Review: Bloons Tower Defense 5

Bloons Tower Defense 5
Developer: NinjaKiwi
Genre: Tower Defense

The new monkey ninja is, as far as I can tell, the most broken tower ever

Total Score: 5 out of 5 (Best in Genre)

The latest (and dare I say greatest?) in the Bloons tower defense series. If you've never played a Bloons Tower Defense, I would highly recommend starting from the beginning and and watching the series refine itself. This installment plays much like Bloons TD 4, except even more polished if that were possible. The levels are much better balanced and the towers are very well crafted to create a smooth and extremely fun gameplay experience. Probably one of - if not the - best tower defense games out there right now. A must play.

The score

System: 5
The layout has always improved a bit with each iteration of the series, and this one is no different. A highly robust system that is simple and smooth for the entire session (BTD 4 would lag a bit with more enemies). The game is very easy to pick up and play, and you are introduced to the towers over time so that you can learn them each as you go. The "monsters" are simple; there isn't any health or armor to deal with, so things are largely transparent and each to understand.

Atmosphere: 5
The visuals are improved over BTD 4 and some of the best in the genre. The music is good and isn't annoyingly repetitive. Besides the fact that monkey with darts attacking evil balloons makes no sense, each of the towers are extremely well stylized and interesting, and there are custom changes their appearances for each of their upgrades. Very cool. I also really like the sort of monkey village menu screen.

Storytelling: 1
There has never, and as far as I can tell will never, be a cohesive storyline to the Bloons series. We are simply left to wonder why monkeys hate balloons and also are extremely good at throwing darts. No intro, no cutscenes, nothing.

Replayability: 5
Even if there was no specific reason to keep coming back to Bloons TD 5, there is always this compulsion to play it for old time's sake. I personally enjoyed giving myself handicaps in BTD 4 and seeing how far I could get. In BTD 5 you don't have to give yourself handicaps, because there is already a mode just for that. There are special missions that you can undertake in order to earn cash for special things in which you must beat a level at a particular difficulty with one arm tied behind your back or something similar. There are even daily challenges too so that you can keep coming back every day forever (or at least until BTD 6 comes out). And that's not even mentioning the special game modes that you can play.

Fun Factor: 5
Even if BTD 5 isn't objectively the "best" tower defense game, it sure is the funnest. The stylized and varied towers, understandable enemies, and robust system makes this game my new de facto flash entertainment source. There really isn't any more I can say on the subject; BTD 5 is simply pure fun.

The Review

The Bloons series began as a accuracy-based puzzler where you were a monkey who threw darts at a field of balloons hoping to pop them all and move on to the next level. This was a reasonably popular game, and enjoyed a few successful sequels. I wasn't until NinjaKiwi released the first Bloons Tower Defense that the series really started to take off. This game was one of the first to employ the clever scheme of "one-hit, one-kill" in tower defense games, and featured a good variety of towers that offered challenging and rewarding gameplay.

Each iteration of Bloons Tower Defense has improved upon the previous; BTD 2 added more towers, BTD 3 a graphics overhaul, and BTD 4 more or less defined what it meant to be a good tower defense game with its clean layout, multitude of upgrades, and balanced gameplay. Bloons Tower Defense 5 continues this progression by maintaining that clean layout, but also improving many areas that could see some polish.

The first improvement that is immediately obvious is the graphics and core system. Bloons is not, by any means, supposed to look wonderful; it is a top down tower defense game, after all, there is only so good you can get here. That's why NinjaKiwi focuses on the graphics system in the perfect way, by adding subtle and elegant animations and stylish towers while actually improving the performance of the system in the later parts of the game. Each tower has two separate upgrade paths with four upgrades each that uniquely change the look of the tower (read: that's 9 sprites for each tower). It all boils into a visually appealing, but still recognizable system.

Secondly, the difficulty and wave progression of the balloons have been changed. There is a brand new balloon added, the heart balloon, that heals itself over time if you don't kill it fast enough. Not only that, but these heart balloons (and also camo balloons) can come in any flavor of balloon. If you were thinking "wait, doesn't that mean there are camo lead balloons now?" then you win a prize, and also lose the round. You actually have to play around camo balloons now. Scary.

There wasn't really much of a reason to keep playing Bloons Tower Defense 4 once you had beaten all of tracks on hard (Apopalypse mode doesn't count). In BTD 5, they have a new set of "missions" in which you play on certain levels with a set of handicaps, such as being able to build only once of each type of tower. These missions give you currency with which you can buy super one-time-use towers to help you out on the harder levels. And there are daily missions, too, so you can come back and have new content to play each day.

Bloons Tower Defense is fun, and is easily one of the best tower defense games to date. If you haven't played any Bloons TD, you can easily start with this one, but I do recommend giving the others a peek and see where this game got its roots. NinjaKiwi really know how to polish a game and give it a good shine, and this game is no exception. It definitely earns its title as a "must-play".