Customer Reviews

Temple of Elemental Evil: A Greyhawk Adventure (Jewel Case)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I've played 'em all. Baulders, Dragons, Neverwinters, Jagged Alliance's, Jedi's you name the RPG I've been through it. Though, TOEE holds a special place in my heart. Sure it's buggy, kinda short for an RPG by todays standards and unless you mod it you max out at level 10 but nothing beats it for adherence to the rules of D&D or the shear number of tactical possibilities in combat. The graphics are excellent for the generation and were way ahead of their time when the game first dropped. The interface isn't the slickest but it's customizable and creating shortcut keys is easy. Combat is satisfying, the animations and sounds do a lot to keep you in the moment and listening/watching/hoping for that long shot crit to take down the last target.

I would be remiss if I didn't at least mention the Circle of Eight mod which takes this game many leaps and levels above where it started. The bugs are ironed out, the characters can run to level 20 and there's a little bit more content for the initiated to chew through. Definately worth at least checking it out.

Lastly a comment on the state of RPG's in the modern video game landscape. As far as I know this was the last game to let you just up and create your entire party. I don't know which side of the ocean that idea comes from, I just play the games I don't study them, but it needs to come back to this side. I would trade every prefabed and pretty cut scene in Mass Effect along with all the lame backstory with your party memebers for the ability, or at least the option to create my own party of characters. I still pull out my old copy of Ultima or Final Fantasy on the NES (8-bit) just to make a party and send them out adventuring.

- Anybody that reads this and holds up a lighter for my praise of a great game please comment and let me know of any other tactical RPG's you've played lately that let you create a party and send them into the wilderness.

Definitely not the greatest roleplaying GAME I've seen for the PC, but it's probably one of the most enjoyable gaming EXPERIENCES I've ever had.

I would strongly recommend it... but only if you're experienced in the pen-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 game. Those who haven't played D&D 3.5 will be completely lost when it comes to things like initiative, skill points, and feats. I found myself sitting with the D&D Players Handbook in my lap at some points in time, especially when it came to playing more obscure classes (druids for example).

Anyone that has played the actual D&D modules "The Temple of Elemental Evil" and/or "Return to The Temple of Elemental Evil" will recognize characters such as Terjon of St Cuthbert, Lareth the Beautiful, Jaroo the Druid, Burne's Badgers, and so on.

A warning: this is an older game meant for an older operating system. My 2007 Windows Vista hiccuped when I tried to run it, and it took me hours of frustration to find the right patches. It runs fine with XP, but anyone with Vista should be wary.

Initially getting the hang of the controls and dealing with sometimes frustrating camera angles takes a while to become accustomed to, but don't let that deter you from this game. If you're a D&D fan, you have nothing to lose from picking this title up.

I played D&D for many years off and on... from 1st edition to 3rd and I the original Temple of Elemental Evil was one of my favorite campaigns. This game really captures the spirit of that module and D&D in general. It uses the new rule structure and seamlessly integrates them in such away that they dont interfere with your enjoyment of the game.

This is no blind hack-and-slash... there is a background story and a lot of NPCs you can interact with (and even bring along with your party). You will need to take your time and bring your characters up to each challenge... just like playing the real game.

I highly recommed it... and you can't beat the price!

The DRM on the CD might keep you from ever playing this game. I have never been able to get this game to run. Don't waste your $$ on this game. You can have my copy if you want it, it's no good to me...except as a coaster set.

I enjoyed the other 2 Troika games (Arcanum and VtM:Bloodlines), so I thought I would give this one a go. Unfortunately, after several hours dealing with it, I still can't get this piece of trash to run at all. I meet the system requirements, it just won't run. I've narrowed down the causes of why it isn't running, but that hasn't helped.

Possible cause #1: The game will only run in 75hz. My lcd monitor only runs in 60hz. I found a way to disable the intro movies, which also want to run only in 75hz, but not a way to change the way the game renders.

Possible cause #2: SecureRom. Like all pieces of trash, I mean fine quality games from Atari, this is loaded with SecureRom. Sometimes you can get around this with no-cd patches. But should I really have to resort to piracy to play a game that I just *barely* purchased?

So, I ended out throwing this against the wall in frustration. This is the LAST $[...] that Atari will get from me.

..However- as everyone knows by now, it is *Loaded* w/ bugs & Atari doesn't support it anymore. Only thing you'll get from the Atari forums are years-old, archived topics & the 3 official patches to fix the bugs.
To combat all other problems, you should go straight to a site called Circle of Eight. It's a gaming site that sort of specializes in ToEE, provides tech support & a great ToEE mod for more experienced players.
Also, if you're new to D&D & you're looking for 4th edition rules, forget it. This is 3rd/3.5 all the way, baby! (which, as far as I'm concerned, is the last ed. that has any resemblance to the game I knew in the 80s)

The game was fun to play, but the bugs are significant, even after installing the 3 patches. The biggest pain with the play was that in certain areas when there is a lot going on, the play would slow to a crawl. My fight with the boss in the fire elemental node took about an hour, but should have been over in about 10 minutes if things went smoothly. Also, in these areas, doing a save takes 1-2 minutes sometimes. Other than the slow play in some areas, the game was fun. Just be patient.

