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Incline ToEE is fucking fantastic

RegionalHobo

Scholar
Joined
Oct 2, 2018
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294
lack of plot and characterization of companions.

for me it s a better icewind dale but as a plotfag i like other games a lot more
 

Major_Blackhart

Codexia Lord Sodom
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What always amazed me was that they did the game in 18 months. From scratch really. The engine base, at its core, was Arcanum but the whole thing got completely rewritten.

18 months and they did that. Obsidian got how long for PoE and PoE 2, with a massive team, and what did we get?

I have respect for the entire Troika team for that. I mean, if the environment that exists now (crowdfunding, early access, etc.) existed then, they might still be around.

But that's hopeful BS. And I think I know it. You know why?

VD and Styg. Iron Tower and Stygian Software. I mean, they've done insane games, and they didn't go the crowdfund path. Early Access though, yes.

I think those teams just have better businessmen than Troika did. They have guys at the top who actually want to not just make games, but run a game company.
 

gurugeorge

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Strap Yourselves In
What always amazed me was that they did the game in 18 months. From scratch really. The engine base, at its core, was Arcanum but the whole thing got completely rewritten.

18 months and they did that. Obsidian got how long for PoE and PoE 2, with a massive team, and what did we get?

I have respect for the entire Troika team for that. I mean, if the environment that exists now (crowdfunding, early access, etc.) existed then, they might still be around.

But that's hopeful BS. And I think I know it. You know why?

VD and Styg. Iron Tower and Stygian Software. I mean, they've done insane games, and they didn't go the crowdfund path. Early Access though, yes.

I think those teams just have better businessmen than Troika did. They have guys at the top who actually want to not just make games, but run a game company.

That's kind of unfair, Troika had a pretty good run, and their failure wasn't the result of something like consistently bad management, just a few mistakes and some bad luck really.
 

Major_Blackhart

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I'll give you that. They had some terrible luck. But it also felt like they were always an outsider in the community, you know? Call me crazy, but I would not be surprised to learn that somehow, Feargus saw them as competition while in Interplay and later Obsidian and did everything he could to bad mouth them to publishers.
 

anvi

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It's more exciting than your mom.
See? Like the game, like its defenders. The dullest.

Anyway, ToEE is not a shit game, it's a good game actually, if you're a D&D enthusiast. Especially since it looks fantastic and has nice soundtrack (and an extremely annoying radial menu but that's passable). But if you're not, then the chances are you will die from boredom way before the finish line. The game lacks mystery, sense of exploration, any real hook outside of being a decent D&D adaptation, like I've said already. At the very least it doesn't have dices the half of screen size every time the game suppose to throw "dice".

I agree. It does have all those problems, but it's got more depth and tactical goodness than most games. For me it is top 3, maybe the best. I think games/RPGs are so weak that the best of the genre is an under funded, buggy, dull, poorly paced game, from 20 ish years ago. Sad isn't it?

But the way I see it, RPGs were traditionally combat focused and dungeon crawls, and I preferred that. If I want story I would much rather read a classic, game writing never comes close. But if I want to summon an army of fire elementals, shoot cone of cold, magic missiles, etc, then there really aren't that many games that even provide it. Even the codex top 50 or whatever is a tiny niche in gaming, and most of those are not traditional RPGs. Even with the classics, I don't get along with most of them because of what I see as intrusive dialogue/story, weak/primitive combat, and lots of boring exploration and travelling and clicking. I also think most of the top 20 type games are only relevant for what they did at the time, more than how worthwhile they are to play today. They deserve to be on a list of games that were historically important or whatever, just not on a list of enjoyable experiences for this weekend.

But the likes of TOEE / JA2 just haven't been outdone anywhere else. You get such fine control over multiple characters, lots of options of spells/abilities things to do with the character. But also a decent amount of 'other' tactical type abilities too. Like giving up your turn to move a few inches out of the carnage, etc.

Tl-dr- I have to accept some pacing / janktastic issues to get to a good deep combat game. It's how the world works.
 

