Customer Reviews

Temple of Elemental Evil: A Classic Greyhawk Adventure

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(31)
3 star:		(23)
2 star:		(28)
1 star:		(33)

 

 

ToEE is not worth a premium price in it's current state. I recommend waiting for a patch (though it is uncertain if Atari/Troika is going to fund a patch) or waiting for the game to hit the bargain bin. Infested with bugs and gameplay issues to include:
-Setting screen scroll speed to 5(fastest) brings everything to a crawl.
-Traveling with NPC's can cause the game to lock up at the world map.
-NPC's inyour party loot themselves into an overburdened status and can barely move in combat.

-Some quests cannot be completed because NPC children were removed from the game.
-Ironman mode "Save and Quit" does nothing. "Return to Game" actually saves and quits.
-No description for the effects of magic items.
-Craft Magic Arms and Armor feat. +3 damage/hit/armor and elemental damage enchantments do not work. May also increase the armor check penalty.
-Craft Wondrous Item feat. Many items cannot be made due to SPELL_NONE being listed as a spell requirement.
-Clerics are not getting domain spells beyond first level.
-Metamagic feats for Sorcerers do not work.
-Monsters spawn in walls while resting.
-Wearing chain boots or gloves can reduce combat movement to 10'.
-Magic weapons negate the Weapons Finesse feat, causing you to use strength instead of dexterity bonus.
-Good clerics sometimes spontaneously cast inflict wounds instead of cure wounds.
-Poor pathfinding and formation holding. Characters will deselct themselves and not move with the group. Wizard/Rogue end up out front when zoning.
-Druid spell Produce Flame gives unlimited attacks against a single target.
-Magic and Greater Magic Weapon give permanent, instead of temporary bonuses.
-Greater Spell Penetration Feat does not seem to be working.
-Crash to Desktops and may not run due to copy protection scheme.
-No feedback from developers on the official forums.
-Other small annoyances.

I waited on this game because the reviews said that it was buggy. Three patches later and it still needs a lot of work. I suspect that there wont be any future patches.

When it works the game is great. There are tons of sidequests and the battles are enjoyable and I like the interface a lot. I'm old enough to have played the ToEE module when it came out originally so this one brings back a lot of memories. If it was bug free this game would be a five star game. Unfortunetly the bugs keep a comin'.

Bugs (playing with patch 3):
My magic user stopped gaining spells about half way through the game. He had an 18 intelligence so why did he stop acquiring spells? I don't know but since that's sort of the point of the magic user it kind of made him rather wimpy.

NPC's always take part of the spoils. You have no choice in this and you can't take these spoils away from them ever. It's all well and good until they become overburdoned and you can't do anything about it.

There are also the classic freeze-ups, slowdowns and spontaneous shutoffs. The game actually seemed to get worse the more I played. I would put this game in the heartbreaker catagory. You want to love it but it just keeps finding ways to make you mad.

A few non-bugs also bothered me. Early on in the game your characters are absolutely PATHETIC at hitting. There're few things more frustrating then having eight characters surround a creature and all wiff. Actually this habit of missing everything lasts well into the game. I also wish they didn't have a level 10 cap on the characters.

Recommended for gamers with lots of patience.

We got this game almost the day it came out, as we were very excited about it. I LOVE the game itself, as it is extraordinary many ways - I will have a hard time going back to anything which does not have this turn-based style of combat.

The combat interface incorporates pen and paper turn-based style, with full/half/free actions, and an initiative order! While the game occasionally gets a bit confused (I have had five foot step free actions interpreted as full actions, annoying to say the least) overall it works the way its supposed to and makes combat better than any crpg I have seen to date: really exciting from a strategy standpoint.

The radial menu available to all characters is a bit unwieldy in that mousing slows down (particularly in big battles) and is difficult to "catch" the option you want to choose for your mouse wavering all over the place. You can work around this, however, and once you learn how to implement the various options (it took me forever how to figure out how to unlock doors, for example) It becomes easier and faster to use.

However, the truth remains that it is an unfinished game, and it should never have been released as such. There is little to no "finishing touches" ie. no item descriptions, and obviously temporarily named objects which remained in the game.

The bugs are numerous, and some of them are game-stoppers or quest-breakers. Many of them are obvious, so I don't think anyone did any quality testing. I am having to read up on what does and doesn't work in the game, and play my game based not on what I want to do, but on what isn't bugged.

