lmao Kingdom rush was a vital part of my childhood summers Originally found it off of random websites as a flash game, it was interesting to find a flash game with so much effort and detail put into its art and gameplay. Even if the story was rather small and simple, they made it work, and overall, it was pretty fun
and I have 0 doubts in my mind that that's a reason on why they're the titans. they are such goofy premises of "monkey pop bloon" and "plant kill zombie" that people are too intrigued by it to not check it out
@@murmunster1761 Yeah but battle cats isn't trying to be cool, they make their game deliberately ridiculous and they love it. Both PvZ and Bloons geniunely feel like it would be normal in a different universe, as odd as it is here. Also everything in PvZ and Bloons fits the theme within the continuinty, whereas in battle cats they just put in loads of crazy stuff as long as its cool
@@Connie_TinuityError not anymore, they updated it to look at auto captions and the real captions whenever you choose to auto-sync and it sees what words match up and lines it up that way.
Saw the og RU-vid app design and got blasted with 80 psychic damage. Always been a fan of video essays, if you keep up this particular series I look forward to it!
Don't forget that Kingdom Rush exists! The original can be played for free, while Origins and Frontiers only cost $4.99 on mobile. Vengeance was a bit rocky, but they got a new game designer to balance the most recent expansion, and graphically the game's just as great!
@@genetheminemanit's more like an rts because the main format of td games is your tower shoots / damage the enemies and they rather doesn't move very often unlike a rts would with its units
@@genethemineman i dont think it counts, it is more of an rts. But there is some examples of tower defense and rts combined too, like mindustry, its a combination of factory building, rts and tower defence
Fun fact: A Wallnut’s nervous system is so numb that they don’t really feel any of the “getting eaten” part. It’s really more of a light tickling sensation. So yes, the Wallnuts in PVZ are ok with being eaten alive. I mean, they only start frowning when their insides are literally exposed. Meanwhile, us humans would burst into tears immediately after a single bite to the scalp. Are we just inferior to PVZ Wallnuts? Or do we just have a better fight or flight response?
Editing is good, writing is good, I would like to touch on some stuff with PvZ First, I feel it should have been stated that PvZ was originally released for the PC, and how great it was that a PC game was moved to mobile devices. Secondly, I feel it should have been mentioned that PvZ2 is still a live service game, and is, in fact, still being updated, which shows that PopCap didn't completely move away from Tower Defense. That's all I wanted to say. Great job, I look forward to your career with great interest!
Also saying that the garden warfare games had no staying power is just false. They stopped making them because BFN was way worse the GW2 and EA instead thought of it as people don't like the pvz shooters anymore instead of we made a bad game lets try again to improve. Also GW2 has a decent player count still you can even get full or almost full lobbies consistently.
My first ever video game was PvZ. Had it on my gramps old pc. I used to play it every day after school. Its been so long since I've played the OG though, which is a shame.
sadly not as replayable as the other two and the series peaked at Frontiers (I'm still hopeful tht Ironhide didn't go to shit and that they can still make good games)
@Shadow first one is good Secound one was really good it made the the game popular Third is not bad but alr Vengeance is good Last one is literally dogshit
@@AbdelkrimElfaouz there's no last one, Kingdom Rush Heroes or whatever it's called isn't a tower defense, neither is Iron Marines, so I don't know what game you're talking about
Monkey pop balloon. Monkies and Balloons have been at war since the dawn of time, but the question I've always wondered: What are the balloons running from? Where are they running to? WHY R U RUNNIN?!
You are confusing balloons and bloons One is a harmless decoration that can even be found in parties for children, and the other is a deadly thing that knows only how to kill and destroy.
well actually the lore is that the monkeys popped the at the time, innocent bloons in the bloons puzzle game which is seperate from the td games. after this the bloons had no choice but to attack the monkeys to defend their land.
6:02 it's literally in the first game's almanac. They literally have asked. It's the first thing PopCap thought of with the character is "how does he feel about it" and the almanac explains it away by having Wall-nut with really insensitive nerves so it just feels like a backrub to him edit: 7:57 GW2 is literally still active lmao it literally DOES have staying power
Yeah the reason the stopped making shooters is because they took the negative reception from BFN as people don't like the shooters anymore instead of we made a bad game lets go back to the GW formula.
bro GW2 is so good. sadly the PC version is pretty much dead. last time I tried during peak gaming time in the evening on the EU servers there where barely enough people to play. and if you did get into a match there where always one or two others who are always there with you again and again. but man did I have a lot of fun playing that game
Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten is sooooo good, honestly my favorite tower defense game of all time. I also remember the Gemcraft series pretty fondly.
Honestly I'd argue that the PvZ 2 community isn't nearly as active as the Garden Warfare and just shootet side of the franchise in general, and even then, most of the stuff going on in the actual community of PvZ 2 is happening on the modding side with stuff like Eclise, Reflourished and Altverz just to name a few. I'm not saying that the GW side of the franchise is bigger... that would be impossible but they definitely have a lot more going on, not only thanks to people hosting tournaments and whatnot, but also problems like big names in the community doxxing eachother like toddlers throwing all the swear words they learned from their parents the night before.
