The Codex's official opinion on Temple of Elemental Evil?

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I enjoyed ToEE thoroughly. This is a module that I grew up waiting for and read with fervor when it finally got released. To see it come to the PC for me was an exciting thing.

Then again, I used to sit there for hours on end painting with excrutiating detail my miniature lead figurines back in the day, I read the DM's guide probably a thousand times, I remember the odd orange-colored half-sized NPC sheets (and went through way too many of them before discovering the wonders of a Xerox machine) and therefore naturally gravitated towards anything authentic D&D.

Say what you will about its content, but this was a faithful translation of Gygax's seminal work. It would've been infinitely better if it were to have implemented some of the live-DM abilities of a NWN. *THAT* would have been something special. As it is, if you played it without some degree of LARPing, you did it wrong.

Edit: Ahh, a little hyperbolic of me on the 'seminal' comment, but I'll stick with my stance on the supermodule. Maybe its hype was what truly made it stand out to me, but it still was a big deal back then. I actually think Hommlett was the better module.

I was trying so damn hard to have fun in ToEE Co8 and I succeeded maybe 10% of the time. (I didn't play vanilla ToEE)

It's buggy as hell (many CTD's), and it just lacks that "fun" factor that makes a game, you know, fun. It had literally 0 interesting NPCs. No interesting quests. Boring turn-based combat (all that grapple/tumble/etc. gimmicks mattered squat since you can easily just attack everything to death). Completely broken shit like that "neutral" sword that deals insane damage. So the only incentive to play through is to see numbers go up, but even that isn't fun since there's very little fun/challenge once you've earned your first few levels. I kinda played through it still since I had nothing better to do until the Elemental Nodes, and then I couldn't take it anymore and quit.

I'd give it 3 out of 1000324

as far as I'm aware, the game was made to follow the actual module very closely, so I'm not sure why people complain about the content or encounter design. it was taken from the book, chill the fuck out.

the game is great for what it does: brings DnD to the PC, has great TB combat, great graphics. what more do you want from a DnD computer game? choice & consequence? oh, it has that too

With the community patch ToEE is a bit short (just like Arcanum IMO) but otherwise awesome.

Betrayal at Krondor was very primitive. Not sure why anybody would want to make that comparison.

I loved this game. With the Co8 patch I played all the way through till the end. I will say the combat did get a bit boring once you became OP'd but that is a failing of D&D itself. It followed the original campaign very closely, so perhaps you should blame Gygax for a few things and not the video game iteration. The turn based tactical combat in this game was perhaps the most fun I've had in a long, long time. It's just very entertaining the amount of options you have with all the 3.5ED rules and a full party of chars you made yourself.

Now, I have never played IWD, I plan on doing it some day, but part of me fails to see how any game with RTwP could compete against ToEE's turn based awesomeness. The simple fact of the matter is, RTwP is sit back and watch what happens. TB is plan each move, step by step. Perhaps you could make the argument that eventually, gamers will always find an exploit or two, and then continue to use those exploits. Maybe enduring these exploits as the combat gets boring is less tedious in RTwP because trash encounters go faster.

ToEE really, REALLY shone at the lower levels. It was brilliant. The module limited this engine immensely though and it is a fucking fucking shame that this game was rushed out the door with the crap code it has. I would to this day pay full price for a new game with a totally bug fixed engine. The graphics/animations were perfect IMO. The locations lacked the variety of BG, but they were very rich and detailed, with better textures and the perfect blend of 3D effects and 2D glory.

Naturally I voted yes.

Fantastic combat engine + utter shit encounter design = wasted potential

I like it, but not only is the content terrible, the game itself is broken as all hell. All I like about it is the combat system, which is good enough at low levels to give out a small recommendation. Becomes worse once you get Fireball and can ninja-snipe all the mobs with it. High levels don't matter too much, since the game will probably corrupt your saves before you can reach that point.

I guess you could say it's a game I'd like to love, but it just has so many flaws that I can't. I enjoy flawed games almost exclusively, but ToEE has to little going for it. I still voted Yes, though.

Best game ever. Enjoy it more than Fallout, and I like Fallout. Agree about the content (lack of). The game itself is so wonderful and holds so much promise, but then you realize that it´s "empty". Even with the Co8 thing it does not get much better.

