This where you start chatting with the locals and perhaps doing favours to start earning experience. There are a multitude of quests but I must admit I wasn’t too enthusiastic here. You can do things like play Cupid and get a couple together, play Romeo and woo a couple of the women, catch a couple of petty thieves, help someone get accepted into the town militia, or find converts for the church. Although they can get intertwined these quests are mostly solved by a lot of walking and talking. There are one or two more ‘heroic’ deeds to be done but for a while there I thought I was in a Soapie rather than a fantastic fantasy rpg.

I must admit this initial part of the game does get a bit mundane. Whilst you run around doing favours there doesn’t seem to be any semblance of a game story lurking in the background, most locals aren’t even aware that there’s a problem with bandits let alone the worst that could be to come.

In fact The Temple of Elemental Evil is overall very light on story. Towards the end it picks up a bit when there are different factions involved and opportunities to play the game out in half a dozen or so different ways, but there certainly isn’t a strong story line propelling you on. I suppose this is a plus for some players who don’t like their games ‘tarnished’ with the smell of linearity, but I’m not one of them. I like to feel that I’m ‘living’ a story and that a lot of my deeds have purpose. In the scheme of things, when evil is lurking nearby and about to knock on your door, who cares if two people get together or not, surely "the problems of two little people don’t amount to a hill of beans ..."​