When comparing Gemcraft: Chasing Shadows vs Orcs Must Die! Unchained, the Slant community recommends Orcs Must Die! Unchained for most people. In the question“What are the best PC Tower Defense games?” Orcs Must Die! Unchained is ranked 3rd while Gemcraft: Chasing Shadows is ranked 6th. The most important reason people chose Orcs Must Die! Unchained is:
Most tower defense games follow the same formula – you build a bunch of towers and watch enemies slowly get slaughtered by them. The Orcs Must Die franchise steps away from this by allowing you to jump into action yourself. You can choose one of the many heroes and just slash, shoot, and cast spells at the incoming enemies in a third person view. This creates a really fun experience with hardly any downtime at all.
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Pros
Pro Addictive, in-depth gameplay based on combining gems that provide different traits to your towers
The main mechanic of the game is using gems that provide properties like splash damage, poison, chain lightning, etc to your towers in different combinations. Add to that the fact that there are 7 levels for each gem, you have to manage your mana, there are multiple difficulty levels that change the amount of experience you gain, there are multiple kinds of spells, 25 passive skills and talisman fragments among other variables that you have to balance and you end up with an impressive amount of choice and depth.
Pro More than 140 levels
With so many levels to play in the game will last a good while. Each map is varied and with that makes for an experience that does not get tiring either.
Pro A great twist on the tower defense genre
Most tower defense games follow the same formula – you build a bunch of towers and watch enemies slowly get slaughtered by them. The Orcs Must Die franchise steps away from this by allowing you to jump into action yourself. You can choose one of the many heroes and just slash, shoot, and cast spells at the incoming enemies in a third person view. This creates a really fun experience with hardly any downtime at all.
Pro Really fun to plan out trap layouts
This game is all about slaying hordes of orcs and other demihumans. To do that you’ll have to set up many traps, including spike traps, tar pits, massive meat grinders, and many others. Your success depends on how well you plan out the layouts, so it feels really satisfying when you make a great death trap.
Pro Quite funny
It's very surprising how lighthearted it feels despite all the blood and death in it. From its cartoony and colorful designs to heroes cracking jokes in the heat of combat and the nonsense orcs spout at you, this game clearly doesn't take itself too seriously. OMDU somehow makes orcs getting dismembered feel funny.
Cons
Con Can seem too heavily luck based
Hit damage is luck based meaning that it is up to the game at points as to how much damage is given making for a bit of an imbalance when winning in just a few strikes in one game and then having to do many hits in another.
Con Poorly balanced singleplayer
OMDU is primarily designed as a multiplayer game, so you'll have some difficulty when playing alone, especially when just starting out. This is mostly because the enemies have a lot of health, meaning your damage might be too low to take them out on time. There’s also the issue of some levels being quite big, so you might not be able to cover all the paths easily. OMDU is certainly playable on singleplayer but only if you’re up for the challenge.