That's just not right - Atari shows (IMO) poor business ethics by charging unsuspecting customers $50 for an unfinished beta version of what WILL be the best crpg ever when it is finished.

The retail version of ToEE has some substantial bugs. It is virtually a requirement to download the patches. Having said that, once the free patches are installed, the game is very good.

IMPORTANT: The version 1.1 patch can be found at Atari's web site (www.atari.com). There is also an additional, 3rd party patch available for free from Circle Of Eight (www.co8.org) that has even more bug fixes and adds some features. Unlike the Atari patch, this one is updated frequently to address user reported issues.

If you are a fan of D&D and have even a little knowledge of the 3rd edition rules, I think you'll really enjoy it. If you are only familiar with the older 2nd edition rules, you'll probably want to pay extra attention to the manual or review some of the fan sites in order to get the most out of it. If you don't have any experience with D&D at all, I can't say for sure if you will enjoy it or not.

i can sympathize with some of the reviewers here who have experienced problems with the game on their systems. i installed it on a machine that met the requirements but quickly uninstalled it because gameplay was unbearably slow. unbelievably slow. i shelved the game and then when i got a new system last month (2.8 hyperthreaded gigahertz, 1GB of DDR memory) installed it and i've been playing it ever since. my new system doesn't even blink even when the screen is filled with a dozen enemies with spell effects going off right and left. so, buy this game if you have a brand new system. the minimum requirements should be at least a 2 gig processor and lots of memory on a new system. old systems are dog slow. performance aside, i love the game. i wish there were more battles, like pool of radience. the quests are fun and entertaining, but it seems like the game designers had a Baldur's Gate (for the consoles, not the pc) type of template for the game in mind and wanted more quests than fights. oh well. i also hope they come out with a sequel that lets you import old chars. another great thing about the game is that you can play the game multiple times with differently aligned characters. i can't wait to replay the game with a chaotic evil party. pillage and destroy!

I have waited anxiously for months for this game, and now that I've played it for a couple of weeks, and my characters are at 5-6th level. I have to say I am disappointed. I have encountered several of the bugs mentioned (crash to desktop when moving items, NPC's overloading themselves, others). Unfortunately, plotting and game play don't make up for it. The voice acting is uninteresting (as opposed to BG I and II), the items lack the interesting descriptions of the BG series - in BG I and II, even some low-power, magic weapons had interesting little histories written. I wound up keeping some low-power weapons just because I found their stories interesting. I have found little that is that interesting in TOEE. There are a number of odd quirks that do NOTHING to enhance game play. For example, at every merchant I shopped at, you say "let's barter" and the merchant says something like - "I have to help this person who was here before you first. All right. Now let's trade." This happened EVERY SINGLE TIME I TRIED TO BUY SOMETHING. This is just an irritant.
The good news:
I like the combat system, some of the battles are VERY hairy, and I like the fact that NPC's grab a share of the loot - makes you look for balance rather than just snapping up everyone available. But they will overload themselves and there is no way to get them to part with valuable stuff. Suggestion to ATARI - let the PC's buy stuff from the NPC's.
This is a GORGEOUS game visually though, with great spell graphics, movement, and well-rendered characters and backgrounds. I hope that the patch(es) that come out will fix the bugs, but overall, I have to agree with the reviewers who say WAIT FOR THE PATCH.

No doubt, this game NEEDS the official patch. 'Nuf said.

After that, artwork is good, implementation of 3.5 rules is excellent and very insightful. NPCs are a bit weak, so make a good party. Fortunately, you have complete control over character generation. Game difficulty at the start can be tough because it's hard to tell which encounters are over your head as a 1st level party and resting is not a gimme - once you're past that, it's better.
Radial menu commands and mapping system can be tricky at first. There's a ton of helpful tips you might miss at first that let you hot key popular commands, check for "clickable" items, check your path, etc. Yes, for the first time ever, I'd recommend going through a few of the "Tip of the Days."
If you want a faithful electronic implementation of the latest D&D rules, here it is. If you're new to RPGs, Baldur's Gate II, while older, will be more fun.

I'm a big fan of CPRGs... I played all Baldur's Gate series and loved em... I even tried Pool of Radiance, but returned it the next day it was so bad.

