Orcs Must Die 3 Review

 I'm tired of being afraid. I have feelings world! For Traps, and Tower Defense!

A whole 10 years and a failed MOBA later. The indie hit tower defense Orcs Must Die finally got another sequel. A co-op venture featuring some of the younger war mages trained by our old protagonists to defense their realm from the neverending army of orcs... Not that story matters, I mean there's a villain and protagonists but this is a goofy game about flinging orcs into a meat grinder. It's like going to Dynasty Warriors for story, maybe it's there but it's the wrong place.

Gameplay for Orcs Must Die is now pretty standard for action tower defense, though it gets some slack for that given the original was an early entry in the shooter style. You defend a variety of keeps using traps on the walls, ceilings, and floors. Featuring physics based flinging, multiple damage types, mild mazing, slowdowns, hypnosis, aoe, summons, sappers, runners, tanks, pilotable war machines and- well you get the idea. The appeal of a first playthrough is very much trying out all the different flavours of silly and appreciating the sight of an orc sailing gracefully over a pool of lava. With higher difficulties ending up with you using a pretty set roster of traps, but at that point the appeal becomes efficiency and your own combat prowess.

Yes this isn't the sort of action TD where your own weapons are a last ditch effort. Many of your foes are best taken out by a well places headshot or lobbed grenade. Even without damage your own hard crowd control effects can prove far stronger than the automatically triggered traps. Letting you focus fire on those foes that need it and chase down stragglers of all sorts, while your traps are mainly for taking out groups and hordes.

Speaking of hordes, a new feature in Orcs Must Die 3 is it's few "war mode" maps. Huge scale fights on both an inner and outer keep, where outside you can summon anything from catapults, to ballista, to rolling death spheres, to archer squads, to paladins and priestesses with enough power to hold the line in their own right. While not a major challenge, they serve as fun breaks in the action where you can indulge in a little mass genocide. With a few more interesting maps taking advantage of the inner-outer split. (You cannot place war mode traps indoors, so you would set massive aoe attacks outside while focusing on single target DPS indoors for those strong enough to break through)

I'll admit I don't have a ton to actually say about Orcs Must Die 3. It plays almost exactly like it's predecessor (Ignoring failed trend chasers...) while smoothing out some things and adding just enough to not feel stale. I don't know if I'd recommend it on it's own, the first two games remain classics in their own right and well worth a playthrough. But if you're like me, and played them back in the day, the long gap between entries only serves to make 3s return to form even more enjoyable.

At least until a kobold sneaks through every single one of your traps on the final wave when YOU JUST WANTED THE 5 STAR RATING-

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