Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap review – So close to orc-crushing greatness

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is the latest entry in the Orcs Must Die! Series. Unlike previous entries, this game is a roguelite, so you’ll be dealing with elements that change as the game progresses. You can play this game by yourself or with up to 4 other players; however, the game is much more enjoyable when you get a group of friends together to help you. Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap does adjust to the number of players you have in your group, so plan accordingly! 

Like previous installments, Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap features a colorful cast of characters to play as. This time, each character's spells and weapons are fixed, preventing you from customizing them. The War Mages also have a set of abilities, and for the most part, they’re fun to use. 

There is a lot of fun to be had here when everything is running properly. The death animations for the orcs are a lot of fun and, like previous installments, it's great watching their body parts fly around the screen as they’re chopped, burned, and melted. However, a large portion of my time with Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap was spent battling bugs and frame drops. 

There is something here… 

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap has the groundwork for a great game. As of writing this review, the developers have already patched the game and listened to community feedback; we got more barricades and these barricades need to be bought during your run but they’re cool because they boost damage. These barricades are frankly awesome to use and they help out a lot in single-player. 

I also enjoy the variety of traps we got, though I think that there could be more. Specifically, I like that there are multiple traps for each element. I can also appreciate what the developers are going for here. Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap can be played with up to 4 players and while single-player isn’t the best experience, it’s still doable. I also like the idea of threads, the skill tree, and trap upgrades. However, when I replay the previous games, Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap is a step down in almost every way. 

War Mages

Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap features 6 War Mages. If you’re expecting anything interesting in regards to these characters, you will be disappointed. Each War Mage uses a different weapon and, in theory, each mage serves a different purpose. For example, Kalos heals and buffs allies while Mac has debuffs, and Wren is all about cooldown time and triggering traps. This is cool and I appreciate that they’re at least different from one another. In Orcs Must Die! 3 you could change weapons and add trinkets. I don’t miss this; I enjoy having the weapons and spells attached to a specific character. 

The skins and skill tree is where my disappointment stems from. For starters, every character has 1 unlockable skin, and it’s red and black for everyone. I appreciate that you can unlock a skin at all but did they all have to be the same color? The skill tree is even more bizarre to me, and where I think the game starts to show its cracks. There is one large skill tree that is attached to every character. What that means is everything you buy in the big skill tree will carry over for the other characters. Each character has a smaller skill tree. These skills are a missed opportunity to heavily buff characters and traps.

Progression 

Deep progression is such a stretch. While I understand that this is not Orcs Must Die! 4, there was no reason to remove the previous progression for traps. In fact, having unique upgrades with the system that we got would be perfect. 

In the screenshot above you can see what my trap shop looked like at the start of the game. You have to use golden skills to unlock new traps. As I made progress, I found myself specifically trying to get all the floor traps first and the wall traps after. With all the history in this series, I was expecting more traps. 

Once you buy a trap, you can upgrade it. Things will seem expensive in the beginning but as you complete the “story” getting skulls becomes easy. However, these upgrades are boring and there should’ve been more to this screen. In previous games, you could change how the trap operates. For example, the Ceiling Laser could be given extra lasers. The Floor Spikes could do Arcane damage, and so on. The upgrades are generic and while you can see the difference, the upgrades make eventually; getting to that point is not as satisfying as it could be. Never mind the fact that, due to the map design, a lot of these traps are not usable in a satisfying way, if usable at all. 

It’s a real shame because seeing all the traps come together is amazing! The traps are beautifully animated, and I love how they glow when it's dark. When used with the new barricades, they even get a blue glow that I just adore.

Map Design

Every map in this game contains four doors, and it makes for bland maps. You’ll also notice that most of the maps feature large outside spaces. The map design in this game lacks the creativity and innovation expected of a sequel. 

Another issue is that a lot of the maps don’t have good spaces to put ceiling traps if they offer space at all. It’s an absolute shame because the ceiling traps are awesome. There are also many spaces where you can’t utilize wall traps, some of my favorite traps in the game. The reason that the maps don’t work well for ceiling traps is because of how few ceilings are actually in the path of the orcs. Many of the maps are open and don’t properly utilize the walls and ceilings. 

With that being said, the maps are very pretty and, for the most part, have a lot of charm. Unfortunately, depending on where the rift is, and it will change as you beat maps, you will have minimal variety in where you can place things. There aren’t many maps in the game, though more are unlocked as you beat the bosses. The boss maps are among my favorites, though, because of performance issues, I have only been able to beat one boss. 

Gameplay 

I’m playing Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap on the Xbox Series S and the game runs poorly. Constant framerate drops, especially in multiplayer, ruin the experience when playing with a friend. Single-player isn’t much better, as the framerate dropping so drastically and carrying on for so long has caused me to lose games. At the time of writing this review, I have also crashed well over 17 different times, all during the late game. Orcs Must Die! Similar to Hades, Deathtrap has you doing back-to-back runs; however, because quicksaving is only possible at run's end, every crash meant completely restarting. 

Threads are new for this entry in the series; they function as game modifiers, and for the most part, I enjoy them. After beating the first boss, they became a more valuable addition to the game for me, and the ones you pick can determine how good your run goes. For example, on one run, I accidentally clicked on a Thread that prevented me from being able to delete barricades.