Underrated AF. Only thing that bothered me was your shift in tone with the GW games because they're amazing, but I understand the complaints weren't with the games themselves, more-so with the change of style. For me, They should have been either just a spin-off, or a secondary game series, with both being developed. But, after GW1's massive success, PopCap abandoned tower defense for a while, until they brought it back. There's also PVZ heroes, but it's the most mid game ever, and like, I don't mean mid as in bad, I mean actually mid, average, neither amazing nor terrible. It's just kinda there.
@@tpfoxCastro Yes, but every update made it worse. I wish I could go back to the old versions where there was no P2W, gameplay was interesting, and far future was still being worked on.
@@trickygamer555 Uhhh, no? The most recent updates have been very good, there is new zombies and new plants coming, with some of them being plants from the original PVZ1. My man, you are a little trapped in the past, just a little
My first tower defense was Plants vs. Zombies as I use to play it with my Grandpa and we beat the game on a few occasions . and it literally made me click and is what got me into gaming, going into minecraft, then left 4 dead, bloons tower defense all those huge titles only because of one little game.
Yeah it's pretty odd is I'm somewhat of a member of the community of this point, not a whole lot of videos and I even joined the fandom discord it's definitely one of my favorite games after all over a year and a half I've already sunk over 600 into the game and I've caught up with the latest content
2 absolutely ICONIC franchises, the bloons games are constantly getting better and NK seems to be intent on providing content and listening to community reception on balance and changes to improve the active bloons games
@@shalvei_ the grind is pretty simple once ur at mid game, u just play for a couple of hours, lose your sanity (energy meter), then u wait until tomorrow. It's not as complicated as you think bud. Plus 3 star characters are op and they're pretty common to get by anyways hell they're even better than the 5 to 6 star operators
@@faustus_tatacher9035 As Arknights addict 3* are not even close in power to even 4*, 5* and especially 6* that have such fun and balanced characters like Surtr,Texas and Młynar. However getting 4* ops is pretty easy.
great video! The only detail i would add to this is that the second pvz game ever made is, as far as i know, pvz adventures, which is completely fine if you missed that lol, it was available on facebook a long time ago and only lasted a couple of years i believe, but still, great job!
well uhh before plants vs zombies 2 released in 2013 there was a facebook pvz game called pvz adventures (it got discontinued in 2014) then after pvz gw2 there was pvz heroes, a card game and there were two different versions of pvz3, the 2019-2020 soft launch which was the portrait mode thing you showed in the video, then since 2021 every 6 months there is a new beta of a new version of pvz3 which is *slightly* better than the previous one
I feel Ninja Kiwi is basically keeping tower defense alive, but basically killing chance for any other game not owned by them to succeed. With their main 2 games right now, Btd6 and Btd Battles 2, they basically made top notch games very hard to beat. Whether you talk about the simplistic gameplay, complicated gameplay, intense gameplay, competitive gameplay, Ninja Kiwi just wins all of those and gives other tower defenses nothing to grow on besides niche gimmicks Edit: Also, with their constant flow of balance changes, updates, exciting content, and weekly events, nothing can really be that consistent but also high quality at the same time
I would say there’s another tower defense game who in my opinion are worthy successor of the genre: Arknights It may be a gacha game but holy cow the developers went Doritos with the tower defense aspects and mechanics (I never thought the anime girl equivalent of a chomper could solo a Russian version of Darth Vader lol)
This was a great video! I know it may not be as well known as the shooter, but Plants vs Zombies also released another really fun mobile app in the form of Plants vs Zombies Heroes! It is a really impressive deck builder game that has a lot of depth and a ton of creativity. It is still not a tower defense game, but it also is another form that PvZ has taken besides the shooters. This is not a critique on the video for not mentioning this; I just felt compelled to add this to the comments since I still love PvZ Heroes and believe it is a worthy addition to the PvZ brand.
The garden warfare games were actually really good. Its one of the only 3 multiplayer shooter series that i actually enjoy. After garden warfare 2 the entire series started to fumble. Battle for neighborville was kinda mid and at least for the time being, killed the pvz shooters, and the 3rd tower defense game was widely hated during every open beta it ever had and is now canceled. Pvz 2 and merchandise are the only things keeping the franchise alive, wich is pretty sad to see
@@knyt0 Kingdom rush was one of the most played flash games, Gemcraft is a tower defense where you fuse gems together to create higher tiers, and Creeper World is a tower defense where you fight off liquids
7:14 Since you said "Bloons" not "Bloons TD", then you are masively mistaken, The original Bloons was like those cannon shooting games, You aim a dart and charge it and pop as much as Bloons as you can, and Bloons had a LOT of spinoffs, and Bloons TD was one of them and ultimately the one that carried the franches, Bloons had several versions and sequels, but since Bloons TD became the prominent one, even Bloons TD itself had several spinoffs, like Super Monkey, which functions nothing like the tower defense games, and then a sequel to Bloons, Bloons Pop! (Not Bloons Pop 3) and pretty much every character in the game from Bloons TD 6. There are much more to talk about but I wouldn't be putting it all here.
