The Codex's official opinion on Temple of Elemental Evil?

[Falkner]

Great engine. Great combat. Poor everything else.

Really good art direction, good music, spell animations and sound effects that actually deserve to be called visceral, actual party creation and a functional UI with good rule transparency and an ingame encyclopedia. That's a lot of well done things. What really hurts the game (besides being terribly buggy) is encounter design, pacing (Hommlet) and perhaps a lack of variety. These flaws mean that the game certainly isn't the best RPG ever, but it does some basic things better than pretty much everyone else and has really good flavour elements (presentation). Considering that most of the revered games on here are pretty flawed as well, it's definitely one of the better games in the genre.

 

[SuicideBunny]

liked the combat and the many little hidden secrets, didn't like enemies generated inside walls when resting.

 

[Aldebaran]

One thing that always struck me about the game was the UI: it was functional, took little time to navigate, and had a bunch of helpful notes for new people, but it looked completely inappropriate for the setting. The big, friendly blue buttons seemed to be something out of an uninspired science fiction game.

The music suffered from some of the same unnatural tendencies. I was not looking for an orchestra, but the music in Hommlet just made the place seem dull and dead. Then again, with all the "lively" NPC activity, engrossing quests, and appropriate ambient noise, maybe that was what they were going for. Maybe Hommlet worked in a PnP setting, but I think ToEE would have been greatly improved by removing it. The game was built around combat and it shows. There wasn't any great need to wedge this tedium into the game for the sake of a narrative. Every resource spent on Hommlet should have been invested into the core of the game: granting more enemy diversity (I think the game had quite a bit, but it was not distributed well), more interesting encounters, more jiggle animations on Zuggtmoy, etc.

It really failed to provide anything of value. NPCs for hire could have been relocated or removed entirely, and the shops could have used a similar treatment. I understand that its purpose is to provide a good party with something to do aside from engaging in genocide against evil, but once you get into the meat of the game you are finished with Hommlet. More than likely you have already forgotten everything you did in Hommlet. You have also forgotten how to spell Hommlet. The only reason to visit this village is to stop at the Inn or sell your plunder. A better social engagement for good parties would be to provide more temptation to do evil.

I could talk about the promise of the engine or how fun the combat can be, but that is obvious. Overall, I like ToEE quite a lot, but the negative bits always jump out at me--no matter how superficial they are.

And no, I have never used the Co8 mod, but by the sounds of things I missed a lot.

 

[Snufkin]

ToEE is poor man's Knights of the Chalice.

 

[Deakul]

Like in the IE games, this was never fixed and probably never will. It sucks, but the game is still playable even with this problem.

Guess I'll try to persevere and just take baby steps when moving around, I really do love the combat system though.

 

[deuxhero]

One thing that always struck me about the game was the UI: it was functional, took little time to navigate, and had a bunch of helpful notes for new people, but it looked completely inappropriate for the setting. The big, friendly blue buttons seemed to be something out of an uninspired science fiction game.

Personally, while the interface was good, some quick keys would help (One for five foot step would be big, but full attack with selectable irritates would be another). Some way to avoid moving 30 feet plus one inch would be nice too. Still miles above a lot of interfaces though.

 

[procrastinator]

You can assign your own hotkey to any action.

 

[SCO]

One thing that always struck me about the game was the UI: it was functional, took little time to navigate, and had a bunch of helpful notes for new people, but it looked completely inappropriate for the setting. The big, friendly blue buttons seemed to be something out of an uninspired science fiction game.

Personally, while the interface was good, some quick keys would help (One for five foot step would be big, but full attack with selectable irritates would be another). Some way to avoid moving 30 feet plus one inch would be nice too. Still miles above a lot of interfaces though.

You can configure that shit easily with shift+key while on the radial menu with the option selected, i always configure almost all melee commands and some spellcasting ones

Unfortunately that stuff is saved in the savegame instead of a saner config file (so i have to redo the whole ringmarole whenever i "reinstall" or start a new game - in thief for instance, i can just unzip, and i'm ready to go with my keysbindings).

