Cursed Treasure 2

Oh, nooooo...I had things I wanted to do this week.

Aaagh, if anything this one is MORE addicting than the first. The level design is SO tightly constructed, that I keep finding myself *1* arrow shot short of stopping an attacker while chasing a 3-star finish.

The most frustrating thing is that the critical wave is usually somewhere in the first third of the level. If you can get by that wave without any attacker getting through, you can pretty much cruise through the rest of the level. Makes for some pretty serious rage-quits. But the sense of accomplishment once you do manage to complete it is ...amazing...!

As nicely designed as this game is (excellent graphics, sound and design), the level design is seriously some of the best I've played, right on the perfect point of that line between challenging and torture, if you insist on 3 star finishing a level before continuing, like me.

Where did my day go?

In theory, I'm thrilled that the graphic stylings of Takeover have merged with Cursed Treasure.

In practice... there's some functionality and fun being lost.

What I'm sayin' is: don't put the oversized kiddie oven mitts on everything when the game is one of surgical precision.

On the bright side, that meteor targeting is so much less annoying. And oh yes: addictive.

I like the way that you can place towers on a grid of squares half the size of the tower.

It's not always worth seizing a town straight away. If your towers are powerful enough they can take out the reinforcements before the main party arrives, thus giving you extra money and dropped items, while a seized town only earns you gold. On the other hand, you probably want to seize a tavern as soon as you can.

The night mode is a nice touch:

Most disappointing sequel of 2013; I ragequit after the fourth wave.

Everything is slower, and I don't think it's just my pathetic computer: it takes forever to load, the enemies move like snails (unless you continuously hold the speed button), and after you kill the last enemy in a wave, you have to wait about 2 seconds for its death animation to end before you can launch the next wave.

Worse, the towers take forever to aim. Instant aiming used to be the primary strength of temples, but now I often see enemies get right next to my temples before they take any damage; I hate this so much I never used ballista in the previous games.

Crypts lose all their charges when you upgrade them, they no longer fire more than one charge at a time, the charges move slowly and often circle the enemy a couple times before hitting.

The maps feel smaller, with fewer choices of where to put towers.

The whole game was so frustrating that I couldn't tell if the actual new concepts (night mode and enemy structures) were good or bad. The only thing in this game that is clearly an improvement is the ability to reassign skill points, and those skills seemed less useful than before.

anyone know how to unlock the final region? im level 30 and most day and night on 2 stars, if not 3.. still clouds over the last section though.

I have enjoyed this game so far, and overall, I think it's a better game than the original.

The only difficult thing in the old game was dealing with ninjas, considering they were invisible for nearly twice as long as they are in this game. In the end, you just had to max out meteor and mana to spam the champion ninjas. There was even that one level where the first hit had to fear the champion ninja or you couldn't win.

The difficulty in this game, on the other hand, is solely in surviving the first few waves. Once you've restarted enough times to learn how to perfect your strategy in the first few waves, you're basically done.

@fstr21 - I believe there are only 15 levels and the clouds over the coast are pleasant eyewash. On 15. Battle Royale you're fighting inside the castle and that's as far as you have to go. The beach is for relaxing after the fight. If you peek through the clouds just above your rank you can see the tiki bar waiting for you.

While I found this game to be about as enjoyable as the first Cursed Treasure, there were some things I would have liked them to keep.

It was interesting having the towers and spells locked at first, but what was nice about the first game was that you had access to everything for every level. Keeping it initially locked would be OK, but maybe after gaining access to a tower, letting it be used on earlier levels would be nice.

When I played the first Cursed Treasure, my go to tower was the crypt, since the shots would home in on the enemy, but change targets to the next available if the initial target died. That does not happen in this, instead your charges are lost. Meaning that they are useless with large groups.

The skill upgrades had no indication of what it would take to unlock, whether it was # of points spent or previous skill needed.

Overall, it is a pretty fun game, though.

