Orcs Must Die! 3 Reviews
Orcs Must Die! 3 is very familiar to players of the second game but still a fun and goofy action/tower-defense challenge.
A conservative but confident return to form from the masters of a much-loved genre.
Orcs Must Die 3, like its predecessors, will withstand the test of time for folks looking for a lighthearted strategic affair in the sadly-now-underrepresented trap genre. Stadia is going to be a dealbreaker for a lot of people though, so that timed exclusivity can't end soon enough.
Orcs Must Die! 3 is a great return for the series, giving you a near endless number of ways to bring down destruction on the Orc hordes, even if the larger War Scenarios lose some of the series' carefully weighted balance.
Orcs Must Die! 3 is an excellent outing from Robot Entertainment, as it delivers exciting tower defense action along with some truly challenging sequences. The two new protagonists serve to usher the story in a new direction, while adding some flavor to gameplay. Playing with a friend is best, as it allows the two stars of the game to shine the brightest. Now free from the shackles of Google Stadia exclusivity, Orcs Must Die! 3 is the best entry in the series.
An action-tower defense that makes "Bigger is Better" its mantra. Same formula, still fully functional, but even more orcs on the screen to beat in the most imaginative ways possible.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Orcs Must Die! 3 is a solid tower defence game with great humour and a nice aesthetic, but the Stadia exclusivity will do it more harm than good
Orcs Must Die 3 is a captivating, funny, and varied tower defense/action game hybrid best suited to those that don't want to just be armchair generals. But with a massive difficulty spike halfway through the campaign, it doesn't quite find the perfect balance.
Orcs Must Die! 3 is a hectic, challenging hybrid of action and tower defense that is a lot of fun for anyone looking to kill a ton of orcs.
Orcs Must Die! 3 contains a ton of the tower defense/shooting hybrid gameplay that fans love – all delivered in a very polished package. The new war-sized levels deliver a massive jolt of fun, and there is plenty of content here to keeps players busy for quite a while. Though progression feels a little unbalanced in single player, perseverance or grinding will eventually overcome obstacles.
Orcs 3 doesn't revolutionise the series, and while the story is a little light and the gameplay a tad repetitive, it's so delightfully fun watching unsuspecting orcs haphazardly wander into your deadly machinations and be stabbed, skewered and smashed into a thin paste.
Orcs Must Die! 3 isn’t much of a step (let alone, a leap) forward from the last installment, but after eight years maybe it’s just enough to remind people that hey, this fun fantasy franchise is still alive and kicking. It has modest ambitions but it’s certainly not a disappointing installment, and Orc Must Die! 3’s blend of action, tower defense and puzzle-solving remains unique and entertaining.
Orcs Must Die! 3 does not innovate significantly – some might even call it lazy – but is an effective recollection of everything that made Robot Entertainment's franchise so great in the past, turned up to eleven.
Review in Italian | Read full review
As tower defense games go, this should be the new gold standard as it’s chock full of strategy but levels that with being able to actually control your hero and let you go hands on with the action. Hopefully this one doesn’t get forgotten due to its exclusivity to Stadia because it will be a real shame if this is the last Orcs Must Die…especially since I am now a huge fan.
Robot Entertainment's return with Orcs Must Die! 3 is good, but doesn't feel like a step forward from OMD2, and is hurt by playing on Stadia.
Eventually, I learned how to play Orcs Must Die! 3. It was only then that game began to shine and really only if I was playing by myself. While I wouldn’t ever call it a masterpiece, I had hours of fun and laughter as I found the joy in killing orcs. One of the most satisfying things to do was to launch a grenade into a group of low level orcs and watch them explode with orc guts flying all over the place. It was humorous. It was satisfying. It scratched that itch to just sit down and shoot something especially after a bad day. My hope is to see OMD!3 come to the Nintendo Switch and/or Steam where the internet issues I experienced with Stadia won’t be a factor.
Orcs Must Die! 3 feels like a known quantity from the moment it loads up. Those who have never played before will have a great time discovering the various traps and monsters the developers at Robot Entertainment have come up with over the years, but experienced players don't have much to get excited about. The additions are nice for what they are, but they don't give a true upgrade to what the series is known for beyond the graphical bump that comes with making a game on new hardware like Xbox Series X. There's no denying that this is the best that Orcs Must Die! has looked, and the War levels do throw more enemies than ever at players. Going in with the lowered expectations of a remaster rather than a full sequel makes all the difference, but it's hard to say whether or not a game that still feels a decade-old is worth the return trip.
As far as co-op games go, into doesn't get much more frantic or fun than Orcs Must Die! 3. It's at time unintuitive and feels like it's missing a few key quality of life features that could really help smooth out the experience, but at its core, the simple trap-building orc-killing gameplay loop is addictively engaging, far outshining any issues it may have at the menu level, particularly if you have a co-op partner to go through it all with. There aren't many shining examples of "active" tower defense games, but Orcs Must Die! 3 absolutely exemplifies what's so great about the genre and series, even if it stumbles a bit on its way to get there.
Orcs Must Die! 3 is definitely a case of “another verse, same as the first”, but fortunately the formula still holds up. The changes to gameplay balance mostly work, as does the implementation of the new Scramble game mode. However, the War mode shows that throwing more orcs into a stage doesn’t necessarily make it more fun, and the level design generally doesn’t feel quite as fresh as it once did. All that said, the visceral pleasure of slicing through a group of orcs with a buzzsaw launcher is as present as ever, and ultimately the experience is still a fun time. For tower defence fans, Orcs Must Die! 3 is worth checking out, particularly if you’re planning on playing co-op.
Returning the franchise to the original style seems to have paid off. With brilliant, fast paced, tower defence gameplay on offer it will keep two cooping players thoroughly entertained and wanting to play just that one more level. There's a huge range of levels to play through, different modes to unlock, traps both big and small to upgrade, and so much more. The inclusion of the war scenario mode adds that wow factor of scale, without losing what makes Orcs Must Die 3 fun. There is always another wave of orcs, trolls, elementals and more ready to fight, and you'll want to defend against them time and time again!