Kingdom Rush

I played this on the Android tablet I recently picked up.

Let's start with the good, and end with why I didn't play it into the ground.

The graphics, gameplay, controls, and style are superb. The tower defense genre never gets old, until you realize something is horribly, horribly missing.

Here are the major issues I had with the game, and why I didn't play on past the first major boss.
* You cannot restart any part of the level, it's all or none.
* If you are not a high enough level, you will not be able to beat a level, so you must grind levels.
* You cannot speed up the game speed, so it crawls through each of the rounds (there are upwards of 20 in some levels)

Overall it felt unforgiving and lacking game design polish. They do have purchasable items that you can use to beat the level, but I really don't understand the need to pour gems into beating a level. PvZ2 added the power ups for money, and it always leaves me feeling like a cheater.

To put this into perspective:
* In PvZ2, I'll waste 4-5 minutes before failing a level, and I can always cheap my way through the level with spending money. Most of the time it's a planning failure for why I lost, or pour money into a fix in the last 10 seconds of the last wave.
* In Defense Grid, it's almost always a planning failure for why I lost. I can also speed up time, and back up a few rounds to fix what I messed up
* In Orcs Must Die! 2 you need to learn the rounds, and play against two sides. It's not really fun playing solo, but the failure seems to come faster here at least. So there's less waiting to fail. I also feel very empowered to make a change in the loss that might be coming versus just watching it... slowly... happen...

It's a shame I didn't feel like playing this any more than the first major boss. It had a lot of potential.