The additional items are as overpowered as they are entertaining, but the additional traps are at least balanced.

User Rating: 7 | Orcs Must Die! Artifacts of Power PC

INTRO:

The vanilla version of Orcs Must Die! is challenging enough with the arsenal that is available to the player. In its attempt to enrich the game – and itself – further, Robot Entertainment has released a premium DLC package that introduces two items and two traps to the game.

The traps have balanced designs, but the items might be more powerful than they deserve to be. Still, all of them grant new ways to kill orcs and their allies with, so this premium DLC is far from boring.

SHOCK ZAPPER:

The Shock Zapper is a specialized trap that is designed to kill flying enemies before they even have a chance to fly through the rift fortress. The auto-ballista can do the same and more, but the Shock Zapper has a more consistent damage output, is better in tighter spaces and has a chance of zapping more than one target with each discharge.

Its designs strongly suggest it is intended for players who do not want to bother with waves of flying enemies. This may be so on the "Nightmare" difficulty setting, in which the ground-based mobs can be a greater concern than the flying ones.

FLOOR SCORCHER:

The spring trap in the vanilla version of the game may be a bit too powerful; it can launch mobs far out of the rift fortress, causing problems. The floor scorcher is a bit gentler than the spring trap, in that it merely flips mobs that step over it, which is adequate if there is a hazard just next to the trap.

Its secondary function is to shoot fire in the direction opposite to that which it flipped its first victim at; anything within two squares that its vents are directed at is fried. Clever placing of Floor Scorchers, supplemented by spike traps or brimstones, can defeat very thick waves in fiery manners.

However, the Floor Scorcher is an expensive trap, which is perhaps understandable considering its versatility.

VAMPIRIC GAUNTLETS:

The gauntlets can rapidly fire a stream of magical bolts that damage anything that they hit, while healing the hero if the bolts land. Alternatively, the player can have the hero sacrificing his health to restore mana. To prevent the player from abusing the gauntlets, the trade-offs between mana and health happen to be less efficient for restoring mana than it is for hurting enemies.

These designs suggest that the Vampiric Gauntlets are intended to be a risk-versus-reward item, but it may have given skilled players too much versatility in strategies that involve the extensive use of the hero. Said players can exploit the presence of healing potions and the hero's regenerating mana to juggle their mana and health expenditure so that the hero can stay in the battle longer.

Of course, one can argue that the juggling consumes time that could have been spent doing something else, but this is still better than having the hero run back to the rift(s) to recover.

ALCHEMIST SATCHEL:

The satchel lets the hero toss large round acid flasks that bounce around a bit before settling down. They can be detonated by the satchel's secondary attack or upon being hit by anything. The acid flasks take a lot of mana to create, but the player can set up to three of them to be remotely detonated. This makes the acid flasks one of the most tactically valuable items in the game, especially when one considers that their acid douse kills most mobs outright.

Unfortunately, the alchemist satchel is overpowered, mainly because the radius of effect of each acid flask is massive – its area of effect is even larger than that for the Boom Barrel. This allows players to eliminate whole swathes of orcs and other weak mobs with just a single flask.

OTHER MENTIONS:

The additional items and traps in this DLC may have their own models, but all of their particle effects are recycled from existing ones in the vanilla version of the game; in the case of the items, the hero's animations are recycled from existing ones too. Their sound designs are new, fortunately, so Robot Entertainment has not exactly been too lazy.

CONCLUSION:

This would have been a balanced package of additional game content, if not for the rather overpowered items in it. Still, the package is at least entertaining as it gives new ways and permutations of strategies to slay orcs with.