ToEE is the worst RPG ever made

[Sol Invictus]

At least according to PC Gamer UK.

http://forcesofchaos.port5.com/toee.jpg

Enjoy.

 

[Visceris]

A tad harsh, I mean PoOR 2 was far far worse.

 

[Volourn]

Bah. I disagree with the article.

 

[chrisbeddoes]

they gave it 57 % .
Sad .

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Interesting... where to begin?

ToEE rejects the character-recruiting dynamic of Baldur's Gate in favour of organizing your entire team of five (or picking from pre-sets) at the outset. Removing the possibility of meeting rounded individuals with their own backgrounds and personalities means your party is essentially a group of faceless meatbags, and while the chance to recruit men-at-arms to beef up your squad is welcome, the opportunity to make them genuinely engaging is missed."

So. First the "reviewer" (which probably thinks himself to be a professional) claims the game rejects character-recruiting but later on he states its in the game. Second, comparing a single-character, story-driven CRPG with a party-driven, dungeon crawling CRPG for reviewing purposes really speaks volumes of his ability to make simple comparisons. No Icewind Dale, no Wizardry, flat out Baldur's Gate. Mahvelous.

"Much has been made of the differing experiences you'll have depending on your party's alignment, but in truth this amounts to little more than a very brief opening vignette and alternative endings.

And whatever little it amounts to, its a step beyond the vast majority of whatever other CRPGs present. Who would've thought about it, multiple beginnigns and multiple endings to be of little interest.

At least alignment is being taken into consideration here.

Did this guy get paid? I certainly hope not. I'd be devastated if this sorry excuse for a reviewer was actually given money to spout nonsense like this :evil:

With some luck though, given each time we crucify reviews and reviewers they whine about it here, mayhaps this wannabe gaming journalist will find his way here too. I've got my torch ready.

 

[Spazmo]

That's a lie. Different alignments yeild different beginnings and endings, yes, but also different middles. If Reviewer McIdiot decided to play a chaotic evil party exactly the same way as a lawful good one, that's his own damn fault. The truth here is that ToEE provided a wealth of options for both good and evil players.

One gripe I do have with ToEE--something I mentioned in my review--is the vignettes. They're good, but not as good as they could have been. The neutral good one is particularly uninteresting as you simply get one encounter at the very beginning of the game and that's it. It leads you to one character in Hommlet and that's the end of it. I've recently restarted the game with a chaotic good party, and this one is better. You get a quest from the elves to rescue a pair of elven nobles. So beyond just the opening vignette and the first person you talk to in Hommlet, this vignette affects how the game plays out since you have to keep an eye out for your nobles. The problem, though, is this: what if I'm playing an all-dwarf CG party? Why should my dwarf warriors accept this quest and go to Hommlet? Hell, why would they even be elf-friends in the first place?

So two things need to be done to vignettes to make them really cool. First off, make them affect how the game plays throughout the game. Give the player a long-reaching objective that changes how the game plays for them. Second, make them depend on more than alignment. In the case of D&D, for instance, make race a factor, too. Slap that into the vignette concept and I think it'll be really great.

 

[Visceris]

First thing a reviewer needs to do is know the genre.

Dungeon Crawling CRPGs are not going to be in the same class of role playing as Story Driven CRPGs. When I reviewed ToEE I took in the fact of the bugs, style, and themes the game held. Compared to Icewind Dale, ToEE fails short on a number of things, but that would be a valid comparison.

As for the opening vignettes and multiple endings, that are strengths and having them alignment based is not a bad idea. I have yet seen another CRPG that has multiple beginnings like that based on player choice in character design since Ultima 4.

This reviewer needs to go back to school. Even though I am not a journalist, in the sense I never took any classes, but this is just a terrible review of the game.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

things

Definetely agree with you there. I also think vignettes could be better implemented. More factors into play and it'd definetely would work much much better.

 

[Volourn]

Please. While I disagree with the over allr eview. The different openings were nothing more than wasted effort. From the two I actually tried, from the one I saw my brotehr have,a nd the ones I've heard about; the vignettes all have one thing in common - they add nothing significant to the game as far fun, and true replay value is concerned. Pre rel3ease; theyw ere hyped as amazing things with cool role-playing yet the only role-playing pretty much done in the vignettes is choose your alignment, and that's it. *yawn* Nice idea that fell flat on its face.

 

[triCritical]

The vignettes were pretty weak. They gave each party a different reason for being at Hommlet, which IMO is not necessary. Suffice it to say, your there, deal with it and lets play. Furthermore, once in Hommlet a lot of the internal quest were pretty one dimensional, unfortunately. So Vignettes kind of got my hopes up for a better Hommlet as well.

 

[Rosh]

I believe that with a bit more effort, they could have been better, but at least they did one good thing. They've introduced this and could prompt it for others to try.

What do you expect about the reviewer? The only thing more notoriously inbred in the UK than the British nobility are the PC Gamer UK reviewers. :D

 

[Voss]

Yeah, the vignettes should have been seriously fleshed out. And several of them were redundant or pointless as well. (The Cuthberite sends you to the same rock as the CN quest- which is simply odd given the opposite alignment), The TN sends you to find out why the druid hasn't sent a message, turns out he just hasn't bothered..., and most end up with "check the moathouse. Oh, not there? Well, wander over to that Nulb place..."

