Rush 5: Alliance Website |
