izigame.me

I'll start with the things I like about this game. Graphically its a lovely game. I adore all the gorgeous paintings on the walls and the neat details on every map. The traps themselves look better than they ever have when going off. The orc deaths are even more funny than in OMD3. Sound design is decent... I like the music and all the character and enemy callouts. I like the new enemy types and their designs. The goblins floating around on baloons are hilarious.
Now for the rest of the review.
This is not Orcs Must Die 4... I put a lot of hours in OMD3 playing with friends and laughing hysterically at the crazy trap hallways we could create. Gone are all the interesting weapons you could slot in... now you are stuck with 1 weapon depending on the character you select. But its worse than that... gone also are all the trinkets you could equip. You are also stuck with 1 special ability dictated by the hero you choose. Your build variety has been nerfed into the floor.
Gone is the large variety of traps you could equip. Including nearly all of the crowd control traps that were the funniest to watch. The majority of the very few traps in this game just do damage. But don't despair... this isn't a trap game anymore. You are really here basically to play a crappy version of fortnite against bots. You won't have the resources to build clever or fun trap hallways. There aren't very many ceilings in the game so say goodbye to 90% of the ceiling traps from previous games. You won't have time to watch the traps go off and laugh at the funny ways the orcs die either... you'll be too busy desperately trying to keep up with killing orcs manually coming from the 500 different directions each of the very few maps provided allow orcs to trickle in.
Let's talk about the maps. They are massive... gorgeous but massive. And as I said... you'll be starving for resources at all times so you won't be filling that giant space with traps. No... you'll be spending your time right next to the rift you need to defend because all of the maps provided have 4 or more rifts that will all open and most rifts have an inordinate amount of directions the orcs can trickle in from to the wide open spaces in which your rift resides, not to mention all enemy types spawn in basically all waves. People HAVE already identified basically 1 optimal way to place barriers in each map to funnel most of what will be thrown at you... and if you don't contribute to that one meta solution you WILL be kicked from the party. And your trap hallway will always look the same when you do, because there is an anemic amount of trap variety in this game. It is startling that the maps are now much more complex than they were in previous games... but your play variety is so much lower. All of your runs on each map will look exactly like the last time you ran that map. With the same barrier set ups, the same few traps used in the same positions. I love trap halways... I loved OMD3... I still play it with friends frequently... but this isn't it... this boring. How can such a frenetic game be so static?
There's no gradual wind up in intensity like in previous games. This game just throws everything at you from wave 1 so all subsequent waves are basically more of the same just with larger HP bars.
Character movement feels terrible. Unlike in previous games you can't jump and do other others at the same time. No... you have to have your feet firmly planted on the ground to activate basically all of your abilities or do much of anything and you do get locked into a small number of animations with no way to cancel them. Again... the maps are huge so it will take you a long time to get from one side to the other, but don't worry about that. The actual playable area during an active wave is smaller than the smallest maps in OMD3... you'll be standing next to the rift. The rest of the map is just dead space and you'll be waiting at the rift for long boring periods of time watching red dots slowly march toward their goal. But you have to stand there because theres always fliers and fast runners that will have to be dealt with before settling down to take a nap while you wait for the main force to crawl your way.
Trap upgrades are now boring AF. In OMD3 you could change how traps function, or what type of damage they applied, or where you could place them, etc and so on. That's gone now. The trap upgrades you have available to you are just flat damage increases, flat reset time reduction, price reduction etc. Boring. Obviously most traps in OMD3 had similar boring upgrades... but they also had much more interesting options. There are threads which add some of these modifications... but its RNG... over the course of a mission you'll face a minimum of 5 waves. You'll have 3 choices of threads between those waves and there's lots of threads and curses. Forget getting the thread you want... you won't.
Each hero you might choose from is locked into a single unique trap. They are, for the most part, entirely useless mobility options that could be fun if you didn't have to stand next to the rift in a small space all the time. You don't need that mobility during the actual gameplay. And the mobility they do provide isn't all that great anyway. The couple of unique hero traps that aren't useless mobility are lackluster in other ways... one heals another provides a miniscule buff to nearby traps that recharges very slowly, it is essentially inconsequential. You wont notice whether it is or not though... because you'll be standing next to the rift trying to deal with the flood of enemies coming from all directions you couldn't defend from if you didn't do the meta barricade layout. And you don't have enough resources to handle the mass of enemies using traps unless you use the 1 meta barricade layout per map. You won't have time to see what any of the traps do. Theres no laughing during these waves... you won't have time to watch orcs die in funny ways. Gotta go fast... gotta be frenetic... fortnite is frenetic... this game is bargain bin fortnite. Don't forget. You don't have time to fool around and have fun with your friends... theres orcs to kill... you won't have resources to buy lots of fun traps and all those fun traps are gone... you need to do most of the killing yourself. This isn't a trap game.
The main weapon you are expected to kill basically everything that spawns with because there's only 1 barricade solution on each maps that will make traps matter does terrible damage. Many of them have horrible accuracy with shots flying far outside the bounds of your aiming reticle. You'll be chipping away at huge HP pools with a lot of your shots seemingly intelligently swerving around your enemies while you watch other enemies dive into the rift (Mac). Unless you used the 1 meta barricade layout for each map. Then you'll mostly be watching all of your attacks collide with the melee bear in front you because heroes have collision with each other and all projectiles. And that bear is always there... in every run... hes the only decent hero at your disposal so hes always there... in melee... blocking all of your attacks and you visibility with a so many visual effects going off... those intelligent attacks that swerve to miss enemies are thirsty for that bear... they swerve to hit him.
TL/DR: This game is not "hard" because it was designed to be hard. It is hard because of poor design choices that lead to a poor player experience. This isn't a trap game... this is a janky fps game with terrible character control and unreliable weaponry. The maps are huge but all of your game time during waves will be spent standing on a postage stamp. This game has no subtlety... it throws everything at you all the time and the only thing different from wave to wave is the size of enemy hp bars. This is not an Orcs Must Die game...