Orcs & Elves

Orcs & Elves is a well-balanced RPG that plays well on the DS but doesn’t offer anything new or exciting we haven’t already played.

Orcs & Elves is no revolution. It's Western role-playing the way it used to be - hidden passages, mountains of gold, dead dwarves and a temperamental dragon. It's perfect fodder for the geek in you, and a half-an-hour train ride, but don't expect it to rock your world.

A budget game being sold at an inflated price, likely to fans of the genre only. But I’m still really looking forward to Orcs & Elves II on the DS.

It's not big, clever or original. But it does feel like a blast from the past. [Jan 2008, p.76]

Orcs & Elves' simplicity doesn't do much to hide its roots as a mobile phone game, but it's also what makes this dungeon crawler accessible, fast, and fun.

Its simple elements are well-blended in an adventure that only lasts about eight hours but still manages to fill its time with great fighting, fun puzzles and a general nostalgic atmosphere.

There is a reason many of the RPG game mechanics this game uses are no longer found in other RPGs – they suck. You may be better off making up your own fantasy game with RPG Maker.

Where Orcs & Elves leaves me is wanting a decent, full-length dungeon-crawling RPG for the DS. What it gives me is the first five or six hours of one that was already beginning to feel a bit repetitive. Nothing's inherently bad about it (apart from the attempt at touch-screen movement controls), but it's rarely unapparent that this belongs on your portable telephone.

Orcs & Elves is a simple dungeon crawler that harkens back to the FPS PC games of old. The graphics, combat, and puzzle elements are crude and uninventive. The game isn't awful, but it isn't very fun either.

The length of the game isn’t above four hours, making the investment redundant. All we have left is an interesting atmosphere and an homage to the classic first-person RPGs.

It is possible to dress up a cell phone game and make her the belle of the ball on the Nintendo DS. Unfortunately, ID has not done this with Orcs & Elves. [Jan 2008, p.64]

At a measly 5 hours, Orcs & Elves is a short game that is meant to be beaten through brief sittings on the commute to work, school, or back home. But at its core, this isn't a game that's actually worth anybody's money.

LOTS of different items and potions to help on your quest.

An intriguing game on mobile phones makes a reasonable translation to the Nintendo DS, but it's hard to look past the fact that Orcs & Elves feels dated and overly simplistic. If anything Orcs & Elves makes us hope that nobody will contemplate bringing mobile phone games to the Nintendo DS ever again.