Here's a miniature review for a miniature game.
DSiWare, the library of downloadable games for the Nintendo DSi, hasn't had many entries that made me particularly excited, but when I saw the screens of Legends of Exidia, I got interested real fast, since it looked very much like a 16-bit action role-playing game in the vein of Secret of Mana or Illusion of Gaia.
And that's what it is! But it's also very simple, occasionally broken and only a few hours long. And at $8, it's the same price as many much lengthier classic WiiWare games.
Exidia is a port of a Might and Magic mobile phone game, with the license taken away and a couple more dollars added to the price. I've never played the original, but I'm assuming it's much more enjoyable to play this with the DSi's controls versus a phone keypad.
Basically it goes like this: You're this guy, there are all these slimes and orcs, you hit them with your sword and numbers pop out. Once enough numbers come out, they die. You do this in various permutations until the game ends. Oh, and then once you finish it, it apparently deletes your saved game, just to make sure you don't play it any more than you absolutely have to.
The story is silly, the sound effects are like Chinese water torture (special to Gameloft: The sound of another human being swallowing is not a sound normal people like to hear over and over) and the only thing resembling challenge is when it decides to kill you with half-baked action sequences.
And I played it anyway, because nobody else seems to want to make games where numbers come out when you hit things. Please let me know if you find any! In the meantime, if you've read all of this and you still want to buy Legends of Exidia, then we apparently have the same mental disease.
WIRED Hey, they should make more games like this!
TIRED Except, you know, good.
$8, Gameloft
Rating: 
Read Game|Life's game ratings guide.
Image courtesy Nintendo
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