izigame.me

Great entry to the OMD series. The hero-specific weapons (akin to Unchained) are exactly what I want to provide variety enough for replayability, and the rogue-like threads and distortions absolutely make me think more strategically.
It is not perfect. I will say that those who are new to the series would likely be better served to try either OMD2 or 3, as this one isn't particularly good at explaining itself to newbies. (Hilariously, Unchained had way better, and more descriptive videos to tutorialize you. And FFS Robot, please put HOVER context on your trap effects. How does somoene know what Melting is without having played this series before, huh?) However, as a gamer who enjoys challenge and specifically variety in playstyles, it functions just fine. I play mostly duo, but have dabbled in solo. I will probably play solo more on this game, as I found no issue doing so. This is all just context for my comments.
I want to emphasize, I realize a majority of my below review has a critical tone, but underneath all of it, there is a truly enjoyable experience. This isn't a game where you would play it for 2 hours and then let it rot on the shelf never to be opened again. I definitely enjoyed OMD2 and 3 (less so), but honestly that's what those games were to me for various reasons - the simplicity could certainly be a draw, but also a showstopper in short order for keeping interest. I played through them one time, and that was almost all the game had to offer for me. I can understand the desire to have a game you dive into and just be good with it once you finish, but to me, OMD isn't in the genre I want to be one-and-done-withed. This is, in fact, the first one besides Unchained to TRY to offer replayability in spades. In terms of sheer potential, this game holds the greatest of any so far in the series to keep you playing it for more experiences. This is a GOOD THING... but also just be aware that in that regard the game might not be for you if you do want to just slaughter orcs in a 10-15 hour "story-driven" campaign.
As to the actual sticking points:
The maps are weaker than prior entries, and perhaps the largest disappointment for me. They are absolutely far more open than before causing unexpected "leakage" - especially with fliers. The pathing of the orcs is some of the most varied of any of the prior ones, with some of them genuinely every single wave going in what would be longest route possible, but they try anyway just because they detect that there's a valid path to it; definitely something to get used to since you can also be caught by surprise if you're not aware of what's going on due to some extremely winding path they found. I would have instead preferred maps similar to older titles in the series, with entire chunks of potentional killbox zones throughout, but with more proclivity for the new rift corruption feature (think specific areas where it will block off a section of walls/floor/ceiling where it is impossible to build traps) to enforce that you can't just build in the same place/same way every time.
Barricades being limited only means that the already practically wide-open maps offer very little potential for different killbox zones. FWIW devs have already immediately responded to this concern on Day 1 in a certain way which could alleviate this issue for when you might not have the coverage to be 4 different people at once, so I will let this cook still without additional comment for now.
Traps orientations seem less impactful than prior entries. This probably leads back to again the fact that the maps are so much more open, but at the end of the day, you can really put whatever you want so long as it makes higher combos with different elements to ensure you have enough coin to put enough traps in to do enough proper damage to not be overwhelmed and fail. The traps themselves are NOT WEAK. They absolutely do damage in this game. Do not listen to people stating they don't, and in fact I would love to see some cool people like themselves taking on the levels with no traps if they think this is the case. For the record, I would believe this is possible, but frankly not probably very likely for the sheer amount of knobs claiming this particular point of misinformation.
Perhaps the second most disappointing thing for me is the upgrade system for the traps. I could respect that the devs have stated they don't want to go down the path of having upgrades for traps completely change their elemental identity except for 1) the aformentioned trap orientations seems to matter much less to begin with, and 2) having the upgrades be in some cases hundreds of skulls for an extremely underwhelming upgrade of a second or second and a half shaved off of its cooldown timer of 12+ seconds. Now, I'm not one to complain without constructive commentary, so instead I would say that if they want to hold true to their original intent, while still offering meaningful progression and interest in builds, they consider instead some measure of hybridization for the two systems: why not make it so that trap upgrades are actual progression paths where you can build into a trap that can do more damage, at the cost of slightly higher cooldown? The more skulls you put in, the more effect that has in that direction. An alternate path might offer a means to have the duration of the status effect be longer, but the damage is decreased. This would cause folks to have a reason to genuinely consider one path over another, and more importantly more expression in trap builds to alleviate the fact that how they are now is so unimportant. (Or you know... rebuild the parts system from Unchained which offered similar expression, but y'know, I'm trying to make it easier on them even if it would be more robust.)
Some heroes have strange design choices. For example, Kalos has no indicator to show where he will leap (and it is QUITE the leap). He seems to have the ability to control it slightly in the air, and I assume they mean to not provide an indicator because of this, however the issue is that you then are BLINDLY jumping and potentially colliding with ceiling geometry unexpectedly. There's honestly no reason they cannot just have it show an indicator with a circle for the variance of where he might land and then only launch the leap upon release of the key. They do this with other heroes abilities, like Mac's Q and Wren's right-click so it isn't as though the tech isn't there, it's likely just that it probably looks too janky, but instead of just scrapping the ability or adjusting it to perhaps just be a flat jump with an exact landing point, they insist on allowing you to potentially off yourself by just jumping into a lake because you didn't see a specific roof tile that was going to interfere with your trajectory.
Some *gameplay* is also strange in design choice. Why is melee auto-target and not able to be animation cancelled? Who wants to be stuck in animation dashing forward because they left clicked once to glue themselves to an orc that was 2 meters out just to get into the line of fire for a crossbow orc to shoot them in the face because of it? If I use my primary attack, and I'm not in range to hit something with melee, guess what - that's on me. Actually managing my position to avoid damage is far more important than you playing the game for me, Robot. This is one of my hugest pet peeves, so I won't actually rank this on how much I hate it because I'd be biased against it. I sincerely hope to see a change to this, because if not I'll need to look into mods.
Never thought I'd say this, but I do miss the warning regarding there being enemies close to the rift. Even if you have the new rift type that allows for damage to be slowly taken by the rift it doesn't warn you properly that the rift it taking damage. You will absolutely find yourself losing a point or two due to this.
More to say, but there's a character limit. Hope this helps someone out there.