Codex Review Temple of Elemental Evil Review

[Spazmo]

Tags: Temple of Elemental Evil; Troika Games

RPGCodex reviews Temple of Elemental Evil. I think it's just darling.

Temple of Elemental Evil is a game that has its flaws but that also has got some very strong qualities. Although the role-playing aspect isn?t nearly as strong as such RPG juggernauts as Fallout or Arcanum and wary gamers may want to wait for a patch (official or otherwise) before leaping into ToEE, the combat is simply second to none and the game is a big bucket of fun. If you like big, tactical fights with some robust if somewhat limited role-playing and some great graphics and sound, ToEE is the game for you.​

Mmm... Turn-based.

Read the full article: Temple of Elemental Evil Review

 

[Whipporowill]

Best review yet Spaz-boy. Great piece of writing.

 

[Zed]

Good stuff

 

[Vault Dweller]

Great review, after reading I felt the urge to buy the game, but had to restarin myself as I already bought it 2 weeks ago :D

 

[Jinsai]

Great combat, but the rest?

Excellent review. I bought the game on the day of its release.

First thing I noticed is that it is very difficult, especially at the beginning. The town stuff is particularly tedious...I have no idea why they will label all the small maps in the map view, but won't point out which is which on the big map. So you have to go and drop flags down yourself. Then there's the 10 minutes it takes to get from one side of the town to the other.

But in the end, the combat is just great. There's so much depth, I want to build another party already and dive back in. But having to wade through the towns makes that less appealing.

 

[Kizmiaz]

Wow. Great review.
I've been playing a week or so by now and I'm getting more and more into it as I'm beginning to understand D&D 3.5. (Borrowed the 3.0 manuals from my DM).
Alas, the only sad thing is I still haven't been so hooked that I come to at 3am and realize I only can get 2 hours of sleep before duty calls.
Damn, I miss those days.(nights) :wink:

 

[Rayt]

Great review, Spazmo

Now I only have to wait for this game to be released in backwater Europe.

 

[Whipporowill]

Released in Sweden today or yesterday

 

[Chadeo]

So for each and every party alignment that I have chosen has given me a new start. Even more impressive to me, each start has revealed more of the overall plot and background in the game. I.E. things that are hinted at by various townspeople are more than just hints, and you (as far as I know) only get to know this when you start multiple games.

This gives me very high hopes that the endings will also be varied and complex.

So I guess my point is that it seems there is a lot more “role playing” in the game than I originally thought. If you only create one party alignment, the bland dialogs give the impression of little to no depth, when in fact there is some depth to be found. So while it does seem to be very skewed towards combat, it also seems to have a rather large amount of replay value, which might very well change your initial impressions of the game.

Now if only I could actually survive the damn moathouse once so I could see how the rest of the game holds up. (I want to play in ironman, thus the multiple restarts, each time with a new party to try and find a better combination)

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Great review, after reading I felt the urge to buy the game, but had to restarin myself as I already bought it 2 weeks ago :D

Kinda like me, only i have to restrain myself as i have to wait until i can get it here in Europe

But i have to agree Spazmo, great review. Methodical, serious, honest, more professional than so-called professionals. Why, its everything i hope to be in terms of reviewing games . I specially like the slight punch at Bioware's attempts at D&D :wink:

 

[Spazmo]

We have to zing BioWare in every piece of content we put out--it's RPGCodex policy. That said, BIOWARE SUCKS!

And thanks for the kind words of praise, folks. Remember, the key to ToEE is to RTFM!

 

[Tris McCall]

<<Remember, the key to ToEE is to RTFM!>>

In some ways I am looking forward to the manual more than the game itself.

Tris

 

[Sabotai]

In some ways I am looking forward to the manual more than the game itself.

Tris

As a non-religious person I'm praying a lot wishing that Atari doesn't change a thing about the spiral bound manual. I haven't seen a decent manual in ages. The last one I can remember which was halfway decent was AoW2's manual.

Has anyone already seen the European version of the ToEE manual?

 

[Volourn]

When I first read TOEE's manual; I thought like you guys; this manual is great. In the end, the manual has quite a few mistakes and too much left out info. Examples/ There is no discussion of Ironman parties getting 0gp to start, and there really is no info on itemc reation at all other than brief feat rundown. Tsk, tsk. I do like the couple of pages worth of things that were changed from the 3.5 rules.