The thing that irritates is the buffs spells with multiple targets interface. Beyond being buggy (it sometimes won't register to casting), it's also a pain (you have to select all targets, while a saner approach would be -> no target -> max you can).

 

[Shannow]

Great engine. Great combat. Poor everything else.

[...] and a functional UI with good rule transparency and an ingame encyclopedia.

No. The UI was "ok" but neither especially good nor especially functional. Critical information was hidden in the encyclopedia instead being transparently presented in the relevant context menues, eg. spell descriptions in the spellbook lacked elemental information like "lasting time", or (IIRC) the category of weapons wasn't shown in the weapon descriptions and similar stuff.
But otherwise, yes, Andy was too general. Story RPG elements were also done very well in parts. Just look at the several endings that differed in more than just coloration.

 

[SCO]

There's some hidden stuff in ToEE if you don't just treat the "combat areas" as massacre simulators.

You can be recruited by Lareth if evil and he gets arrested later on, you can get "Mother Screngh" in your party with some contortions, you can have a no-kills playthrough, you can triple cross the informers in nulb, there are about 5 or so npcs just in the temple (more outside ofcourse), and they have small vignettes in the endings (there's even minor C&C in those), you can kill the temple spies early, or fuck up and sell lareth things to them - triggers a assassin), you can mess with the temple robes (but if you act suspiciously the temple still gets suspicious and the patrols start to be more aggressive).

Basically, it's a game that needed a lot more polishing, and a little bit more obvious content, so that people didn't dismiss it out of hand.

The Co8 mod new areas on the other hand... it's all massacre guys - there's something with a gnome ring but it's a biowarean thing as far as i can tell. Guess not having a quest designer does that.

 

[JudasIscariot]

SCO

Can you still download the Co8 mod without the added content and just the bugfixes? Last time I checked they offered two versions of the mod.

 

[SCO]

Yes you can.

 

[Kaol]

Its a great game. Only shame is the engine wasnt used to make more games.

 

[Deitti]

Even vanilla ToEE is in my top5 best RPGs list simply because it has so many good things in it. Co8 ToEE just makes ToEE go higher in that list. The fun combat, fun storylines in temple, great encounters in certain places, character creation process and so on so on is simply too fun, especially compared to some other RPGs.

only downsides are that even with co8, your bound to run into occasional bugs and glitches and ToEE crashes so much, i think only Bethesda games crash more than ToEE. Also i found Hommlet to be unbearably boring after the first time i completed it. Encounters were also downside, as there were too many dumb melee fighters in them, who didn't even have the ability to use charge and trip attacks against your party. And before co8, there were very few encounters with casters in them.

but nevertheless, great game overall.

 

[I_am_Ian]

Anybody ever watch Kikoskia's YouTube Let's Play of this game?

 

[BLOBERT]

BROS DISSING KOTC IS A SURE SIGN THAT YOU ARE A CUNT

 

[King Crispy]

I enjoyed ToEE thoroughly. This is a module that I grew up waiting for and read with fervor when it finally got released. To see it come to the PC for me was an exciting thing.

Then again, I used to sit there for hours on end painting with excrutiating detail my miniature lead figurines back in the day, I read the DM's guide probably a thousand times, I remember the odd orange-colored half-sized NPC sheets (and went through way too many of them before discovering the wonders of a Xerox machine) and therefore naturally gravitated towards anything authentic D&D.

Say what you will about its content, but this was a faithful translation of Gygax's seminal work. It would've been infinitely better if it were to have implemented some of the live-DM abilities of a NWN. *THAT* would have been something special. As it is, if you played it without some degree of LARPing, you did it wrong.