This game falls somewhere in the middle... There are LOTS of bugs, but the basic design of the game is good... A basic dungeon crawl with nice graphics and kewl spell effects.. the user interface is ok once you get used to it.. There are some major problems with the current game however:

1. You can't escape combat if your guys are starting to die off... running is not really an option. (It takes forever and you can't exit to a different level - even if your standing right next to the stairs.)
2. When camping inside the dungeon, wandering monsters sometimes appear WITHIN WALLS! You can't get at them and they cant get at you, and if you get into combat mode your only option is to try and run away from them, one painful move per character at a time.. I've spent literally 20 minutes trying to get all my guys far enough away so that it exits combat mode.
3. There is a bug where the game will hang on one of my characters and cntrl-alt-delete is the only way out...
4. Game will sometimes exit completely when trying to move my party to another level.
5. Broken quests
6. Weapon bonuses dont appear as they are suppossed to.
7. Even running on a 3GHz machine with a GeForce video card, the scrolling stutters.
8. If I click to move my party to a different spot, sometimes the NPCs will stay in their current location, while the rest of the party moves away.
9. There is no custom AI scripting you can set for your characters. (Best you can do is set them to fight defensively, or cast defensively)

If you like dungeon crawls, and 3.5 edition DnD, you might still like playing despite all the problems... Too bad they didnt finish the game before it was released though..

Anyone know if there a new Baldur's Gate coming out soon?

I bought TOEE at it's release based on the overwhelmingly positive feedback on previews in game magazines, sadly this game
is not a finished product. Items lack descriptions, items do NOTHING (including all boots), characters do not get spell progression they should (cleric domain spells, NPCs don't level up correctly) and the game world is pretty darn small.
The major positive for this game is the combat, which is interesting and tactics intensive (although there is a long stretch where all you are doing is fetch and carry quests) and the wizard spells and turn undead spells which are pretty devastating.
The game is somewhat buggy, even after the extremely delayed patch but is playable all the way though if you can get over your annoyance at how many game aspects just DIDNT GET DONE!
If you buy this game you will want the Circle Of Eight Fanfix which will make it less annoying and more playable, but I would save my money for a game the publishers actually let the developers complete.

Jessica

First I'd like to say I never had any problems running this game. I popped it in, downloaded it, and played it with no weirdness. Smooth as could be. Also I strangely did not have a level cap, but just kept getting new spells and feats, etc. (I honestly think something went wrong here--but my characters just kept leveling up beyond where I think the game was programmed to prevent me. Hey give me more bugs like that anytime!)

The gameplay feels a lot like Baldur's Gate (which is the computer game that made me fall in love with both the Forgotten Realms and computer RPG's--the best computer RPG of all time) with much of the same freedom to explore and do things in any order you want, and to approach problems from a variety of angles. Most of all, it is a great way to fall in love with D&D's Greyhawk setting if you're like me and pretty much have only gotten to know it in snippets from the 3rd edition core rulebooks. It is wonderful to immerse yourself in, an engaging story that will suck you in for hours and hours.

A couple of warnings. First the game is HARD. You will be challenged to think tactically about every fight you get into, even the random encounters along the roads, and even then you will die horribly a lot. They throw some mean badguys at you without flinching. I loved the challenge of it, but I can see how all the merciless slaughter could turn away someone who's used to games that pamper them a bit more.

Also as mentioned in another review, you'll find that any adventuring companions you run into will get first cut of the loot when looting enemies. I can see why they did it, to reflect the fact that characters who join your party don't automatically become your slaves, but still it can be a bit frustrating, especially when an ally pilfers the best stuff off a body literally on the other side of the map from him and you cannot get him to return it. Also if the comment made is true, and the NPC's will overload themselves, then that's another big headache. What I found as a solution was this: Give the NPCs all the worthless big items you're carrying around (quarterstaves, rocks, arrows, etc) until you fill all their inventory spaces. They won't be able to pick up anything but coins and won't get encumbered. The other easy fix is to kill your NPC companions as soon as they've outlived their usefullness and get your stuff back (gee, any guess what the alignment of my party was?)

On the whole I was impressed by the game. I found the graphics very pretty (a refined version of what you get in Baldur's Gate--a bit of a dated presentation compared to Neverwinter Nights, but very nicely drawn and animated). The dialogue options were great--with four or five responses available at each branch of conversation I was usually able to say some flavor of whatever I would have wanted my character to say. The NPCs were colorful and fun, always worth talking to, and the main plot when you enter the Temple is really absorbing. My one regret is that apparently there is some demon queen ultimately responsible for the ills in the game, but for the life of me I could never find her--though I did run into two gods and fought gobs of uberpowerful devils and demons across the elemental planes before finally submitting to the will of my dark lord. Heh-heh, how often does a game let you do THAT?