Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap

OMD 3 was a perfect game in the series, This game had a VERY rough start- They did however fix all the issues early on and today id say its on a very great platform! Ive unlocked everything there is to unlock and done about all the achievements but one. I still enjoy this game and all additions to it, I am however hoping that they add more maps, more traps, more orcs and multiple war mages. If you dont like this game: Go play OMD 3. probably the best prio to deathtrap.

An Orcs Must Die! game minus the story mode. A lot of people gave this game negative reviews because there's no story mode, but I won’t. I love the Orcs Must Die! series and have played 1-3 for many, many hours to get all of the upgrades and get the highest skull ratings on all of the levels on the highest difficulty. When I saw this game, I got excited for another round of levels, maps, and stories. But, alas, the story is just reading what happened until now (i.e., multiple bosses vying for control over the orcs, and the two veteran war mages training a new crew—no mention of what happened to the crew from the previous game). There are no levels…just maps of varying difficulty being offered to you in no real order. Basically, compared to previous games you have more characters (though they all seem to be variations of melee/range archetypes), no story mode, similar non-story modes where you play special challenges, escalating-difficulty scenarios, or multi-part “runs” with increasing handicaps, more traps, abilities, and upgrades than ever before, and a handful of new maps and bosses. But, without the story mode, it’s really just an online multiplayer game where you can play by yourself on maps meant for 2-4 people. That’s why most people don’t recommend this game, and I’m only giving it a recommend because I love this series—I miss the story mode with the skull ratings and the gradual building up of my arsenal and capabilities throughout the campaign. If you want to play solo, I recommend OMD! 1-3 over this. It feels like they wanted to replace Orcs Must Die! Unchained after retiring it in 2019. The Positives -The art style still rocks. I think the game is so cute and cartoony, making it so much fun to play and just watch all the beautiful environments, animations, and characters. At least they didn’t ruin it by going in a different direction here. -The two classic characters are still here. I’m glad because I never really cared about any of the other characters (good thing, too, since they're not in this game). The one good thing about no real story mode is that you can unlock the classic characters before even playing a mission by exploring the fortress. I’m not sure why they locked the characters at all since it’s so easy—and they didn't even bother to make the unavailability part of the story. But I figured it out just walking around the fortress, so I consider it a positive that they’re playable without completing another character's campaign. -There are new traps, and they’ve brought back the concept of threads from previous games (chosen enhancements to your character in between waves). If this had a story mode and you had to play, say, 4 maps and a boss level 5 times (20 levels/maps total) to complete a story campaign, that would’ve been amazing. And, to be honest, it would've only been an extra 3-6 months to make the script, drawings, and voiceovers like OMD! 1-3 since the characters, gameplay, maps, etc. are all there. Without the story mode, it’s still an impressive set of new traps and ways to improve them (skulls buy trap upgrades via a 3-attribute, 5-star system), but there’s no thought into how the game introduces you to the new traps and gives you a level specifically designed for you to use it so you can understand the situations in which it shines. Without that, I just stick with the traps I know (except where an area is missing a wall or ceiling). -They created a rogue-lite system that gives you that sense of progression without having a story mode, so the feeling of building is there. I don’t like that it feels artificial because it’s in the form of “make the enemies more difficult once your traps get better” instead of the originals’ “the maps get more complex with more difficult enemies as your traps get better” approach that I prefer. But it sucks for a veteran of the series to effectively be incapable of playing the game on a harder difficulty at first because you need to upgrade the traps and your abilities to DPS 10,000-hit-point enemies, leaving you grinding on the lowest difficulty until you can have the necessary upgrades. Since they were focused on multiplayer with this title, this is a positive that they kept the sense of progression intact. The Negatives -There are many “they got rid of what made it great” comments in the negative reviews, and what they mean is that the fun, quirky story with levels and maps that gradually introduced you to any new gameplay elements, traps, characters, and enemies…all of that is gone. It’s just, “You’re in a fortress fighting several bosses all trying to control the orcs. Pick your character, play missions, build your traps and skills, and rinse and repeat.” There are plenty of things still in here that make it fun, but what made this game addictive for me was the way they structured the story and the levels to take you on a journey. It was amazing, and that’s completely missing here. -As I mentioned above, the difficulty curve is annoying. You have to start at a low difficulty at first because you just don’t have the traps or the DPS necessary to survive for very long otherwise. And, unlike in a story mode where I don’t mind starting over and building up again, now I’m just nerfed until I grind enough points to upgrade. It’s a very different feeling from building up from simple levels to complex ones...instead, I'm playing the same maps over and over again grinding and then trying new strategies with the better arsenal. -The maps are made for multiplayer, so if you’re solo, it’s miserable. Many maps require you to place the barricades around the rifts. There aren’t many places to do the classic snake or choke-point-kill-box techniques (minus the one map that’s clearly meant to be the easiest since it’s just a big snake-enabling level). My tactics did change as I improved my traps and skills, but solo was not as fun as OMD 1-3. There’s a lot of RNG, which would be fun to keep things interesting for multiplayer, but in solo you always knew the enemies so you could plan. Now, even if you do plan well, you can goof off for a second putting an extra trap down (because it’s getting easy) only for a kobold mound to open up and allow kobolds to run right into your rift. I’m sure that’s fun and frantic in multiplayer, but in solo it just feels cheap—and, as with the problem with giant maps with only one war mage, forces you to just build everything around the rift in most maps. It gets old and annoying really fast. -The rogue-lite elements mixed with some quirky controls and bugs make the experience much more frustrating than the previous games. In the old games, failure was learning. I loved it. I would only rarely get upset—most of the time, I’d just replay knowing I’d learn from my mistakes. But, in this game, the teleport has me flying into water half the time, killing my character (I just stick with a double-jump character—much better). Many of the quirks have me messing up, but because it’s a rogue-lite I can’t just restart the level. Nope—I have to live with my little screw-up for another two hours through the whole run. And then there was the moment when one of the bosses bugged out, and there’s no way to leave the game without forfeiting your “let it ride” skulls. So I lost ~750 skulls because of a bug (another player experienced the same boss-disappeared bug in June, and it has not been fixed). So, I now get mad when I make a mistake, which really sucks. Overall, I love this series and can't give it a thumbs-down. But this is a multiplayer game, and solo content is just playing the multiplayer content by yourself. I 100%-ed this and had some fun, but it’s sad that this is just a co-op rogue-lite tower defense instead of continuing its pioneering of the third-person shooter/tower defense hybrid with optional co-op that it’s been for well over a decade. Solo mode is just grinding the same levels over and over until you complete every quest and hit 100,000 kills.