Review ToEE reviewed by us!

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Temple of Elemental Evil; Troika Games

It's up. Our <a href="http://www.rpgcodex.com/content.php?id=76">review</a> of <A href="http://www.greyhawkgame.com">Temple of Elemental Evil</a> is up.
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[Diogo Ribeiro]

Huzzah! :D

*goes read it*

 

[Volourn]

I like the review. I petty much agree with everything though the negatives noted I'd go to the extreme with; and would be so political about it.

 

[protobob]

This game is good. I played it so much that I got burned-out.

Also I'm exploring the fourth level of the temple and when I move my mouse over some areas the game just freezes for some odd 10-15 minutes. That put a damper on things.

My one attempt at an Ironman ended badly in the guard tower near the temple, grin.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I restarted my damn party about four times in a row, trying to make that perfect team, and I think I found it. Im now on the fourth level. Can anyone tell me if Hedrack's Warhammer is a warhammer or a maul, cause it really looks like a maul despite what it says.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

It's also nice to see many D&D spells aren't as bastardized in ToEE as they have been in past D&D titles. Teleport is in the game, something that was mysteriously lacking in all the BioWare D&D games. Charm person, another P&P favorite of many D&D veterans, is implemented quite well in ToEE. Rather than reworking several elements of D&D to make it fit better into a computer game, Troika just tossed all this stuff into ToEE as is. And, wouldn't you know it, it works just fine.

BAH-DUM-PSHH!!!

Damn straight :wink:

 

[Volourn]

Huh? Teleport IS a bastardized version of the pnp version unless the 3.5 version has been completely changed from 3.0 which would be weird to say the least...

 

[Pseudospawn]

hmmm..... needed more swearing in the review. I want more passion in your words Spazmo!

 

[axel]

(my utterly pathetic bard managed to miss twenty-one times in a row. The lesson? Well, bards aren't terribly good)

Do you mean, "Bard's arn't terribly good at combat"?

 

[Spazmo]

axel: Don't you mean "ToEE is mostly combat making classes that aren't very good at combat useless"? WHY I THINK YOU DO!

 

[MF]

Bards are great.
I have a party of 2 Thugs, Half-orc Barbarian and Fighter, respectively. One small 2'2" halfling neutral evil rogue, one half-elf neutral wizard and a true neutral human Bard.

The bard is very useful. Inspire Courage/Competence/Greatness provides the two thugs with that extra little +1 they need. I also use him as a healer, right now he gets two moderate healing and three light healing spells a day. Finally, I use him as the conversation party member. I get dialogue skill checks all the time. Oh, and when they use a bow they're fine too.

Essentially there's nothing really wrong with a bard. What is wrong is that my Neutral Evil party finished the game by Doing 1 quest in Hommlet, 1 quest in Nulb, 3 Quests in the Temple (for The fire Priest) and 1 Quest for the evil bad guy of doom. After that last quest I joined the temple and finished the game. It was a rather unsatisfying ending. I want to start over with a good party, but first I reloaded the game to see if I can't take over the Temple myself or anything. So far my level 5 party has just been trotting around.

Beating the game at level 5 is probably only possible by sneaking and bluffing your way through all the time? I don't know.

Anyway, nice review. Not too fanboy-ish, enough criticism to make people really believe you're not biased.

 

[HanoverF]

There is some silly stuff you can acomplish by invising your chatty character and trapesing around the temple, like say, join each sub temple, but since Fire is the target of several quests its easier to just join Earth, Water, and Air.

Throwing Bards into Melle is playing to their weaknesses, unless you have a particularly strong bard, two feats and they're very good archers, and they have a nice selection of utility spells.

 

[axel]

axel: Don't you mean "ToEE is mostly combat making classes that aren't very good at combat useless"? WHY I THINK YOU DO!

Don't you mean "ToEE is mostly combat making classes that arn't very good at combat useless at combat"?

Some how I doubt the class would even exsist in DnD (bearing in mind that DnD is mostly combat) if they didn't have some use other than combat. For example some type of support role perhaps.

 

[Spazmo]

Bards are excellent buffers, but once they've used all their buffs, they're only really good for running around slapping potions and scrolls on people. Clerics, however, are far superior supportive spellcasters who are also actually useful in combat.