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Review WarGamer: ToEE is a must-have

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Tags: Temple of Elemental Evil; Troika Games

<a href=http://www.wargamer.com>WarGamer</a> posted a 6-page long <a href=http://www.wargamer.com/reviews/temple_of_elemental_evil>review</a> of <a href=http://www.troikagames.com/toee.htm>Temple of Elemental Evil</a>. There is no score, just an opinion, which is the best way to go about reviewing games. Of course, some opinions are less intelligent then others, so readers discretion is strongly advised.
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<blockquote>Unlike other recent releases of the Dungeons & Dragons gaming system, The Temple of Elemental Evil <u>feels truly turn-based</u>. Perhaps the most difficult problem I had with the game was caused by my difficulty in adjusting to this turn-based nature. Just like the pen and paper game, when combat starts everyone rolls for initiative. A high dexterity modifies the die roll (calculated by the computer) which typically, though not always, means that those with the highest dexterity move first. Of all the classes, rogues have the skills most dependent on dexterity. However, they are not the best front-line fighters. They have a backstabbing ability which makes them ideal for sneaking around and hitting an opponent from behind, and their high dexterity also makes them a good choice to stand off and fire missile weapons instead of drawing a sword.
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When combat begins, my instinct is to move my fighters into a kind of blocking position to protect the weaker party members. So I often find that I try to click on a fighter to attempt to move him only to discover that my rogue had already won the initiative roll. So I just ordered my rogue to walk up beside the fighter, who was often in the lead to begin with. There is no "undo" feature in The Temple of Elemental Evil, and the result is that I often placed my rogue in needless danger, squandered a round of combat moving her when she could have fired her crossbow, and was generally frustrated by my own thick-headedness.
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After a few days of play I trained myself to stop doing this, but initially it was very frustrating. Even after extensive amounts of play I still sometimes found myself fighting the instinct to move my fighters first. Once combat was underway, it was easy enough to follow the flow. But that first move when combat begins is tricky, and when combat begins players would do well to take a deep breath and look over the screen before taking any kind of action.</blockquote> TB combat claims another victim. Here is another interesting quote for you: <i>Combat is divided into rounds of six seconds each.</i>. Right on.
 

Limorkil

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 19, 2004
Messages
304
From my point of view that is the best review of TOEE that I've seen so far. It answered all the questions that I had and dispelled my reservations. I don't think it is necessarily a GOOD review, since anyone who claims to be a long time D&D nut yet cannot handle the concept of initiative is clearly a bit of a twat.
 

Voss

Erudite
Joined
Jun 25, 2003
Messages
1,770
Me, I like that he felt the need to point out that die rolls were calculated by the computer.

Produced a nice mental image.

Player: I rolled a 20!
Computer: No, you didn't.
Player: Look, I'm telling you I did!
Computer: I know you're cheating, Dave.
Computer: You shouldn't do that, Dave. You know there are consequences...
 

fnordcircle

Liturgist
Joined
Jan 6, 2004
Messages
693
Location
Frowning at my monitor as I read your dumb post.
I only recently started playing TToE. I wish I had read more reviews up until now, because I seemed to have been mistakingly having a lot of fun with that game. Thankfully, all the reviews and complaints have sobered me up, I plan to stop having fun tonight.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
OMG! U r teh n00b! The game is absolutely unplayable! It has bugs. Especially the combat. Every time combat starts, the game stops (probably freezes!) until you manually!!! move one of the characters, and then you have to move another one! What a pain!
 

Petey_the_Skid

Liturgist
Joined
Jul 1, 2003
Messages
170
Location
Stanstead, Quebec
TB combat claims another victim. Here is another interesting quote for you: Combat is divided into rounds of six seconds each.. Right on

Actually, a round does take up 6 seconds of real-time, 10 rounds make up a turn, 60 turns make up an hour...it's all there in the D&D rulebooks from wayback. This was too allow the dm to know how long in real time a combat took, so he could judge the flow of time in the rest of the game world etc etc. If you look back far enough, you'll find out that at first a round represented ten seconds of real time but that's reaching back way into the history books (1rst edition AD&D and even beyond). So there:P
 

Sol Invictus

Erudite
Joined
Oct 19, 2002
Messages
9,614
Location
Pax Romana
Why the fuck is this guy a writer for Wargamer? Last time I checked most of the games they played (e.g. Disciples II and Massive Assault) had initiative.

In any case, the seconds are abstract and do not happen in real time (It's hard to play with a fucking watch dammit). And yeah, you summed it up Petey. It's too bad this guy is taking it literally.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Petey_the_Skid said:
Actually, a round does take up 6 seconds of real-time, 10 rounds make up a turn, 60 turns make up an hour...it's all there in the D&D rulebooks from wayback.
I wasn't disputing that. I was pointing out that this otherwise fascinating fact has very little to do with ToEE's review.
 

geminito

Liturgist
Joined
Sep 24, 2003
Messages
144
Space Bar

If you hit the space bar, your characters should start moving. Then you should be able to hit the space bar to see how many of your own guys wandered with a mind of their own and got killed by your own fireball. Then you should be able to reload and try again until your fucking fireball goes off at the right time and then you can never use fireball again because the game makes it so incredibly frustrating to use and you can just use magic missile all the time. Oops, that's Baldur's Gate.

ToEE has fantastic turn-based combat. But we already know that.
 

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