At first glance, you’re going to be asking me, Tyknighter, why did you make an in-depth review on Bloons Tower Defense 6 (BTD6)?" And to that, I’ll say to you; I don’t even know why chief, I just decided to do this.
When I was younger, I did play a lot of BTD5 on my elementary school computer when I was able to go to it. I had a ton of fun playing the game and years later, I found out that the series had a 6th game and that it was on Steam. So, I bought it and it quickly became one of the most played games in my library.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Fun and addictive gameplay that you can play for hours on end
- Multiple upgrade paths for all of your monkeys/towers
- 15+ different Heros for you to unlock and utilize
- Multiple game modes for you to play
- Very nice 3D-based art style
Cons
- May get stale at times as there is nothing fresh being added to the table in terms of gameplay
Gameplay
The gameplay for BTD6 is very simple, you place monkeys along the tracks of the map you are playing on and from there they will attack any Bloons that come across that path. Each game will have a set number of rounds depending on the difficulty chosen and each round will have a set of pre-defined Bloons to take out. You will come across different types of Bloons for your towers to take out and certain ones can help take out special Bloons.
There will be Camo Bloons that can only be hit if the tower has camo detection, Regrow Bloons which will regenerate after not getting hit for a while, Lead Bloons who can only be destroyed by magic or explosions, black ones who are in contrary immune to explosions, white ones that are immune to ice and finally fortified Bloons that are just normal Bloons but with some armor. Purple ones are immune to energy, plasma, and fire attacks and there will also be times when a combination of two or three special types will spawn. So, you have to take extra caution when trying to deal with them. There are also MOAB, BFB, ZOMG, DDT, and BAD, which are blimps that can soak up a lot of damage and instantly end your run if not taken care of.
When a monkey or tower takes out a balloon or the round ends, you get money. You can use this money to get upgrades to that monkey or tower. This will make them do more damage or have a secondary effect like when dealing with camo or another type of balloon. To get that upgrade, the tower in question will need experience points and they can level up to get that upgrade you want.
There is a new feature to this game compared to the predecessor, that being the level 5 upgrade - although only one monkey on screen can get that specific level 5 upgrade at a time. Each tower has three upgrade paths to choose from, however can only ever invest in two of them at a time while also allowing only one of these chosen paths to progress beyond level 2. The other options become unavailable, making for a huge variety of possible combinations within the same tower's abilities.
There is one other new upgrade you can get and that is the Paragon, these can only be acquired by you having a level five upgrade on all three paths from a tower. From there, it will absorb all three and any other towers from that specific type on the map and get more power when doing so. The more expensive all absorbed towers are - or the more extra money you spend on the upgrade - the higher the paragon level of your tower will be, amplifying it's already immense power even more. This will be the final upgrade you can get for your towers, and not every type has a Paragon upgrade yet. You can have up to four different Paragons on the map at a time, but only one of the same type. However, you can rebuy the towers absorbed and get their level-five upgrades again if you so wish.
Also new to this game are heroes, these are special monkeys that you can summon that will level up on their own and provide benefits to you. Most of them pop bloons but some of them can do other stuff too. My favorite hero is Benjamin, who can get you tons of money to help you out in buying upgrades and towers. He can also give you some extra lives in one of his upgrades too.
There are a few other game modes you can play to spice up the gameplay, these do, however, have the same premise as normal modes. They can have unique gimmicks though. Like giving you no breaks in between rounds, which also makes you lose out on bonus money, or having a boss battle with a giant blimp. Or if you want to have some sort of challenge, you can play the game with half money.
One thing I should add is that you can use your creativity to play the levels, this screenshot you see is how I play. You can play this game in any way you feel like and if you want to dive into the game, some pros will use these builds with just a few towers. The builds and setups have endless possibilities that you can do and I love it for that.
However, there is one thing that I do have to point out with BTD6's gameplay that would hinder the experience of the game, it would be that the gameplay can get stale. Nothing really changes when you are playing, it is always the same rounds of Bloons on every map, so outside of your creativity in new builds and weekly rotating events with slight variety it will get repetitive. There is a high replay value though, with community created challenges, occasional new content updates, and your freedom for creativity, so don't be surprised if you find yourself coming back to the game after awhile, just like I did.
Graphics and Performance
The art style of the game has changed from the previous ones, it now has a 3D art style that looks very nice. I tested the game on an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 3GB, AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor 3.50, and 16 GB of RAM. I experienced no issues while I was playing the game, and it should be able to run on low-end PCs. It will get laggy with speedup and a million effects on higher rounds though.
Final Verdict
If you are looking for a nice casual game to play, then Bloons Tower Defense 6 is a fantastic option for you. It can and will get addictive. I do recommend the game on a sale though, if you do it’s usually on sale for around 2 dollars and that’s a fantastic price for a game like that.