Zeriel

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Jun 17, 2012
Messages
13,379
ToEE is great, even though Hommlet sucks shit. It’s also bittersweet playing it now with the knowledge that Troika wanted to use the engine to adapt a slew of modules in perpetuity. But then the Xbox happened.

The most bittersweet thing about the end of that era is knowing that type of D&D is never coming back. We're never going to get good D&D games again, or even good tabletop adaptation RPGs again, because D&D and all tabletop is now dumbed down to shit to "copy" modern video games and their market size.

Even something like Doom can't happen again, because the cultural zeitgeist that had all those college kids like Romero being raised on playing tabletop and creating "dungeons" even in FPS is gone.
 

NJClaw

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That's kind of unfair, Troika had a pretty good run, and their failure wasn't the result of something like consistently bad management, just a few mistakes and some bad luck really.
Arcanum and ToEE are two of my favorite games ever, but "just a few mistakes and some bad luck" seems a bit of an understatement considering that in 7 years they weren't able to release a single game that wasn't a completely broken mess.
 

Roguey

Codex Staff
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18 months and they did that. Obsidian got how long for PoE and PoE 2, with a massive team, and what did we get?

They didn't design their own systems or any original content aside from the barely-there opening vignettes and the daisy-chain errands that everybody hates in Hommlet.
 

Murk

Arcane
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ToEE's character generation alone is better than most games' entire... uhh... game.
 

Volourn

Pretty Princess
Pretty Princess Glory to Ukraine
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Wouldn't go THAT far, but it was good. Best part of the game. As a compliment, I did love their use of frogs. I wish more games did that.


As for their opening vignettes. Those were simply embarrassing. DA1's origins were not perfect, but they were vastly superior. It isn't even close.

Playing a TOEE vignette, one just wanted them to throw it in a fire because it was trash and why even bother?

With the origins, one wanted more of them.

Because, they were mostly good, and added to the game experience and had some later consequences. They MATTERED. the vignettes were embarassing.
 

jackofshadows

Magister
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Oct 21, 2019
Messages
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Frogs, right. If I wanna wack some frogs, I might as well launch D:OS games, right?

Vignettes were cool, I'll give them that. Then again, if your game is narrative-light, why bother?
 

jackofshadows

Magister
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Oct 21, 2019
Messages
4,488
Anyone who enjoys ToEE is hopelessly autistic. That much is clear. It's like playing railroad with yourself or cubes, or whatever. Just bear it in mind next time you'll see your ugly mug in the mirror.
 

Darth Canoli

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Wouldn't go THAT far, but it was good. Best part of the game. As a compliment, I did love their use of frogs. I wish more games did that.


As for their opening vignettes. Those were simply embarrassing. DA1's origins were not perfect, but they were vastly superior. It isn't even close.

Playing a TOEE vignette, one just wanted them to throw it in a fire because it was trash and why even bother?

With the origins, one wanted more of them.

Because, they were mostly good, and added to the game experience and had some later consequences. They MATTERED. the vignettes were embarassing.

Alright, let's compare other DAO features against ToEE:
  • Combat ToEE 1 DAO 0
  • Character creation ToEE 2 - 0
  • Itemization ToEE 3 - 0
  • Recruitable NPC ToEE 4 - 0
  • Quests, fewer quests in ToEE but Nulb + Temple Quests are vastly superior, quality over quantity ToEE 5 - 0
  • Crafting ToEE 6 - 0
  • Dungeon design ToEE 7 - 0
  • Bestiary ToEE 8 - 0

But DAO has better opening vignettes, wow, great job! They get half a point...

Result ToEE 8 DAO 0.5

Game over!
 

JDR13

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Temple+ fixes most bugs and also adds some race & classes variety, vanilla ToEE is barely re-playable due to the very standard and limited character creation options.

Huh? There's nothing limited about the base game. It doesn't have prestige classes, but there's more than enough variety there especially considering it's only a 5 character party. It's not like we're talking about Knights of the Chalice here.
 

