Temple of Elemental Evil

Combat is one of this games strong points though because it is turn based and brings with it a tactical element that is lost by most real-time combat rpgs. The implementation of the 3.5 edition Dungeons & Dragons rules is really very good. You can flank enemies, feint, perform a coup de grace. You can perform a full on attack with a penalty to defence as well as take cover behind scenery. You can even deal non-lethal damage to an opponent should you wish to incapacitate a target but also keep them alive. it also makes character building much more fun because many of the feats and skills you choose at the beginning of the game have a tangible and noticeable effect on the way your characters handle combat. The height of your character is customisable, as is hair colour and style. I’ve spent hours just building new characters and testing which combinations work best and what feats are useful under certain circumstances. Many of the feats and skills are used outside combat too making Non Player Character interaction quite flexible. You can intimidate NPCs into doing what you want. You can bribe some of them. if you are observant then you can spot NPCs cheating you in a game of cards or extorting you by selling goods at crazy prices.

The whole thing is wrapped up with beautifully animated models and rendered backdrops. Cloaks waiver in the breeze, your rogue wipes his/her brow when s/he is picking a lock. Armour pieces all have unique graphics so you can see circlets around your character's foreheads and you can see them wearing different gloves and boots. All the character portraits, which are sadly limited, also look quite a lot like the in game models, particularly the druid models so that’s a bonus to the die hard role players out there.

The music is fantastic and adds to the ambience of the game, which comes into its own when you get to the temple. Actually the presentation is first rate throughout.

And then things start to go wrong. Or rather they were never wrong to begin with but were traits of the original pen and paper Greyhawk module. You either liked them or you didn’t. The backgrounds are unusually static. You can’t open a lot of the cupboards, look on the shelves or sift through debris in search of items. Very few things in the game world are ‘pillageable’ aside from corpses. The quests suffer from the same rigidity of the game world. they are mostly just simple FedEx quests. talk to person A. person A asks you to get an item from person B. person B wont give you the item till you retrieve something from person C. and so on. It’s like Morrowind in this respect. Unlike Morrowind though you will never create god like characters in ToEE. The level limit is 10 and the game was designed to be played with that in mind. The lack of any fixed storyline is both good and bad. Its good because you can do what YOU want. If you create an evil party your opening vignette places you in a suitably evil scenario where you are killing innocents and burning down churches. Your dialogue options are also occasionally different. You get a real sense of consequence and responsibility for your actions whilst in the game. It’s bad because it sometimes leaves you aimless and wandering. ToEE is so small you can end up fluking your way through much of the game and wonder where you are and what you are doing. It also makes everything less dramatic, which counts for a lot when you look at the intricate, interwoven stories that accompany games like those in Final Fantasy series. There’s a real sense of emotion and change and progression in Final Fantasy and BGII. In ToEE all of that is optional, provided by the player at his/her discretion. This kind of freedom I quite like but then I’m not capable of crafting a story like those in FF. Like Morrowind, the ability to do what you like, when you like and deal with the consequences of your actions whilst in the game is both a blessing and a curse. It’s really up to you to decide which type you like.

And then there are the bugs. This is where things go wrong for a lot of people really fast. This game is bugged on a similar scale to Ultima IX to those who played it. To those who didn’t play Ultima IX then ToEE is bugged to hell and back. A lot of them are really trivial, silly mistakes that are currently already fixed by fans and are in the process of being fixed by the developers. Some bugs are really quite serious and result in lockups and corrupted save data. I have not experienced any serious problems but some have. Also, it is often chronically slow, particularly in the Temple itself. I have a 1.6 ghz Pentium 4, 512mb RAM, Radeon 9600 pro and loads of virtual memory and it gets close to unplayable late in the game. My PC isnt state of the art but it’s hardly slow either.

ToEE was forcibly released by Atari (publisher) much earlier than Troika (developer) wanted. Thus some of the games content didn’t make it into the finished product and the game was not beta tested properly. This is one of the reasons why the game is so heavily bugged. On the flipside Troika is correcting the problem and have expressed a desire to add the content that was discarded at a later date.

Overall I’m glad I purchased the game. It isnt a very demanding game in terms of game play hours and that fits me just fine because I don’t always have time to play video games. I liked the thoughtful touches littered throughout, the slower pace and well implemented turn based combat and I like how the game is very replayable. I just can’t help but feel that it could have been so much more than it actually is.

I will give this game 5 stars as it was generally so well done but I do have some gripes that if addressed would make any future installments (please make these!) quite simply the best games ever!

1 - characters get 'stuck' sometimes and can't move around each other. This was annoying but certainly not game-breaking
2 - sadly the game is a plot-free zone. There is no depth in the storyline and it is a case of room monster treasure. This is a shame as if a plot had been added to this game it would have blown me away! I hope one is added to the next one.
3 - Similar to the no plot issue there are also no real quests. You can hack your way through the entire thing with about 2 conversations. That said the battles were SO rich that it almost compensated for it.
4 - the game was too short. I could have carried on for ages - seems about half as long as say BG. Even with the limited plot I would have settled for more levels just so it would carry on.
5 - the game did slow down in some areas to a near standstill(not too many) that made play very difficult indeed. It seemed to be a case of escaping these areas and it would be fine again.
6 - not enough AI where spellcasters were involved. There was also a lack of the 'larger' battles where there are many different kinds of foes. The toughest magic user could be taken down easily as not enough thought was put into their defences or tactics.

Gripes aside this system DOES surpass BG & IWD - this is something I never thought I would say. I only wish they would churn out more of these every year! There are so many D&D adventures that could be easily covered and they could make them endlessly as far as I am concerned. PLEASE do followups!!