A Rogue-Dislike
HIGH Sniping the head clean off an orc’s shoulders! With a wrench! Somehow!
LOW The ‘thrill’ of grinding for a -0.2 second reset time to grind more efficiently.
WTF 99,999 Skulls to wear the color PURPLE. Are you serious?
Editor’s Note: This review was conducted before the “Arcane Update” on March 23rd. Though the update does provide some quality-of-life improvements, two maps from prior games, and an additional playable character, the same foundational issues persist.
Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is the fifth tower defense/third-person shooter orc slaughterfest from Robot Entertainment, and I’ll answer the obvious question for fellow fans — no, it’s still not better than Orcs Must Die! 2. What does this mean for everyone else who hasn’t played these games? Well, Orcs Must Die! is built on a deceptively simple premise.
Players, as a Warmage, defend magic rifts across various maps from incoming orcs with skillful shooting, brawling, and tactfully deploying defensive traps. There are a ton of physics elements at play too! The sequels added optional two player co-op, and what made it sing was the wonderful attention to detail — sound design, animation, and vocal performances of the two leads. It was all just so good… once upon a time.
After two divisive, gimmick-filled sequels, the series is pivoting again to be a four-player roguelite. This pivot is also a convenient excuse to abandon the story mode and cut down on the maps, now less than a dozen maps. A new map is unlocked after defeating each of the four bosses, but that can take dozens of hours of grinding for better stats, perks (Threads) and debuffs (Distortions) so that players can maybe have a chance.
Each round, players choose from three maps, each coming with some Distortion — basically, a negative consequence — something like tougher enemies or enemies no longer dropping power-ups upon death. Every wave survived grants a new Thread that adds a positive perk, like a temporary discount on a trap type, an elemental damage boost, or doubling some useful aspect of a trap.
What breaks the experience is how barricades (once an optional obstacle players could use to redirect enemies) are now required to have a hope of victory. They’ve been patched to allow up to twenty-two barricades by default, which is more than I had to work with during the embargo period, but that’s still not enough. Maps are too flat and open, and cluttered with debris that serves no purpose — it’s like half of every map isn’t done yet. There are also notable visual errors and collision glitches. As it stands, there are maybe one to two viable layouts on each map, causing notable feelings of repetition.
I could maybe look past this if everything else was polished, but that’s not the case as there’s loads of bugs and weirdness — things like enemy ragdoll animations consistently failing to trigger, AI of melee enemies being easily evaded by standing on a slightly high ledge, almost every map having misaligned assets, getting into places I wasn’t supposed to was surprisingly easy, my chosen Warmage spouting the wrong character audio in the heat of battle, the absence of a real tutorial, and more. Between the promise of future content updates and the obviously incomplete state of things, I have to wonder why this isn’t an Early Access game, because by all appearances, it is one.
Unfortunately, the aspect that receives the most attention in Deathtrap is… grinding.
To be fair, it’s reasonable that most tower-defense games have some grinding, yet I can’t think of one with such tedious costs for minimal improvements. Across my fifty hours playing, I was barely able to upgrade more than five traps to maximum stats, I unlocked barely half of the Warmage skilltree, and there’s apparently a whole slew of Threads left to unlock. These aren’t exciting upgrades either — they’re boring, minimal stat boosts that only the sweatiest players will care about. The devs even removed the ability to respec a loadout — a series hallmark that encouraged experimentation.
Worst of all, the endgame after beating all four enemy bosses in Deathtrap is… keep playing rounds endlessly until defeated on the same few maps with the same traps. I’m starting to think this content wasn’t well-thought-out.
The core gameplay is still enjoyable, it’s just not as good as it’s previously been because it seems actively opposed to the idea of player expression. Also, balancing is fluctuating with every patch so I can’t reliably comment on it. At the time of writing, enemies get 50% more health with every subsequent map, which is currently soft-locking certain playstyles.
Or course the devs are patching the game, which is good, but in the time it’s taken since launch, fans have already created PC mods that address fundamental issues faster than the developers. I’ve tried some of the mods and they make for a much better time. The repetition is still a major issue though.
I don’t know who Orcs Must Die! is for, and I’m not sure Robot Entertainment does either. Anyone new to the series is at a massive disadvantage, and existing fans are going to be scratching their heads. This series might’ve put Robot Entertainment on the map, but what they’re doing here isn’t their future. I used to love these titles — I still love the first two — but even if this mess is the result of an unfortunate series of mistakes made with the best intentions, that still doesn’t mean it’s a good experience.
Rating: 4 out of 10
Buy Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap: Xbox – PC
Disclosures: This game is developed and published by Robot Entertainment. It is currently available on PC and XBS/X. This copy of Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap was provided by the publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 45 hours were dedicated to the single-player campaign, and it was not completed.
Parents: This game is rated Teen by the ESRB, and like previous series entries, contains Violence, Blood, and Mild Language. This one is going to come down more to a matter of preference. Overall, this is a very lighthearted affair. The gore (which is strangely not included by the ESRB rating) and blood are extremely cartoonish nonsense, but they are almost to the level of a DOOM game at points, particularly with headshots. However, in the gameplay settings, it’s possible to disable all gore. This does result in more glitching ragdolls, but if gore is the deciding factor here, you can disable it.
Colorblind modes: There are no colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: There are some visual prompts doubling for audio prompts, but not enough in my opinion. Subtitles cannot be resized or altered. Overall I would say that it’s not fully accessible.
Remappable controls: Yes, this game does offer remappable controls and there are a wealth of additional customization options in settings.
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