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Orcs & Elves (DS) Status: Finished playing I started playing this game on Saturday 28 May, 2011 // I stopped playing this game on: Monday 13 June, 2011
Current opinion of this game
Short and sweet. May be appreciated more by those with an old school RPG itch.
June 13, 2011 03:23:38 PM
This is a curious little game that I imagine will be under appreciated by a lot of people. Well, it's not like a lot of people played it either...I think. Anyways, I picked it up due to the sweet price point (I think I bought it on Glyde or something like that), and because I had heard good things about it. I've already finished it, which fills me with joy because the game is short enough to not outstay its welcome while being interesting enough to keep me engaged. But it's a strange sort of engagement. The game is sort of like a time-capsule from an earlier era. Well, my childhood to be more precise - it plays and feels very much like an old school RPG game. The graphics seem old, the writing seems...well, bad like it was in many old games, and even the gameplay is like that. Playing it brought back memories of the old SSI goldbox games, the Bard's Tale, and other RPGs. However, and here's the strange thing for me, it's not like the game's design is entirely "old" (the automapping is more "recent" as is the focus on action over menu selection for attacks and so on). It's just some things...which is I guess what makes the experience feel quaint but in a smiley happy sort of way. It's sort of like an innocent game... There are a couple of things I'm curious about... The title "Orcs & Elves" seems a bit of a misnomer. The only characters you see/interact with that aren't monsters are all dwarves (ghosts, actually) and a dragon (on the game's cover). The "elves" part presumably comes from the fact that you control an elf, but you never see him or know much about anything elvish. The entire game takes place inside a dwarven stronghold/city (that was run over by orcs and monsters). ...given that the game (originally) comes from Id. How much is it from John Carmack's D&D campaign? (or old campaigns...and so on).

Orcs & Elves (DS)