I’ll be upfront—I asked for a refund. And that’s for one main reason: the game is heavily designed around a four-player experience.

Who Do I Recommend This For?
✅ Groups of 3-4 players.
❌ Solo players or duos.

----

Update: The developers have increased the barricade limit less than 24h after the games release:

Solo players now start with 22 barricades (up from 16).
Duos share 20 barricades (up from 16).
Trios share 18 barricades (up from 16).
Quads remain at 16 barricades.

This is definitely an improvement and makes things more manageable than before. However, I still miss having no limit, as the ability to build enormous killboxes was what made me fall in love with the other games. I think there are other ways to add challenge and maintain the rogue-lite feel without forcing players away from this concept—perhaps by offering rewards for using fewer barricades?

----

I started the game with an open mind regarding the limited barricades, but after testing five different maps, I quickly realized a major issue. Every map had multiple open paths leading to the crystal room. As a solo player, I couldn’t create a proper killbox to just sit back and enjoy mowing down orcs due to the barricade limit. And even if you can unlock more through cards, I just don’t see that being enough.

My original plan was to play co-op with a friend—someone I’ve played the other three games with—but as it stands, I don’t think we’d have much fun.

I loved Orcs Must Die! 3, where the gameplay loop let you scramble a bit during early waves before earning enough money to set up ideal barricades. But with this game’s continuous, non-stop, run-around action, that strategy doesn’t seem viable, and I just don’t think it’s for me.

To be clear, I don’t think the current design is impossible or even overly hard. It’s just a design shift that doesn’t align with the elements I loved in previous games. I appreciate the rogue-lite mechanics and other additions—they’re genuinely great! But the barricade limit, as it stands, is too off-putting for me.

If the developers ever introduce a mode that removes or relaxes this barricade restriction—call it an "easy mode" or whatever—I would re-purchase the game in an instant. Until then, though, I don’t see myself playing it.

Technical Issues
On top of that, I play on a 32:9 monitor, and the UI elements were pushed to the far corners of the screen, making it almost unplayable. Running in windowed mode didn’t help either—there was no option to lock the cursor inside the window.

I currently don't recommend this game to most players.
The best way to sum up my feelings would be to say: "It feels like you're supposed to beat Orcs Must Die 3 on hard, then come play this the day after."

This game is not beginner friendly, if you want to try your first OMD game, try 1, 2, or 3 first. There is very little explanation, and all previous game mechanics are thrown at you from the start, including new unexplained ones.
If you liked replaying earlier levels just for the satisfaction of nicely made killboxes or just slaughtering orcs, this game may not be for you. This game so far seems made for people who just want endless endgame. The maps I've seen are basically all the 4+ door type, and wide field instead of nice corridors, which solo means you are very limited in unique ways to build defences.

Customisation is inferior to the past, you cant choose extra or neat weapons, and as far as I can tell you cant get unique trap upgrades for your loadout anymore either, just lame things like +1 damage or cheaper costs. They may have moved them to the rouge-like perk system, but I haven't seen them yet, and either way that's not personal customisation. (Don't get me wrong, I love rouge-like perk systems, but personalization was a core part of the previous games)

For those who need to know, no there isn't much of a structured level progression and story, but I didn't expect there would be, this doesn't affect my review. Though if they added one I definitely think it would be a good thing.

I've only played twoish hours at the time of this review, and was debating refunding, then realised I was at 2.4 hours and can't anyways. I may change this review later if the devs make any significant changes, or If I find enough good things playing past the refund window.
I will likely play more, and enjoy it eventually, but that doesnt change if I'd reccomend it

Update: They added a total of 6 barricades for solo play, which means they basically didn't change a single thing. you now have a total of 6 barricades for each entry. THAT'S IT!

- Few maps but they are huge
- You have very limited barricades, so no maze making, only trying to funnel them to the same room/corridor
- You can't move when attacking in melee
- Fewer Weapons than previous games
- Fewer traps than previous games
- Some traps are less useful (Even to the point of worthless) since you can't make a maze
- Solo play is bad
- Way too expensive for what you get
- Big dissapointment

+ A few funny voicelines

Conclusion, stay away!