First off, I have to say that my review is based on the game with Official Patch #1, Official Patch #2, and Moebius' Unofficial Patch (a popular fan-made patch). Combined, these patches fix many bugs and make the game playable. I never played the game unpatched, so I can't comment on how unplayable it may have been. When patching the game, there are two options: the three patches listed above, or the Circle of Eight (Co8) mod instead of Moebius' patch. There is an Official Patch #3 but this actually causes more problems and, for me, made the game unable to load. 1/2/Moebius fixes many bugs but does not alter gameplay. 1/2/Co8 fixes bugs but does add new content, items, quests, etc. and will alter the experience somewhat. I recommend choosing whichever you prefer to be your in-game experience.

Now for the game itself. It is certainly a good implementation of the D&D 3.5 ruleset (however, I should qualify that by saying that I am not a pen & paper player, but I have read the Player's Handbook), but there is a fair learning curve if you want to know what's going on, particularly in combat. The combat is turned based and fully implements the D&D rules of one move/one action per turn. It will take some practice but I found this to be a fun combat system and not at all tedious, though some may find it so.

The graphics are about what you'd expect for a game like this from its time period, but I did notice that the characters on the screen move much more fluidly than, say, the characters in Baldur's Gate, etc.

My biggest complaint, and one that ultimately sinks the experience for me in a big way, is that the game feels very directionless right from the start. You are directed to the starting village of Hommlet via a quest, but this quest is unrelated to the rest of the game. You then learn about the next big place you are supposed to visit, but this isn't even added as a quest! In fact, other than the mere mention of it, there is no reason to think you are supposed to go there to progress the story, and no reason that you over anyone else should have been asked to do so. There are side quests in the village, and then you move on to another village (again under a pretense that does not materialize into anything relevant to the quests), and then the Temple itself. Once in the Temple, I still had no idea what I was supposed to do or why, except that I needed to "destroy the evil" in the Temple. Well, okay, but can't I have more to go on than that? I suppose a part of this lack of story development has to do with the original module the game was based on, but the developers still could have fleshed out parts of the story somewhat, even if just to make the player feel like he's actually involved in the events and not just being led around by vague hints of where to go.

Graphics:
I Really enjoyed the graphics to this game. Of Course, they're not up to date with other games out on the market today. However, I am just a fan of this visual style (the top down third person view), there is a simplistic elegance to it. A beautiful wash of vibrant colors just pull you into this digital game world, (I have a high res monitor so it may look a bit different for others). The graphical animations of spells is very well done as well, very smooth movement and once again very vibrant colors. However, I can't say they even come close Baldur's Gate's and Icewindale's hand-drawn graphics (Which in my opinion, even if someone invents Star Trek Style Holodecks, the graphics in those games will still be better.) Also, for some reasons there are areas you can walk into on a map that slows everything down into clunky frames, but when you get away from those areas on the map, everything returns to normal.

Sound:
I enjoyed the sounds to this game, although they weren't the best I have ever heard, the music and sound effects did there job. The Battle Music was Battlie, and the Scenic Music was Senikie, and the voice acting was ok. For example of music when entering into the first town in the game, the ambient music in the back ground felt distant, quite, and peaceful. Which only emphasized the fact that the town was far away from anything, and small. So I would say that their sound department did it's job.

Gameplay:
Character creation is very simple, which is nice if you really don't want to take the time to obsessively pay attention to every detail of your characters development. Also, the game is turn based, which I enjoy because I usually get overwhelmed in not turn based RPGs, such as Baldur's Gate (I usually turn the real-time off). However, I know turn based is not everyones cup of tea. The in game combat menu is easy to figure out. However, other menus are kind of clunky and are accessed in ways that take some getting use to. I think this was a game that came out a little too soon in its production. It has an overall sense of feeling incomplete, there are large are maps with only 25% of it being utilized, this make it so you frequently stumble upon large empty rooms. Sub Quests are too short, as well as the story arc is fragmented to the point of almost being non existent(If you're looking for a well written, epic Story Line, with plot twists, and protagonist character development like many other D&D games, you are definitely barking up the wrong tree with this game). The overall world map is sparse in areas you can visit, and if you know what you are doing, you can actually beat the game in about 2 hours. There is also a Level Cap for players at level 10, (However, that problem is easily correctable).

System Bugs:
There can be some nasty bugs, however, the game has been out for awhile now, so most of those problems have been fixed. There is a particular nasty bug that I encountered when I tried to run this on my higher end computer at home.
My System Quick Specs.
- 2.66 Ghz intel core 2 duo processor (overclocked to 3 Ghz)
- 680i EVGA mother board
- Nvidia 8800 768mb GTX Graphics card
- 4 gigs DDR2 800mhz
- Windows XP Pro x64 edition / Windows XP 32bit
The Problem was after installing the game, I would try to run it, but the game would always exit itself after about 12 seconds making it unplayable. I believe the problem was with the video card. I swapped the 8800 out with a EVGA GeForce FX 5200 I had laying about, and it worked fine. However, I finally got it to work with the 8800 by applying a nocd Exe. That was the only way I got it to run.

wile this game is enjoyable and pretty well made, it dosnt measure up to some of the other D&D CRPG's out there such as bauldurs gate (1, but especially 2), and icewind dale. nor does it measure up to the other games made by troika( arcanum, one of my favirot games; and VM: the bloodlines). in short it is fun, but not outstanding. if your a hardcore D&D or western RPG gamer id recommend it otherwise, i would probably skip it.
peace out, and long live PC gaming
-hobbes mcgoo