“I’ll barricade this section off so you can create a killbox.”
“I’ll add a grinder here and some tar to slow them down.””Scorcher goes on the wall to pick off stragglers.”
“Archers to the back for maximum fire power.”
“This will definitely work! Release the horde!”
Orcs Must Die! 2 is a two-player tower defense game where unlikely heroes slay hordes of orcs to protect magical rifts and humanity.
The game is very simple and that is one of its greatest features. You have 15 levels in the base game, each one with its own map, enemies and environments. Different types of enemies will spawn from gateways, mostly orcs and orc-like creatures, some large and slow, some small and fast, some flying, some jumping. The players need to devise the best strategy to halt their advances before the rift score drops to zero. You get penalties when orcs reach the rift and also for dying (you get respawned immediately though), the most common way of failing the level is letting too many orcs through. Based on your performance you will get skulls as a reward at the end of the level that you can spend on useful things like new traps, upgrades, weapons, trinkets, and less useful but equally essential things like Halloween costumes. In my case, finding actual armor that doesn’t resemble a bikini for my warmage became an obsession.
In the campaign menu of the game you can access your spellbook and spend your skulls. The game has loads of traps and weapons, so everyone can find their favorite ones that fit their playstyle. There are wall, floor, ceiling traps, there are contraptions for damage and for crowd control, and you can also buy summoning skills to gather a squad of archers, dwarves, or paladins, there are trinkets for mana, health, trap reset, etc., there are weapons to summon lightning storm, freeze enemies, create fire walls. I am only listing a small portion of the options presented by the game, the selection is indeed vast.
Each level has multiple waves, between them you will have some time to put down new traps, and once the horde charges you can use your weapons and trinkets to fight them off, aided by your hopefully well-placed traps.
The Good
The map design is great, each feels unique and requires different strategies. The difficulty is also well set, normal is normal, though you still need to pay attention and think a little bit before acting, and nightmare is, well, pretty nightmarish. For our second playthrough, we wanted to get a perfect score for all the maps on nightmare but we quickly had to give up on our ambitions and just focus on simply getting through the levels regardless of rift points. First five levels, easy-peasy, full points, next one three, a couple of attempts at making it a five skuller, then deciding to just go to the next level and come back to this one later, scoring one skull on the next level, taking a big breath and trying it again, getting two full skulls, deciding to skip this one and circle back later, getting three measly skulls on the next one, and then slowly realizing that we won’t get that perfect score on nightmare. Ever. Sad.
The huge variety of contraptions also adds to the feel of each map. On normal difficulty, this is less of an issue, but on nightmare, you will definitely find yourself refunding all your skulls and buying different kinds of traps for maybe not each, but a sizable portion of levels. For example, one map might be full of tight corridors with low ceilings, while the next one might be one huge open area with vantage points. You obviously need different types of traps for these.
Building out your kill zone is very satisfying. At first, you have only one or two measly traps out there and by the 5th wave you have an elaborate labyrinth of barricades, slowing tar pools, ice vents, flamethrower traps, and archers, that can grind through the wave of orcs beautifully while you pick off the stragglers. It is pure fun. I can’t stress enough how entertaining this game is. Sometimes your kill zone is so perfect that you can just simply stand back and enjoy the view, watching orcs burn to a crisp, frozen, massacred by a volley of arrows, or just simply sliced up by a wall of knives. Beautiful.
The Bad
As I mentioned above, the spellbook with all the traps and upgrades is in the campaign menu of the game. Let that sink in. I still don’t think you understand the gravity of this statement. What this means is that you have to exit the current level if you want to retalent. Every. Single. Time. This gets annoying pretty fast, especially on nightmare, where you might want to change your setup multiple times until you find the right strategy.
Once you are in the spellbook you might want to tweak some of the traps, add one or two to your repertoire, fine-tune your approach, however, the game only lets you refund all of your skulls. All of them. So every time you want to switch let’s say one trap, you have to redo everything and hope that you won’t forget anything or just keep a list of must-have traps on your desk. Needless to say, pretty irritating.
There are a ton of options, but you will probably end up actively using ten of those, max. Some traps seem outright useless, or at least they were absolutely ineffective in our playthrough. I can’t comment on anything more concrete about the effectiveness of those contraptions because the game doesn’t provide any stats. You end up choosing your traps based on trial and error. The scorcher and brimstone both do fire damage. How much? Not sure, but the scorcher seems to do more of it, based on my experience with orcs dying a horrible fiery death when getting near one much faster than during their encounter with the brimstone one.
Overall, the clunky retalenting system and the lack of in-game information on traps make experimenting with strategies inefficient and annoying, even though this could have been the best part of the game.
The story is pretty weak, but if you want a dramatic heart-wrenching soul-crushing opus you probably shouldn’t look for it in a game called Orcs Must Die! 2.
The maps are sometimes difficult to follow, I swear the minimap is the most annoying minimap of all minimaps I have ever used in a game. For reasons unbeknownst to me the chosen color for yourself is white and green for you mate, which made me mix us up constantly because green pops out more. The map also doesn’t rotate with you, and especially on multi-level maps, you can get lost pretty quickly. And before you think it, it is not because I am a female who lacks a general sense of direction, my other half got lost way more than I did.
The Co-Op
The game was designed for two players and it plays like that. You need to specialize in different traps because you can only have six skills each. Someone might bring barricades to guide the route of the endless orc horde, someone might get archers to deal with flying units, acid spray to slow down the monsters, haymaker just for the heck of it, etc. It is a fun discussion to figure out who wants what and how can they synergies.
The game is very fast-paced, so you need to make quick decisions and sometimes save your mate at the last possible moment. For some maps, you’ll have to split up to cover multiple corridors but you will still have to keep an eye on your friend’s progress, occasionally sending a helping crossbow bolt or energy beam over.
The game is also very unforgiving for most levels so co-operation is key to success, you can’t just deal with your own section of the map most of the time, since half of the skills necessary for victory will be with your partner.
However, there are some maps, not many, where you don’t even see each other. You are in two completely different sections, doing your own thing, and in the end, you meet up for your victory dance.
Nightmare difficulty also adds a twist and gives you no time between waves to prepare, which adds a whole new level of anxiety to the game. Especially if one of you is a bit OCD about trap placement but placing traps neatly between shooting two energy bolts while being overrun by orcs is difficult, so sometimes the traps end up a bit all over the place, naturally, and the meticulous one in your group can’t help himself but complain about it, that’s when friendships might end and keyboards might break.
The Recommendation
Orcs Must Die! 2 is a very entertaining game, on lower levels fun is the best adjective to be used, on higher difficulties a complex challenge would be a suitable description.
It is a simple setup with a simple gameplay, it does not promise much but it delivers.
If you want some fun with a teaspoon of strategy, play Orcs Must Die! 2 on War Mage difficulty and have a blast with your gaming partner. If you want to redo levels multiple times, try tons of different traps, spend hours thinking what could work, and in the end watch a youtube guide on how to do it, then play Orcs Must Die! 2 on Nightmare difficulty and try not to yell at your mate too much.
Info
| Release Year | 2012 |
| Genre | Tower Defense |
| Difficulty | Medium |
| Number of Players | 1 to 2 |
| Length | 5 hours to beat the game on medium difficulty |
Rating
| Overall | Good |
| Story | Bad |
| Co-Operation | Great |