A now $14 game with mobile-isms such as a grind not too dissimilar to the more generous town builders of iOS circa 2011-2013, i.e. Battle Nations. Despite this grind, I trudged through it with a level of aversion to its molassesity largely thanks to my depression. It's still a source of comfort food in a way, as I remember playing probably 8 Bloons games from the Flash era and participated in the Bloons Monkey City beta.

I still loathe the grind, but I only find it somewhat tolerable because I knew how to quickly unlock the base tower upgrades, which through what feels like a miracle in contrast to the Daily Chests, Daily Challenges, Weekly Challenges (Odysseys, Boss Bloons), Weekly Events (Contested Territories), are all that's required to tackle the "CHIMPs" mode which completely disables all of the mobile-ism perma-upgrade dreck that is Monkey Knowledge, Insta-Monkeys and Powerups. Oh, but not Heroes. That part sticks. If you're lacking a hero that's clearly needed for a challenge but you don't have monkey money, you probably have to go grind half a dozen or so medals just for the one hero (there's 13 to unlock additionally.)

That said, the balance in this game is utterly masterful compared to BTD5, despite the reliance on heroes for expert maps and CHIMPs. Unfortunately they continue the long-running tradition in the series for only very rarely explicitly telling you what upgrades do. For example, did you know increasing range on the Super Monkey also increases pierce by 2? This is conveyed literally nowhere except the fan wiki, and there's tons of stuff like this. In their hopes that 3-5 word descriptors of an upgrade would suffice for the 12 year olds with mommy's credit card casual playerbase, I feel they've inadvertently turned the more brain-teaser maps/modes into what feels like wiki diving just to have any clue what works. The alternative is opening the challenge editor (not Sandbox as it's inaccurate to real gameplay on all but the base modes).

Another thing that's a major step back from BTD5 is the general progression, they haven't done anything to improve the tower upgrade unlocks, and now that there's more towers with even higher tiers (4 with tier 6s that have an additional 0 on their already 5-6 digit XP requirements) you need to play even more maps with towers you may not want to use at all purely for the sake of progression. The reason this especially sucks is because a lot of the daily/weekly challenges often rely on very specific synergies or ugprades, and if you lack it then you're boned out of participating at all. They also decided to lock the harder modes behind one another, PER MAP. In BTD5, you bought the Impoppable difficulty mode for $1k monkey money, and it was available to select thereafter on every map whenever you wanted. In BTD6, to play Impoppable, you need to play the map you're interested in on Hard first, then Alternate Rounds, THEN Impoppable; and if you want to do CHIMPs, the real meat of the game, you must also complete Impoppable additionally prior. It's utterly ridiculous.

And yet here I am, achievement hunting specific things like No Harvest (Beat Cornfield on CHIMPs without removing any Corn), because once you trudge through that wall of grind, you get to try genuinely neat daily/weekly challenges and play the #1 tower defense game via the mode CHIMPs. As someone with almost 200 hours in the game I still find myself needing to grind stuff out occasionally to attempt some challenges, usually lacking a hero. As a newcomer, I think the game is atrocious, and if you're not huge on tower defense or Bloons I don't know why you'd bother with this.

I love the Bloons series, but I fear whenever they're done milking this with quirky updates that whatever comes next will be not just filled even more with mobile-isms, but mobile-only and explicitly rely on Instas. It sure feels that way in this at a glance.

This is what happens when you forget to un-mobile your mobile game. Shit UI, lacking basic features the previous entry had (no shortcut keys at launch LOL, missing mainstay towers, etc.) and some of the absolute worst progression I've ever fucking seen.

What? You're qualified to go for Impoppable? Too bad, you have to play Normal then Hard then Odd Bloons Blaster 3000 Monkey Shit Deluxe Round and THEN you can play Impoppable. Oh, and you have to do this for every map in the game. WHY. In TD5 you got access to Impoppable by just buying the difficulty outright for like $1k and got it on every map, no prerequisite difficulty unlock bullshit.

It's such a shame too because on one hand it's one of the most satisfying to actually succeed at and mechanically one of if not the most realized TD in the genre; but arbitrarily being told to grind constantly is fucking aids (or you can spend real money on it lololol did I mention this was a mobile game first). Some towers are so hopelessly dogshit without their permanent skill tree perks. This also becomes obvious when you attempt to do the "Boss bloons" relatively early level and have yet to get stupid passives that would've made it free or waste your monkey cash on big buffs, playing damn near perfectly but I lose to the Boss bloon by like 10% of its remaining health because hey guess what I don't have the remaining 25% increase in buffs from the various skill trees is very fun and epic guess I should go grind more :-DDDD

Fuck that. Game has absolutely zero respect for the player's time whatsoever.