Orcs Must Die! By The Blade Review: Patched To Perfection?

One month and a major update later, Orcs Must Die! By the Blade has gone from a shaky VR debut to a fun and frantic melee brawler.

When Orcs Must Die! By the Blade launched in mid-February, combat felt unsatisfying, the user interface could be annoying, and limited movement options disrupted the game’s flow. With a recent patch that addresses most (if not all) of those early issues, the game deserves a second look.

Developed by Teravision Games, the VR-exclusive entry in the long-running Orcs Must Die! franchise attempts to translate the series’ chaotic trap-based strategizing into a more tactile, immersive experience.

It does this by placing greater emphasis on first-person melee combat than on the series’ more traditional tower defense mechanics. While I find the result to be fun and engaging, players looking for the more strategic elements of previous Orcs Must Die! games may feel a bit underserved.

Presentation

My first thought when Orcs Must Die! By the Blade came to life in the lenses of my Quest 3S was, “Wow! That’s beautiful!” And it is. The environments are gorgeous and carefully crafted cartoon fantasy zones. The visuals lean heavily into the series’ signature exaggerated style, in which everything is slightly oversized and a bit ridiculous. You’ll move through a land of worn and weathered stone, hefty, aged wood, chunky tankards of mead and even chunkier weaponry.

Enemies, too, are delightfully stylized; muscly orcs brimming with spiky armor and gruesome, snarling scowls, who become truly menacing in VR. When a towering ogre charges from the depths of a shadowed portcullis, or a fresh wave of speedy little orcs comes rushing over your traps, there’s a physical presence that’s far stronger than in the series’ flat-screen games.

Sound design is wonderful, too, with atmospheric tunes backing a soundscape of medieval foley. The stone halls echo with your bootsteps. Lava bubbles and pops in the dungeons. Rusty hinges creak achingly. Your sword rings against steel, or squelches horribly as it slices through meaty goblins. Over all this, our heroes do their best to provide quippy commentary. While these voice-acted lines can get repetitive, I don’t find it egregious.

In short, Orcs Must Die! By the Blade looks great, sounds great, and presents as a highly polished experience.

Gameplay

The gameplay loop will be familiar to fans of the series, even if its priorities have shifted. Across three chapters of four levels each, played single-player or co-operatively with one other player, you’ll explore an environment in a way reminiscent of dungeon-crawlers.

You’ll move through corridors and castles, at various points encountering areas where you must defend yourself or other objectives (such as treasure chests) against waves of attacking orcs. To do this, you’ll place traps in the environment and supplement this destructive power with your own formidable melee skills.

Each of these instances has a set-up period during which you’ll choose your traps and place them where you think they’ll be most effective. There’s a wide variety of traps, such as floor spikes, springboards, and wall-mounted arrow launchers, and more continually unlock as you work through the game.

Once a wave starts, you’ll use your handheld melee weapons, or weapons scavenged from the environment, to slice and dice your way through the onrushing orcs. While combat felt bland and janky when the game launched, the most recent patch has set things right. In its current form, combat feels great. Attacks are weighty and responsive, with color-coded prompts for enemy attacks that may be parried or ones which are unblockable, and additional prompts for the most effective counterattacks.

Swinging your weapons harder creates more damage, and with just a few minutes of practice, body parts are flying in all directions. While these dismemberments are a bit violent, they retain an exaggerated, cartoony unrealism that keeps the visuals from descending into true gore.

Movement has also been improved in the latest patch. An optional smooth-turn control scheme has been added which makes the game feel far more fluid than before, though users prone to VR motion sickness may struggle with the constant movement demanded by levels which can take up to 40 minutes to clear.

Strategy and Progression

By clearing a level, smashing boxes, and dispatching enemy orcs and bosses, you’re awarded treasure and coins which can be spent in the game’s armory. Here you can upgrade your weapons and traps, or buy entirely new weapons, traps, and equippable items.

This gradual progression keeps things moving in the right direction. There’s always a new weapon to unlock, or an interesting upgrade for your existing arsenal. By the end, there’s almost no limit to the many ways you can kill orcs.

But to say that there’s much strategy would be a lie. While there’s great variety of weapons and traps, the core of the gameplay really comes down to flailing away with your melee weapons. Traps soften enemies up, and can even dispatch them entirely, but most of your time in Orcs Must Die! By the Blade will be spent hacking and slashing by hand.

Orcs Must Die! By the Blade – Final Verdict

At launch, Orcs Must Die! By the Blade felt like a missed opportunity. There was a sense that there was a good game in there, but it was weighed down by some strange design decisions. Though the core idea was strong, reimagining a compelling franchise as a VR combat game, technical issues kept it from reaching its full potential.

The recent patch changes this considerably. The improved combat responsiveness, expanded movement options, and general polish have made the game much more enjoyable.

That said, the shift toward melee-heavy gameplay means the strategic depth of earlier Orcs titles isn’t as prevalent in the made-for-VR game. While By the Blade’s melee action is certainly fun and engaging, it presents an experience that’s far from strategic. Players who loved creating elaborate trap corridors and carefully implementing a torture chamber for onrushing orcs may feel unfulfilled by the melee focus of By the Blade.

Still, for VR players looking for an energetic blend of action and light strategic elements, Orcs Must Die! By the Blade will deliver plenty of hack and slash fun.

UploadVR uses a 5-Star rating system for our game reviews – you can read a breakdown of each star rating in our review guidelines.