Battle of the Elements

Genre: Unlimited Pattern Puzzle

Players: 1-2 Competitive (Local Wireless)

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Review:

Battle of the Elements is a family-friendly Unlimited Pattern Puzzle game released on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2011 and also released on the Nintendo 3DS eShop. In this game, players must contend with multicolored blocks falling down toward them from above, and respond by pulling them down, using one of each color to create a block-clearing orb to shoot back.

The game plays with the Nintendo 3DS held sideways in “book” mode, with players interacting with the game solely by using the touchscreen. I found this gameplay to be generally enjoyable, though its mechanics seem a little too overly-elaborate to be truly compelling in the way the best Puzzle games tend to be. In addition, I found the game’s touchscreen commands weren’t always as responsive as I would have liked.

The other issue here is the presentation. While the puzzle gameplay itself looks decent enough, with the sort of colorful puzzle pieces one would expect from this sort of game. Unfortunately, all of the art surrounding it looks amateurish and somewhat ugly, and it’s made worse with extremely cringey juvenile voice clips for the announcer and characters.

For $5, Battle of the Elements is still a decent pick up for Puzzle fans on the Nintendo 3DS, but it’s not likely to be anyone’s favorite Puzzle game – the overly elaborate gameplay and the terrible presentation make sure of that. Still, if you can look past that, this is a solid entry in the genre that has its own unique charm to it.

tl;dr – Battle of the Elements is an Unlimited Pattern Puzzle where players use the touchscreen to combine different-colored puzzle blocks to create block-clearing gems. This game is a bit too overcomplicated, and the presentation is terrible. However, if you can look past these flaws, there’s a pretty decent Puzzle game underneath.

Grade: C+

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