Orcs & Elves review (DS)

Right off the bat, allow me to state that I liked this game but still don’t understand why. It left me feeling slightly cheated and more than a little confused by the fact that I was smiling while feeling short changed. Building up to writing this review, I vacillated between wanting to slate Orcs & Elves or wanting to recommend it, though not unreservedly. In the end I had to have a cuppa and a lie down. I tell you, reviewing games is a taxing business.

Orcs & Elves on the DS is a reworked version of an award-winning title of the same name that appeared on posh mobile phones a little while ago. The same team created the mobile version of Doom, which I and a great many others quite enjoyed. Orcs & Elves II is already out on phones, so expect it to be converted to the DS at some point too.

That Old Familiar Feeling

Whether you see that as a good thing or not depends, I suspect, on whether you fondly remember such classics as Dungeon Master or the TSR Dungeons & Dragons pseudo-role playing games, or whether you’ve ever rolled dice in anger in a table-top RPG. Certainly, Orcs & Elves will drag you back to the early 1990’s, with its 3D environments and expressive but limited 2D sprite characters. The DS version is definitely better looking than the mobile phone original, and has three extra levels, but does that mean it’s a good DS game?

Playing Orcs & Elves (lets call it O&E from now on, shall we?) at work saw a couple of DS-owning folks walk by and ask what was that ugly looking game I was playing. O&E really isn’t a looker, I have to say, but it does somehow have bags of charm and character that inexplicably save it. For the first five minutes you’ll be plagued with buyer’s guilt, only to find that those five minutes were actually an hour, and suddenly you’re enjoying yourself.

It Talks

There’s very little pre-amble to the story of O&E, something that doesn’t do the story any real favours. A couple of small text pages and you’re suddenly trapped in a subterranean mountain realm populated by vengeful dwarven ghosts. They were killed off by the orcs of the title, and offer help and sub-quests at key moments. You play the half-elf son of someone everyone else seems to know, and have a talking wand as a companion. As you do.

The dwarves shared the mountain with a very big dragon. She has been left unmolested by the orcs, and her lair acts as a sort of game hub and shop affair. Find big jewels at key points, and the dragon gives you tasty weapons or armour. Over time, your wand regains its spells, allowing you to lay low the ranks of D&D monster manual escapees that make up the bad guys. Add to all of this potions, gold collecting, secret doors, a dark evil elven sorcerer behind it all, and you’ve got pretty standard rpg stuff that, through some nice writing, manages somehow to be genuinely entertaining in places.

Troubled Ancestry

Unfortunately, the whole thing is let down not by the limitations of the DS but by the limitations of the original mobile phone format. The 3D engine was created for this version, but the overall look is still somehow of the mobile phone version. The game sprites are fun, but some additional work on them would have been nice. Creatures you meet in this dungeon hack are distinguished from others of their type by their changes in colour. For example, the only way you can tell who the king of the dwarves is is by the colour of his helmet and by the fact that he tells you who he is. Otherwise, he’s identical to all the other dwarves.

Sound is basic, though quite atmospheric in places. The interface makes precious little use of the touchscreen, save for a slightly patronising spell casting mechanic that adds nothing. Even with the additional levels, I saw the (admittedly pretty good) resolution to the plot in under six hours on the middle difficulty level, having defeated all creatures and found all secrets on every single level. The game gives you a grade at the end, but that’s not really enough to encourage you to go back through the game again.

Valiant Effort

id mobile has gone to some effort to make Orcs & Elves worthwhile on the DS, but you’re still left wishing it had just gone that little bit further. This is id testing the water, if interviews you’ll find elsewhere on the web are anything to go by, and I really hope that it and you are not put off by the fact that this first effort, while worthy and often inexplicably entertaining, doesn’t quite cut it.

As it stands, Orcs & Elves is 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.

Great. Now I’m confused again...