Great idea, but there should have been a lot more to them.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I think the vignettes were a damned cool addition to the game. I'm rather sick of D&D CRPGs that have the same intro regardless of the alignment, and that intro is nearly always, THIS TOWN IS IN A LOT OF TROUBLE! YOU CAME TO HELP OUT! As short and sweet as some of the vignettes are, they certainly do remove that annoyance from D&D gaming on the computer, because why the hell would my Lawful Evil band of asshats go to help out a town in trouble where there's a hell of a lot of risk to their own skin? Especially at low levels?

ToEE rejects the character-recruiting dynamic of Baldur's Gate in favour of organizing your entire team of five (or picking from pre-sets) at the outset. Removing the possibility of meeting rounded individuals with their own backgrounds and personalities means your party is essentially a group of faceless meatbags, and while the chance to recruit men-at-arms to beef up your squad is welcome, the opportunity to make them genuinely engaging is missed."

Well, firstly, you can recruit followers, you can only recruit three instead of five of them. Secondly, regardless of their so-called personalities, they're still meatpuppets in both games because you control them almost completely. Then again, this is something I'd be less inclined to fault a dungeon crawler for than a full fledged CRPG.

 

[Affe - Duke of Spam]

They gave NWN 90%+
go figure.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

They gave NWN 90%+
go figure.

Yeah... but NWN was 'revolutionary'.

 

[Megatron]

meh, toee sold pretty well in the uk on release. PC magazines here are utter shit.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Reviewer is a dick

 

[taks]

hehe...
yeah, the vignettes were kinda neat, however, the "wealth" of options that followed regardless of choice all mostly led down the same path with the same result. i've started somewhere around 5 games (different alignment each time) and have noticed very little in the way of "multiple solutions" to different problems. i suppose there are differences between good and bad alignments once you reach the temple (kill, kill, kill for good, kiss ass, kiss ass, kiss ass for evil) but other than that... the reviewer kinda blew it with bg comparisons... definitely showed his inexperience.

mark

 

[Sol Invictus]

I kill kill killed for evil. Watch the result.

"You are the most powerful evil in the land!"

 

[Transcendent One]

The vignettes were indeed not carried out to their fullest potential. Troika did raise quite a hype about the opening vignettes - it made me think of several hour long stretches consisting of several interesting areas with unique NPC's and battles to fight...

Oh well, that is what I was hoping for at least. What I got was 1-2 minute long one area vignettes. It's still a good start, though, because, like that other poster, I also find it infuriating how in most games the story starts out as "you've come to help a city bla bla bla".

But I can't help but laugh at that comment on how it's bad that Troika decided not to use the Bioware NPC system from Baldur's Gate. Really, the NPC's in BG were just carbon copies of the same unnamed character with zero personality. Honestly, I replayed BG with a party created fully on my own (I just gave the other members the same portraits and names as the joinable NPC's), and noticed absolutely no difference

 

[Nomad]

I'm sorry but your experience with BG1 was far different from mine. Some of the NPCs I had in my party were:

Imoen
Monteron
Xar
Jaheira
Kalid
Minsc
Dynaheir

None of them were carbon copies of the other. Monteron and Xar were insane and got into a fight with Kalid and Jaheira outside a Xvart village over the good / evil actions being taken by the party. After Monteron and Xar left, I picked up Minsc and Dynaheir and again, their interactions were nothing like those from Jaheira and Kalid or Monteron and Xar. One thing you could say about Minsc was that he always had a way of looking at the world that was unique from everyone else.

So, if you played through BG twice, once with the unique NPCs you found in the world and once with a completely generated party, isn't that twice as much as you could do with ToEE? From what I understand, the mercenaries you could hire in ToEE didn't quite have the depth of a Minsc or Jaheira so they don't really count, do they?


N.

 

[Spazmo]

The depth of BG1 NPCs was limited to occasionally fighting about something they were pretty damned happy to do at the time or occasionally spouting some scripted line about a situation. If they had any real depth, they wouldn't agree to commit acts that go against their alignment in the first place. In the end, BG NPCs are just [class] [alignment].

It is true that ToEE's NPCs aren't very good. Once again, Arcanum is probably the best game I've seen thus far with regards to party members.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Yeah, 6 pre-scripted lines does not a character make. The lines are funny the first couple of times. Then when they keep repeating them it's just a little annoying. Not "You must gather your party before venturing forth" annoying, but annoying.

Like Spazmo said, they still do whatever you want them to do. Want Jaheira to off Khalid? No problem. Want Ajantis to murder a few orphans? No problem. All they'll do is complain about it later. Not to mention it seems kind of silly that evil characters get bent out of shape if your reputation gets too high, when having a high reputation has so many benefits even the most self-serving person could see the reason in at least appearing to be a nice guy and resist the urge to kill a few villagers here and there for little to no gain.

 

[Nomad]

?

Of course the responses are pre-scripted - it's a computer game. There is no _actual_ depth to any AI-driven NPC, it's all a simulation. Eventually, you'll hit the design limit of any computer controlled character. Why is this a surprise given the limits of the medium in which you're playing (i.e. a computer)? Why do these limits invalidate or diminish at least the attempt to make unique and interesting NPCs? That is, if BioWare's taking shots for having shallow NPCs that are at least unique, why isn't Troika being similarly lambasted for not even doing that (especially if it's _so_ easy that BioWare must be full of idiots to have done it so incompetantly)?

Now, I'm positive that you're not saying that you would rather the characters under your control in a party-based CRPG, refuse to obey your orders because they disagree with your main character. Please clarify.


N.

 

[Jed]

Now, I'm positive that you're not saying that you would rather the characters under your control in a party-based CRPG, refuse to obey your orders because they disagree with your main character.

That would be a good first step toward putting some "Role" in the play.