 

[Whipporowill]

Sabotai, the manual we got in Sweden was non-spiral. Sorry to say so.

 

[Araanor]

Damn.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Examples/ There is no discussion of Ironman parties getting 0gp to start

Considering that party members start with a weapon that they are proficient with, they don't need any gold to start. It's a complex game, it would take a huge tome to mention everything.

and there really is no info on itemc reation at all other than brief feat rundown.

uhh, you choose items creation from the menu and take it from there. It's very straight forward.

But what really pisses me off is that it doesn't say anywhere that I have to install the game before playing. What's up with that?

 

[Volourn]

LOL

VD, that isn't the point. It states that parties recieve 500gp to start the game. There is no mention in the manual, that Ironman parties won't despute having a section dedicated to it. Face it, it was an error.

Yes, actual item creation is very easy (when it works); but it would be nice for them to let you know how it works, and what you need to make items not SPELL_NONE crap. It would be nice, after all. Item creation is a liitle more indepth than just clicking. What level do you need to make certain weapons,a nd armour? How about the extra effects like holy and such. If I wasn't a DnD geek; I'd be out of the loop.

Not to mention, does anyone know, if possible, if you can actually choose what level your spells crolls are/ As of now, I'm stuck making magic missle that shoot one. I hope I'm just being dumb as being stuck with solo mm scrolls sucks big time in the lame ass department. I'd rather be the lame one in this case.

 

[Vault Dweller]

I see your points and I agree. However, we have to consider solutions. The manual is pretty big as is. So making it bigger, and increasing the cost and the price, is out. Making the game less complex (removing creation feats, etc) is out too. So, we are back to square one, which means lotsa manual reading for DnD noobs and trial & error for more complex stuff.

 

[Volourn]

Exactly. I never said the manual was completely horrible; but it is far from being the hly grail of manuals.

Still, you know the answer to my question? Am I doofus, or is it another lame design decison by Troika to only allow scrollc reation at minimum level? I hope it's the former; 'cause I can live with being a doofus; but one magic missle per scroll is unbearable. :D

 

[Sabotai]

Sabotai, the manual we got in Sweden was non-spiral. Sorry to say so.

Do you hav any indication as to whether it might be edited down? I have bought quite a few games of which the manuals were missing big chunks of text (compared to the original American manual that is), just to make them fit in the small DVD case. I detest that.

 

[Whipporowill]

I haven´t seen that much difference in the manual, apart from quickstart chapters in swedish, portoguese, dutch and finnish. The manual part is 152 pages, so they may have minimized the fonts instead of taking anything out.

 

[Whipporowill]

Uh. What happened to the edit button?

Just wanted to add that it´s NOT a DVD-case.

 

[xmojo1]

When I first read that ToEE was going to be made into a PC game I got very excited. I remembered back to my D&D days when I was the DM for the ToEE module. This was all 16-18 years ago! I still have the original ToEE module and maps, so when I got the PC game I dug out the old module and made comparisons. Imagine my surprise (and glee) when I found that the PC game is almost an exact copy of the module! Hommlett is laid out exactly in both. The moathouse layout is the same, down to the monsters even.

It's going to be very hard to resist the temptation to refer to the module when I want to see what is going to come up next. As it is, I still remember quite a bit about ToEE from when I played the module all those years ago. I really hope Troika are encouraged by the success of ToEE and go on to develop the campaign further by creating the next modules in the series, Against the Giants and Queen of the Demonweb Pits.

 

[xmojo1]

When I first read that ToEE was going to be made into a PC game I got very excited. I remembered back to my D&D days when I was the DM for the ToEE module. This was all 16-18 years ago! I still have the original ToEE module and maps, so when I got the PC game I dug out the old module and made comparisons. Imagine my surprise (and glee) when I found that the PC game is almost an exact copy of the module! Hommlett is laid out exactly in both. The moathouse layout is the same, down to the monsters even.

It's going to be very hard to resist the temptation to refer to the module when I want to see what is going to come up next. As it is, I still remember quite a bit about ToEE from when I played the module all those years ago. I really hope Troika are encouraged by the success of ToEE and go on to develop the campaign further by creating the next modules in the series, Against the Giants and Queen of the Demonweb Pits.