The temple quests might've had a great amount of C&C, but the place just felt too static. The people there are so easily fooled with robes that are available for anyone who stumbles upon chests on the top floor (I wonder why the temples won't use this fact vs each other), and even if you fully assault them, free prisoners, and so on, nobody mobilizes their forces after you but you can casually rest in the temple, clearing it 1 room of bugbears at a time at your leisure.
That kills the atmosphere for me, no feeling of danger or urgency.

Also Fireball (and whatever similar, AoE dmg dealers like Icy Rain there is) is too damn powerful, it trivializes other spells and every mid-level encounter way too much.

Good game, would be great had they made Hommlett into nothing more than a place for buying and resting and taken more creative liberties about the adaptation of the module, including more interesting dynamics in the temple. Improved by the CO8, specially by the combat-centered quest that replaces the banal shit boring Hommlett fetching as an early game source of XP. This is a dungeon crawler and the sections that aren't about it show up their weakness. Considering this was the first combat-centric CRPG Troika did, they did it pretty well too. Had it been a bit more balanced and bug free and the few non-combat sections been fun rather than boring, it would stand as one of the best CRPGs of all time.

I would love it if inXile used the ToEE engine for Wasteland 2.

Why the hell would that be good? The combat rules might've been good, but the engine itself was pretty shit what with all the pathing, save corruption etc. issues.

I'm sure the dudes at inXile could iron out those issues.

I did suggest it in the 'Engine' thread in the W2 boards weeks ago, but no one seemed to know what the fuck ToEE was, everybody going on about cryengine, UE3 and whatnot.

So would be the actual worthwhile reusable part of that engine?

graphics, man. Infinity's hand-drawn backgrounds are shit compared to what ToEE has. not to mention 3D character models that don't look out of place. ToEE is the most beautiful RPG I've ever played

And what does that have to do with the engine?

Also, Infinity's backgrounds are not hand-drawn.

"pre-rendered", whatever

graphics have everything to do with the engine. not the textures of course, but stuff like lighting, shadows etc. this is why Unreal 2 Engine games all look the same.

I know.

What I don't know is why you would want the buggy mess that is the ToEE engine when pre-rendered backgrounds with 3D models (what you like about it) can be done on others.

well, because I'm not entirely sure in inXile's programmers' capabilities to take just any engine and make an isometric game as beautiful as ToEE. unfortunately, I only played the Co8 version of the game and only encountered one game-breaking bug. I don't know how bad the engine really is. so you could be right, of course.

still, how many engines are there today that are designed with 2D in mind? Unity maybe. I bet there are others. but ToEE's graphics really hold up well even today, with a bit of tweaking it could've been used to make a kick-ass game, I think. that's my reasoning

ToEE is a combat engine looking for a game.

Hat's off to a bunch of guys who only had 18 months to build a CRPG...imagine what could have been made if Atari gave them 2 or 3 years. It's obvious that the lack of time hurt the game greatly, firstly the role playing elements are very weak, and the writing isn't the best, but the engine and combat are first class. The game is too easy though, a solo sorcerer can waltz through the game charming everything, then it's just a case of sitting back and enjoying the slaughter.

I was very excited about this game when it first came out because I have the original D&D module it is based on. I'm just lucky I have an older brother who collected everything D&D from about 1979 - 1988 and passed it down to me. Now it all sits in a box out in my shed waiting to be rediscovered.

Buggy and half-finished game, typical of Troika. My first run-though I took Druella, who PICKED UP EVERY ITEM ON THE MAP and never, ever traded it despite being Max Encumbered. Still managed to fight through that (hell, I didn't even sacrifice her: RP +1!)
and other ridiculousness to finish.

The winning aspect is the fantastic turn-based D&D combat, and it is that indeed. Yet paying attention to it is wholly unnecessary after 3rd or 4th level, as the fights become MUCH easier than even, say, BG realtime-with-pause battles. At least BG dished out a plethora of challenging fights every damn level and map. TOEE is: tough for the first few quests outside of Hommel, then, uh...faceplant a few thousands enemies in dozens of boring and safe set-tos.

The CO8 mod made things a lot more challenging though, and makes the game pretty damn good. Too bad Troika or their everpresent (possibly valid but I as a consumer don't give a shit) excuse of publisher pressure led them to give out a crappy virgin game.

Condemnation:

Even though Codex rave and rant about the goodness of ToEE, I never find the curiousity to not remove this from inventory, let alone trying it. Lackaluster game!

Yo bro I dunno about you but I don't remember any lobsters in my DnD games.