Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap

If you haven't played any of the previous orcs must dies or aren't too familiar with the series I'm gonna keep it simple, buy OMD 3 instead. Deathtrap literally uses the exact same models for the traps and enemies with the only changes being how the engine handles lighting and the addition of some extra trap VFX while having far worse off gameplay. It literally even uses the exact same code for the gameplay as it inherits the 4+ year long standing bugs. ============================== The game uses trap spaces to measure (most) trap ranges, pathfinding and most importantly trap placement (as a frame of reference the barricade is 2 trap squares by 2 trap squares). The problem most of the maps have is a lot of the ceiling traps are 4 TrSqs in range and a majority of the maps do not allow you to comfortably use these traps more than you can count on 1 hand. One of the threats that can always appear in the game is a 'Cyclops Guardian' it applies a 7 to 10 TrSq range 80% DR buff for over 7-10 seconds that is not dispelled by killing him. He also has 8k HP as a frame of reference the tankiest unit in the game is one of the Boss units at 50K HP and the tankiest common orc is the armored ogre at 9k meaning it has an effective HP of 45K when the Guardian is buffing it making it the second tankiest unit in the game albeit temporarily right in front of the 40K HP Boss in third place. The game also has significantly worse map building than previous iterations. The walls are very sloppily built when compared to the floors as most of the floors are built so the x and y axis of the floor are a multiple of 2 in TrSqs and exceed 16 TrSqs^2 in size, this is because most of the traps are 2 by 2 and of all floor traps only a singular 1 is 1 square wide, additionally large enemies can not pathfind into a 1 square gap and will thus bash the nearest barricade down even though a gap technically exists. Walls in this game are plagued with improparly managed, trap blocking clutter, many spaces have minor pillars and gaps in or on the wall that seem to fit traps but in reality are invalid space even if the pillar is only sticking out 0.05 to 0.15 TrSqs. Wall mounted candles and lamps also randomly take anywhere from no TrSqs to 4 by 3 TrSqs (shoutout to mansion hedge maze for suffering from all of these problems to a very severe degree on top of no viable ceiling under 9 TrSqs). If you already have the game take Void Wall its the biggest wall trap in the game at 4 by 4 TrSqs and try putting it down in literally any map and see how many viable places you can actually place it down and remember Cyclops Druid (Balloon orcs as well) are the tankiest flyer, can show up on any map and can't be pulled by Void wall. You also never end up using a large majority of the very large map, not because you can only commit to one option but mostly because most maps only have 2 or 3 variations of barricade set ups and these all end with you sitting near the rift. To demonstrate this imagine the rift as the center of a circle and the barricades as the perimeter. The more the radius of the circle increases the more the perimeter increases which means you need more barricades to cover a larger area but in this game your only ever allowed a specific amount of barricades so you can only increase the area of your circle by so much before you end up punching multiple holes in the perimeter. Or to complicate it again the further you barricade away from the rift the more alleyways and secondary entrances you have to block off. Difficulty vs reward is terribly handled and health is also poorly thought out. The equation for enemy health is Health multi = (25% * # of players) + (25% * missions previously cleared) + (50% * difficulty level) + % orcs health from debuffs. Every difficulty you add gives 10% more skulls meaning to get double skulls you need to endure enemies with an additonal 500% health (equivalent to mission 21 tier enemies on 0 difficulty) most likely stalling the game out long enough to barely eek out profits in exchange for major risk of losing a boat load of time meaning as a player unfamiliar with the Deathtrap meta you will not interact with difficulty until you no longer need skulls. It also forces all of the difficulty into the start of the game and removes most of the enemies scaling over time as difficulty scaling is additive to mission scaling on top of being twice as big of a contributing percentage. It also invalidates the thread system as you are expected to beat this massive health spike without upgrades than imbue yourself with upgrades after already beating the 'hard part'. When you are at difficulty zero going from 25% health at mission 1 to 50% health at mission 2 is doubling the health, at difficulty 4 you go from 225% at mission 1 to 250% at mission 2 increasing health by roughly 11%. Meanwhile threads that as an example increases primary attack damage by 50% will always increase damage by 50% no matter what. The second mission you can still lose if its a bad map for you but by the third mission you've scaled enough to trivialize all the following missions and by design difficulty is hardly useful for the lower hour players that would actually need currency. Also remember that 80% DR buff? This health equation only gets multiplied by that and is explained no where in-game. Map hazards spawn but only ever set down the hazards in the exact same place and a lot of these available spawns are meant to spawn behind your barricades inside your perimeter so while its meant to serve as a surprise enemy powerplay it in reality only makes you set up a perimeter even tighter around your rift. These spots are also so limited that other than 1 of the 3 hazards called unstable rift you'll only need 1 run to see over 3 quarters of the set hazard spots. Pink red-ish corruption also spawns blocking your ability to place traps down and is unavoidable but all it ever did for me was even further restrict me from using ceiling traps. In the worst case scenario you have to double kill box. Every single double rift map is not a double rift map but is more accurately 2 small single rift maps that exist at the same time. if a gnoll hunter, grenadier or new thief type of gnoll hunter spawns on any of the double rift maps it will literally be completely unable to pathfind to the player if they are on the small map opposite to the gnoll. They are absolutely different maps when played on co-op versus solo becuase of this seperation. The player can give themselves upgrades that effect traps, to keep it short the skill tree exponentially costs more the more you invest in it so its mostly useless to upgrade your character tree. The exception is the trap damage and cost upgrades on the tree but the balancing downside is that the cost upgrades are flat cost reduction instead of precentages and its a large amount allowing for a total of 200 coins saved on every single placed Floor, Ceiling and wall trap meaning that low cost traps massively benefit from this upgrade over high cost traps. Void Wall is one of the most expensive traps at 2k coins, its cost upgrades reduces it to 1.8k coins meaning the skill tree upgrade is equal to its personal upgrade, the spike trap costs 800 coins (without its cost upgrade) and it reduced to 600 after skill tree upgrades allowing you to place 33% more spike traps compared to the 11% more void walls (with 1 having cost upgrades and the other not having cost upgrades) Build variety that came from combining weapons and trinkets is gone and replaced with characters, dealing with and adapting to threats is now completely dependent on your trap selection in a game with the most diverse and random cast of threats yet. Some of the maps need as low as half your barricades to funnel enemies into a 4 TrSq size funnel and some maps are literally impossible to funnel into a singular funnel longer then 4 TrSqs with all 22.