League of Orcs

Day 396

I fully intend to finish War of the Lions tonight or sometime tomorrow, but for now I've gotten caught up in playing Orcs Must Die! 2 again. The more I play it, the more I'm filling with anticipation for Orcs Must Die! Unchained although I must admit a great deal of ambivalence with where Robot Entertainment is taking the franchise. The ability to cooperate with a squad of players to siege or defend a fortress using a variety of traps and gadgets sounds amazing of course, but the complete absence of any kind of single player mode is a definite bummer. Even Dungeon Defenders, as riddled with flaws as it is, features a very playable and enjoyable single-player campaign.

From what little information I've been able to glean from beta footage and teasers from Robot Entertainment, Orcs Must Die! Unchained features the majority of traps introduced in the two preceding games--and presumably quite a few more. If the League of Legends style "hero" model works the way I think it does, then each hero will have a couple of traps unique only to them. At least I hope this is how it works because I think that would actually be quite fun. The Sorceress and War Mage in Orcs Must Die! 2 only have 2 or 3 traps/weapons exclusive to them, but this results in wildly different play styles. I can only imagine the level of variety if each hero in the game follows this paradigm.

I can only hope Unchained will feature a wide variety of maps because the map design is a cornerstone of the series thus far. The fact that it's free-to-play is infinitely worrisome because it introduces the possibility of shady microtransactions. I can deal with paying to unlock cosmetic changes to heroes but being forced to buy tiny pieces of the game in order to compete sounds basically terrible in every way. And as much as I've played League of Legends over the years, I desperately hope they're not choosing to adhere to the leveling model they've established. In that game, an immense amount of grinding is required to simply be on a level playing field with level 30 players. 

I guess I'm just a little bitter because I would have much preferred an Orcs Must Die! 3 in the vein of the first two games, perhaps with support of up to four player co-op and of course a whole host of new traps and weapons with which to experiment. I can only assume (and hope) that Unchained delivers on some of this experience, but I'm unfortunately expecting some of the free-to-play genre's oft maligned trappings to leave a bad taste in my mouth.I'm certainly going to try it because I love Orcs Must Die to death but I'm prepared to be disappointed.