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While I don't disagree about Ninja Champions being ridiculous, they are completely able to be dealt with. A lot of dealing with them has to do with your tower setup and mana strategy. Crypts can still scare or freeze them if they hit first and Burning Temples will hit them when cloaked if they are triggered. If you know a wave is coming up, conserve your mana for Meteor, which will still hit them.
You won't get a Brilliant on a level with Ninja Champions without leveling up Meteor or getting very lucky with Crypts, end of story. That's kind of the point though - it's *supposed* to be difficult to get them. Until you have a strategy to deal with them, you won't get the perfect rating.
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Need hotkeys. Even if just for the Meteor spell. When you have a champion ninja as the last character in a wave, it's extremely difficult to unleash the meteor on him enough times, which is what you need to do in order to get a gold star.
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The only thing that I don't like is that assassins can dodge fireballs and burning towers, miss chance on constant fire lasers isn't exactly fair either...
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fun stuff. like the upgrades and replayability. good badges. agree with silverpenny though - add hotkeys. holy crap, 2 or 3 of the levels was more about mouse speed than strategy. and thanks to Jasperwinkel for pointing out the hold shift for meteor, otherwise I would never have gotten lvl 15 perfect. for all the good, I found most of the upgrades only minorly useful and never used green/dens for anything. I think you can almost complete the entire thing with just the ice towers.
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The best way I found to beat ninja champions is to concentrate your towers in the end and put a couple in the very beginning. The skill will wear off before the champion gets to the towers.
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this game is the definition of grinding. the only way to win is by grinding lower levels to collect skill points. the levels pretty much dictate the strategy because you can only place towers on certain tiles. variation is limited to which towers to place first or to upgrade first. upgrading is also very limited because you need xp by killing. that means you can't have strong towers at the back to catch any leaks. also towers with higher xp hog the xp from towers with lower xp. the skills could have added variation in the strategies, because different skills can make one tower more powerfull than the other. but because the skills cannot be reset there is no way to try a "different" strategy by varying the skills. i you are stuck on a level, because your skills are not optimal for the towers dictated by the level, then the only way to adapt your skills is by grinding lower levels. this game looked great in the beginning, but now it just tedious grinding.
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Unless i'm missing something very obvious. getting the level 14 "Excellent" achievement is nigh impossible. Even spamming fireball isn't enough to kill the final boss before it touches a gem. I have maxxed all the skills so it can't be something I'm missing from the skills.
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And Temples FTW.. I got the " Didn't Touch My Gems Badge (hard - 30 points)
You acquired this badge on May. 13, 2010." With Temples....
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Ugh. I have to knock a point off my original score. You're down from 5/5 to 4/5 because Ninjas (and particularly Ninja champions) are just that broken. If there were a way that was based on skill to beat them, it wouldn't be so bad. But there isn't. You're just praying either that you crit them a ton, or that they get feared/frozen on the first hit when they go invisible so that it's even remotely possible to kill them before they reach a gem if you want Brilliant. I enjoy a challenge, but this isn't true challenge. It's just praying to the Random Number God that he wont **** you in the ass with ninjas you can't harm. Even the "correct" layout of a level will only work like 3 times in ten. A 30% success rate for being perfect is not good gameplay.
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Balance wise, I have to say that Temples in general is a bit underpowered. They level extremely slowly in comparison to the other towers(particularly Evileye temple due to earning 1 exp per attack) so you'll rarely(if ever) have maxed out Evileye temples. in addition burning corpse is quite weak considering the burning temple and ballista dens are a more reliable and powerful source of area of effect damage.Imo, A quick fix would be to allow them to earn 2 exp(assuming both basic training and Demon Lord are maxed) per attack and simply raise the exp caps for temples instead as it is now, the best way to earn exp is to spam frenzy when a boss is in range of a temple/evileye temple(burning temples acquire exp at a decent pace).
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For beating Ninja champs, remember you can hold shift to keep casting the spell. Select meteor, shift-click 5 times. You don't have to move the mouse and select the spell each cast.
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I recently made the 15 brilliant ratings. Here are a few tips...
The crypt towers were easily my favorite, towards the end you don't need much else. Get the fear upg. and freeze upg. and its pretty much GG.
