Posted on: November 28, 2007 Posted by: James McQuiston Comments: 0

Orcs & Elves (Nintendo DS) / 2007 EA / http://www.orcsandelves.com / http://www.ea.com /

For me, ID entertainment will forever be the firm that created Quake. However, with the advent of games like Orcs & Elves, I may have to start changing my perception about what ID does in the gaming world. It has seemed to me in the past that a number of the RPGs that are brought over to the Nintendo DS have only been weakly ported over, and oftentimes do not take full advantage of the touch-screen option and the DS’s two screens. “Orcs & Elves” is the first DS RPG that I’ve played that has broken free of this problem. Individuals are thrown into a fantasy setting where they have to go through increasingly-difficult floors of a Dwarven citadel, while solving puzzles, bypassing traps, and killing hordes of monsters.

While individuals may have played Rocs & Elvs for their cellular phone in the last year or so, the added graphics, game play elements, and storyline will merit a purchase of the game.To further add to the experience, the limited edition version of Orcs & Elves comes with some slick additions: a walking cane/staff takes the place of the stylus, while decals change whatever base color is present on your DS to something that fits in better with the fantasy environment of the game.  Whe one sits down to play the game, there is definitely a feeling as if they have been teleported back into the RPGs of the 1990s, where the graphics were never what was focused on. Rather, the gameplay made for a compelling game, and it is this form of retro styling that puts Orcs & Elves high up on the top RPG games of 2007.

The supporting documentation says that individuals will be able to get about 10 hours of game play out of the game, but I could conceivably see individuals going back through the game a number of times before relegating it back to its dusty box. For individuals that can get behind this solid RPG, the story line will not die out; mobile phone owners are getting Orcs & Elves II as we speak, and the decision to port this over to the DS should be an easy one. If you are a fan of RPGs that stress game play over graphics (ignoring the fact that Orcs & Elves still has very strong graphics for a DS game), makes sure to pick up a copy of Orcs & Elves.

Rating: 8.0/10

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