Volourn

Pretty Princess
Pretty Princess Glory to Ukraine
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Messages
24,924
  • "Combat ToEE 1 DAO 0
  • Character creation ToEE 2 - 0
  • Itemization ToEE 3 - 0
  • Recruitable NPC ToEE 4 - 0
  • Quests, fewer quests in ToEE but Nulb + Temple Quests are vastly superior, quality over quantity ToEE 5 - 0
  • Crafting ToEE 6 - 0
  • Dungeon design ToEE 7 - 0
  • Bestiary ToEE 8 - 0"
  • Why so retartet?
  • Combat better in DA
  • Itemization better in DA
  • Recruitable NPCs better in DA (clearly this proves you were trolling)
  • Quests better in DA. Even with all the fecth quests in DA, the quests in DA are vastly superior.
  • Crafting is a draw.
  • Dungeon design is better in DA.
  • bestiary in DA. Outside of frogs, monsters are largely boring in TOEE. i'll take 1000 darkspawn than a 1000 bugbears. LMAO
  • You fail again.
  • DA also has better origins/vignettes (this can't be understated), better writing, better story, better music, and better graphics.
  • This means the final count is 11-1-1. And, DA's character creation isn't horrible either. But, it isn't as full as D&D. Too bad, DA2 & DA3 got worse not better in this regard.
 

Pink Eye

Monk
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I'm very into cock and ball torture
FYI anatoliy from co8 has recreated an encounter from KotC in ToEE.

https://co8.org/community/threads/kots-challenge.13185/
Is it normal in this game for enemy ranged units to stand around doing nothing after they've run out of ammo? I used Temple+ and Circle8.
Usually they have backup weapons, but in the end it's up to the specific scripting / AI.
Well this enemy crossbow unit didn't have any melee weapon to switch to upon exhausting his ammo. He also didn't use any combat maneuvers against me. He just stood there while my monk punched him to death:
XXenp7c.png
Also how do you get that Chalice mod to work? It's been spitting runtime errors at me every time I try to launch it:
 

Sitra Achara

Arcane
Joined
Sep 1, 2003
Messages
1,859
Codex 2012 Codex 2013 Codex 2014 PC RPG Website of the Year, 2015
FYI anatoliy from co8 has recreated an encounter from KotC in ToEE.

https://co8.org/community/threads/kots-challenge.13185/
Is it normal in this game for enemy ranged units to stand around doing nothing after they've run out of ammo? I used Temple+ and Circle8.
Usually they have backup weapons, but in the end it's up to the specific scripting / AI.
Well this enemy crossbow unit didn't have any melee weapon to switch to upon exhausting his ammo. He also didn't use any combat maneuvers against me. He just stood there while my monk punched him to death:
Also how do you get that Chalice mod to work? It's been spitting runtime errors at me every time I try to launch it:
Ah, the Moathouse archers had their sidearms removed by Co8 because they would sometimes unnecessarily switch to them.

Dunno why the KotS module crashes, could be that it requires a dev build, I'll have to check.
 

Andhaira

Arcane
Joined
Nov 25, 2007
Messages
1,868,966
ToEE is fantastic, even today. Just reading this thread makes me want to go back and play it but I am playing Solasta right now (which is even better!); in fact Solasta takes a lot of inspiration from ToEE (including far superior opening vignettes) as well as Wizardry 8 (character personalities). Also I don't want to have to do Hommlet again. Still, I miss the feats at char gen and level up, which is unique to ToEE sadly (Solasta has too few). WotR will have TB from the ground up so looking forward to that as well and KM's TB is great as well, but the Pathfinder games go from level 1 - 20; ToEE & Solasta start and remain at low level and are in a low level setting and world which gives it its own rustic, gritty charm. No retarded races with wings, avian features etc either (just wish Solasta had Half-Orcs)

However do NOT install the Co8 mod; it adds retarded weeaboo shit like Cloud's sword, pokeballs that act as Summon Monster scrolls, and various other demented faggotry.

Co8 Mod...avoid like the fucking plague.
 

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