Umm somehow my game didn't save on armorgames..
I saved it on the 'online save' option & when I returned, it was no longer there...
Well, I guess I wasted half the day on nothing.

Some differences in gameplay between the original and the sequel that I have noticed:

• The damage caused by an attack is no longer shown. You can however watch the health of an individual enemy by hovering or clicking.

• Dens and Sniper's Dens no longer shoot instantaneously. This can help when fighting ninjas as several towers can take aim at the same time.

• Crypts have three charges without requiring a skill upgrade.

• Crypt charges don't seek a new target if their original target dies. Also they don't always hit immediately; sometimes they circle around first. This means that you can lose several charges if another tower ends up killing the enemy. However they do still track enemies that become invisible after the charge was fired, so several charges can home in on one ninja before he becomes invisible.

• Temple of Overseer and Temple of Ifrit towers take some time to "lock on" to their targets. Temple of Beholder towers have to fire their weapon (like a crypt) which is even slower, although once it "hits" the victim then gets "continuous" damage.

• When you upgrade Dens and Temples, the new tower takes time to become operational. (Previously the new tower became operational instantly even if the old tower was waiting to recharge.)

• You can't tell what the experience of a tower is if it's due for an upgrade.

So, which is the best tower?

@Mantus The ninjas were rather easy this time, too. Because they can only go invisible once.

This really shouldn't be touted as an improvement. It's more accurate to call this a kid-sized version of the game, or as the candy industry puts it: fun-sized. It's wonderful for casual gaming, but not even close to the challenging powerhouse of the original. If I don't have all my improvements yet I can massacre wave after wave at a map entrance -- there's just no need to thread the needle as with the original. (Granted, with the exception of

To be blunt: gushing reviews can set a game up for failure. I heart you guys, and I enjoy the enthusiasm, just please less hyperbole in the analysis section.

Sorry you felt that way, Shudog, and if I seem to have given you the wrong impression somehow. I stand by everything I said about the game as my own personal opinion. I felt it was a massive improvement over the original in virtually every way, and still do.

Trying to Brilliant level 9, I kept tripping over some niggles:

• Space doesn't work if you accidentally mouse over the Slow/Fast button

• The scrolls have too large a hit area, I keep activating them when trying to click other objects. I even accidentally activated one trying to place a tower!

• The sound that the third Boss's special power makes doesn't always stop at the end of the level (whether through quit or victory).

• The ninth level can acquire a huge number of enemies, after which the game just can't keep up and stops responding to the user until some time after they have simply walked into your cave and taken your gems.

I did however discover that the Enter key activates the Attack button. (I had already found a list of the other keys.)

Stunning... there's just no stopping. This is the first TD I've ever played all the way through to the end, and within just a few days too. 6 out of 5 :)

A deeper assessment of the towers.

1. • Against a single opponent the Crypt works best because it has three charges that it can let loose. Otherwise its poor recharge time lets it down.

   • The Den beats the Temple due to its higher range and damage, which is useful against armoured opponents.

2. • The second level makes little difference to the towers, just increasing their damage by 50%. (The Temple loses out very slightly because the Den and Crypt get their damage rounded up.)

3. • At the third level, things begin to get interesting. The temples are designed to target multiple enemies. The Temple of Overseer can take on two at once, but its damage is poor against against armoured opponents, while the Temple of Inferno is impressive if you can arrange to catch several enemies in one blast.

   • The Ballista Den is a bit slow so can miss opponents especially those at the edge of its otherwise usefully large range but its splash damage helps and can also affect nearby opponents. The Snipers' Den's chance of critical hit keeps it in contention and its fast recharge rate helps it gain experience.

   • Just considering damage, the Crypt is the worst, but that doesn't take the Frost or Fear into account. Frost is useful against speedy or fearless opponents but Fear is more generally useful, although (unlike the spell) there is only 20% chance per hit.