When facing a ninja boss make sure the crypt towers hit him first. If you're lucky he'll be frozen before he has a chance to go invisible.
Get the skills to turn 50 mana into 100 gold. Although its not necessary, it can be helpful when you're sitting around with huge mana reserves.
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Only sure-fire way I found to beat last-level Ninja champions was to max the two fireball talents (lower mana and more damage) and to max your mana to 500, then when the ninja comes just spam fireball on it 5 times; it's a guaranteed kill.
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@Mizekel, you can instead opt to use Temples along with the skill adoration (right one down one from Basic Training). This allows temples to grant you 20 mana each time they are built.
Spam 5 meteors(hold shift), build 5 temples(again shift~) and cast another meteor. Fried Ninja Champion ^^
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I LOVE THIS GAME ALL OF IT IS BRILLIANT AND MANTIL NICE IDEA FOR A RESET SKILLS BUTTON GENIUS INCLUDING THE TERRAINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!9999999999999999999999/5
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Click on fireball, then click somewhere else in the menu. It wastes your mana without giving you any benefit... the spell shouldn't activate unless I click on the map itself! Please fix this!
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I had thought this was a great game, but after playing through I'm liking it less. Essentially the game is a cakewalk except for the ninja, which just makes it redonkulous. A 5 second vanish on a Boss Ninja when it takes less then 5 seconds to get to your gems means you can't get the best ranks. Forty levels down the crapper. Now I have to grind the Demon path to see if the extra Meteor damage can kill him before he gets there. Really bad game element. If that were adjusted and the overall difficulty raised to compensate you'd have a great game here. Still, I'll give it a 4/5.
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To beat level 14 with "Brilliant", you need 1 blue tower on the top-left corner and 1 blue tower on the bottom-right corner. Then you need to upgrade the tower enough to get the "Disarm" Skill, and hope that when wave 50 comes, the skill effect kicks in.
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Okay, there is something i do not get. On the first level i got a brilliant because i lost no gems and killed everything, yet i did the same for all levels and didn't get brilliant. Why?
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Mizekel, are you sure you didn't mean Brilliant? Getting excellent on every level isn't very hard with a little strategy and a decent level.
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One thing I really liked was how they grayed out the next wave button until you were done with the current wave. In some TDs I was always nervous about when to press it, wanting to maximize my score but not lose.
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How the hell do you get Brilliant on level 14? I have almost EVERYTHING upgraded now just trying to beat it. The ninja champion on the last level does NOT die to 5 maxed meteors.
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for the ninjas, just put an ice tower in the begining of the game (them, in the wave 10~12 you will have a maxed tower near your gems, one is enough), in the halfway to the gems and your most far 'group' of towers... i dont know if you understand me, but its a good help to win the brilliant medals (i mean, to prevent ninjas to even touch your gems)
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Level 14 is impossible to get Excellent on unless you get really lucky. Even with the max mana pool, max damage meteor and the lowest cost for meteor, you can only do 2000 damage spamming that spell while the Ninja boss has 2400 HP. You need to get fully upgraded Crypt towers with Ice Mastery and Mind Control talents maxed, then either A. Hope he gets frozen and can't turn invisible, or B. Hope he gets hit with Fear and runs in circles until his invisibility wears off.
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good game if not a bit short, finished in one sitting
i found putting a signle point into each teir per level to be effect
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I think Ninjas are great. Sure, they're a pain in the neck, but the rest of the game is so easy, without them the game would be too easy... the only thing I don't like is Ninja Champions (like everyone else). Thing is, you took an extremely high HP enemy, gave him invincibility, and made him fast. If that isn't annoying, I don't know what is. Even spamming meteors ([Shift] for those who don't know) can be hard. Fully upgraded, you've got a maximum of 2000 damage. And slowing or stopping the Ninja is pure luck (25%, yeah, right). So I think there should be an Anti-Ninja tower or skill or upgrade, like anti-air towers in some TDs. Otherwise, you'll be trying the same level over and over, just because of one enemy.
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There's this bug where enemies will run pass my towers and my towers wont attack them =\. It's really annoying and making it almost impossible to get a brilliant rating on some maps.