Review ToEE fairs well at Boomtown

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Temple of Elemental Evil

Another <A href="http://www.boomtown.net/en_uk/articles/art.view.php?id=3654">review</a> of <A href="Http://www.greyhawkgame.com">Temple of Elemental Evil</a> graces the internet, this time up at <A href="http://www.boomtown.net/">Boomtown</a>. Oddly enough, the highest mark for the game was given in the <i>Sound</i> category, which I didn't much like. Here's a taste:
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<blockquote>Fortunately the single player mission is long and winding with plenty of sub-quests to be had, that it should keep most gamers going for some time. The game has been well written and doesn?t really suffer from a lack of a human dungeon master, except in the handling of non-player party members. You can recruit two other team members from locals in Hommlet and these are generally hired for a share of the loot. The problem with not having a human DM is that the recruits immediately take their share of the loot as soon as battle is over, which means that they often take essential quest items which they will sell to merchants so that you can buy them back at an inflated price. At least with a DM you can barter with these characters or get in for the loot first. </blockquote>
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Bartering with followers would have gone a long way towards making this system more acceptable.
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Spotted this at <A href="http://www.bluesnews.com">Blue's News</a>.

 

[Voss]

Two? (recruits).
...
Someone needs to try playing the game again.

And I've never seen one take a quest item. Ever.
Not that there are many quest items. They occasionally take some magic swag (as would be expected if you're splitting the loot roughly evenly), but not quest things

 

[Jed]

Bartering with followers would have gone a long way towards making this system more acceptable.

You're obviously just biased!
[/joke]

 

[Seven]

Bartering with followers would have gone a long way towards making this system more acceptable.

You're obviously just biased!

Fallout let you barter with followers; I loved that game.;

 

[Transcendent One]

There are quite a few inconsistencies in that review.

This is the first game to use the newly revised Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 rule set and so has an advantage over other D&D titles on the market...*snip*...Troika have done a serious amount of research into the AD&D rule set ...*snip*...any gamers who don’t know about the AD&D rules already and this presents a pretty steep learning curve for the novice

The guy confuses D&D and AD&D, despite the fact that there are so many differences between the two rulesets that mentioning all them would result in over a hundred pages worth of text. Therefore, no, knowledge (or lack off knowledge) of AD&D won't affect your learning curve on ToEE. The fact that he makes that confusion in the first two paragraphs and continues with calling the game AD&D (when it is in fact D&D) for the rest of the review doesn't do well to establish him as a credible reviewer.

where you are to track down a party of pirates – who the villagers are worried may have awoken an age-old evil

Actually your quest varies based on alignment.

The attention to detail in the rules of The Temple of Elemental Evil is its biggest asset and its biggest problem. Right away it scares off casual RPG gamers leaving only intermediate and advanced gamers. The intermediate gamers are likely to struggle with having manual control over every aspect of the game, just as you would in the paper based AD&D.

Go play Neverwinter Nightmares, kid, or better yet, Diablo. Every game has rules, and lazyness to learn those rules is no excuse for blaming the game.

The game quickly becomes difficult, if not impossible, if you don’t get a good grasp of leveling early on. Other RPG titles such as Neverwinter Nights include an option to automatically level up your characters and this would definitely help out the less experienced gamer.

Oh, so he does play Neverwinter Nightmares. Almost too predictable Automatic levelling helps newbies, while destroying role-playing. It's a double edged blade, and Troika just decided to stay away from it, so as to not get cut.

You can recruit two other team members from locals in Hommlet and these are generally hired for a share of the loot

Actually you can hire THREE at a time out of a total of about twenty, and not just from Hommlet, but from areas all over the game, even the elemental nodes.

The problem with not having a human DM is that the recruits immediately take their share of the loot as soon as battle is over, which means that they often take essential quest items which they will sell to merchants so that you can buy them back at an inflated price. At least with a DM you can barter with these characters or get in for the loot first.

Never happened in my games, and I've never heard of it happening in anyone else's. Also, I believe there is a bug that allows you to take loot from them on the barter screen as long as it wasn't originally theirs, and of course as long as they haven't sold it.

I do like however how he doesn't include the story portion of the game in the final rating, as the game is based on an old combat heavy P&P module, which makes it a bit unfair to include story in the final rating.

However it is bad that he does not mention the story in the review itself and how it will not appeal RPGers looking for depth in their storylines. Neither does he give any mention to opening vignettes or multiple endings or excellent dialog skill usage. It seems like the guy is more cut out to review action and adventure games rather than RPG's.