4. • At the fourth level, the tower's damage typically goes up by a third. The Snipers' Den also benefits from an increased chance of critical hit.

   • Interestingly the Dreadful Crypt's damage goes up by a half, which makes it look more useful against a single opponent.

   • Meanwhile the Temple of Inferno's damage only increases slightly, but this is more than compensated by its decreased recharge time.

5. • At the fifth level you really are spoiled for choice. The Bunker Den does have an impressive recharge time but its performance against armoured opponents is poor.

   • The Icy Crypt gets an impressive range, and the Icy Orb is useful against fearless and speedy enemies as each Orb is roughly equivalent to a scroll of stasis (the ice can freeze nearby opponents but not as many as the scroll).

   • Interestingly the Shattering Crypt's chance of Fear goes down to 15% but its chaining means that its damage and Fear can apply to multiple enemies.

   • The Catapult Den is also more useful against multiple enemies as not only does it have splash damage but also three shrapnel fragments.

   • Unlike those of lower levels, the Temple of Ifrit can only attack one nearby opponent at a time but it makes up for that with an impressive continuous fire damage plus splash damage.

   • The Lightning Crypt has an impressive recharge time and a useful range and damage with the advantage of an instant hit. It is probably the best tower against a single fearless opponent.

   • The Rocket Den has better range and damage than the Lightning Crypt and also splash damage and even a chance of critical hit.

   • The Temple of Hellfire has an impressive continuous area attack but its range is bad as the Temple of Ifrit.

   • Finally the Temple of Beholder has a useful range and multiple attack.

Enemy abilities and (where known) how you can deal with them and what to avoid:

It blows my mind that gold coins fall on the ground and stay there until you pick them up. Why don't they rapidly vaporize like they do in every other game? ;)

Version 1.1.0e brings three new levels, two new buildings and 5 new enemies with two brand new powers!

Mm, I like this new land. Now that is more like it. Challenging, even with nearly everything leveled up. So far my only complaint is that bizarre priestess 'do, they look more like members of a male hair band. Oh, okay, the last few levels are another round of easy massacres once you have all your towers in place, so there's slightly less peril and a bit more enjoyable strategery.

To me, the biggest annoyance of this game is its lag problems. As the game continues to run, the delay for interactions such as picking up coins/mana and upgrading towers gets worse and worse. It seems related to the sound effects in some way. Eventually, if you want reasonable responsiveness, you have to quit the game, close the window, and reload it. This definitely feels like some sort of bug in how the game uses Flash which never got ironed out.

Version 1.2 added some more levels, while Version 1.3 appears to have been a bit of a rewrite, and 1.3.1 now boasts the following features:

• Invisible and underwater enemies are now affected by area damage.

• Crypt charges now re-aim and they don't linger like they used to.

• Frightened enemies don't get stuck in corners.

• Fast Speed can be toggled instead of holding (pause the game to switch controls).

• New hotkeys: P for pause, T for next wave.

• Coins autocollect before the next wave.

• Terror protects from Charm for 2 seconds.

In addition there has been a total game re-balance: skill effects, meteor damage, towers XP formula, towers upgrade costs, towers ranges and damages, enemies HP are tweaked, all the levels were re-balanced, so you should try playing all over again.

One subtle change which they haven't mentioned is that when Dens and Snipers' Dens shoot at Ninjas that become invisible the arrows disappear in flight whereas previously they would all hit. I assume Crypt charges would re-aim but I haven't seen a Crypt target a Ninja yet.

A re-assessment of the towers.

The biggest losers (at least 70% weaker):

The gainers:

To follow up on the version 1.3 changes, I saw a crypt charge disappear when the Ninja it was aiming at went invisible, which is a change from the previous behaviour. (There was no other enemy available so I still don't know whether it would re-aim in such a case.) Ideally you would use a Lightning Crypt to force Ninjas to become invisible early on but at lower levels a Den is probably your best bet.