Edit: Ahh, a little hyperbolic of me on the 'seminal' comment, but I'll stick with my stance on the supermodule. Maybe its hype was what truly made it stand out to me, but it still was a big deal back then. I actually think Hommlett was the better module.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

I was trying so damn hard to have fun in ToEE Co8 and I succeeded maybe 10% of the time. (I didn't play vanilla ToEE)

It's buggy as hell (many CTD's), and it just lacks that "fun" factor that makes a game, you know, fun. It had literally 0 interesting NPCs. No interesting quests. Boring turn-based combat (all that grapple/tumble/etc. gimmicks mattered squat since you can easily just attack everything to death). Completely broken shit like that "neutral" sword that deals insane damage. So the only incentive to play through is to see numbers go up, but even that isn't fun since there's very little fun/challenge once you've earned your first few levels. I kinda played through it still since I had nothing better to do until the Elemental Nodes, and then I couldn't take it anymore and quit.

I'd give it 3 out of 1000324

 

[Spockrock]

as far as I'm aware, the game was made to follow the actual module very closely, so I'm not sure why people complain about the content or encounter design. it was taken from the book, chill the fuck out.

the game is great for what it does: brings DnD to the PC, has great TB combat, great graphics. what more do you want from a DnD computer game? choice & consequence? oh, it has that too

 

[Severian Silk]

With the community patch ToEE is a bit short (just like Arcanum IMO) but otherwise awesome.

Betrayal at Krondor was very primitive. Not sure why anybody would want to make that comparison.

 

[Cynic]

I loved this game. With the Co8 patch I played all the way through till the end. I will say the combat did get a bit boring once you became OP'd but that is a failing of D&D itself. It followed the original campaign very closely, so perhaps you should blame Gygax for a few things and not the video game iteration. The turn based tactical combat in this game was perhaps the most fun I've had in a long, long time. It's just very entertaining the amount of options you have with all the 3.5ED rules and a full party of chars you made yourself.

Now, I have never played IWD, I plan on doing it some day, but part of me fails to see how any game with RTwP could compete against ToEE's turn based awesomeness. The simple fact of the matter is, RTwP is sit back and watch what happens. TB is plan each move, step by step. Perhaps you could make the argument that eventually, gamers will always find an exploit or two, and then continue to use those exploits. Maybe enduring these exploits as the combat gets boring is less tedious in RTwP because trash encounters go faster.

ToEE really, REALLY shone at the lower levels. It was brilliant. The module limited this engine immensely though and it is a fucking fucking shame that this game was rushed out the door with the crap code it has. I would to this day pay full price for a new game with a totally bug fixed engine. The graphics/animations were perfect IMO. The locations lacked the variety of BG, but they were very rich and detailed, with better textures and the perfect blend of 3D effects and 2D glory.

Naturally I voted yes.

 

[Volrath]

Fantastic combat engine + utter shit encounter design = wasted potential

 

[Duckard]

I like it, but not only is the content terrible, the game itself is broken as all hell. All I like about it is the combat system, which is good enough at low levels to give out a small recommendation. Becomes worse once you get Fireball and can ninja-snipe all the mobs with it. High levels don't matter too much, since the game will probably corrupt your saves before you can reach that point.

I guess you could say it's a game I'd like to love, but it just has so many flaws that I can't. I enjoy flawed games almost exclusively, but ToEE has to little going for it. I still voted Yes, though.

 

[Melcar]

Best game ever. Enjoy it more than Fallout, and I like Fallout. Agree about the content (lack of). The game itself is so wonderful and holds so much promise, but then you realize that it´s "empty". Even with the Co8 thing it does not get much better.

 

[Johannes]

The temple quests might've had a great amount of C&C, but the place just felt too static. The people there are so easily fooled with robes that are available for anyone who stumbles upon chests on the top floor (I wonder why the temples won't use this fact vs each other), and even if you fully assault them, free prisoners, and so on, nobody mobilizes their forces after you but you can casually rest in the temple, clearing it 1 room of bugbears at a time at your leisure.
That kills the atmosphere for me, no feeling of danger or urgency.

Also Fireball (and whatever similar, AoE dmg dealers like Icy Rain there is) is too damn powerful, it trivializes other spells and every mid-level encounter way too much.