The best tower-defense losses seem to tell you exactly which decision failed: a route leaked because the damage was committed too early, a support tower sat out of range, or the economy delayed a needed upgrade. A loss is much harder to learn from when the game hides its targeting, pathing, or why a wave suddenly overwhelmed your build.
Which game gives you the clearest explanation of why a defense failed, and what information does it show?
I think there’s 2 good failure states, one is you learn something from why you failed so you want to try again to update your strategy and see if it works. The other is you carry over advancements or abilities from previous attempts so even if you try to brute force it it eventually works. Or I think most games have some mix of the two. For the first style having a recap at the end that shows a summary of how you did and also what you did so you can see if it improves with different actions seems less frustrating, like a damage parser you can only see at the end when you lose or win, or just a count of abilities used or structures built or whatever.