The Temple of Elemental Evil

I thought I knew all the D&D CRPG's, but I'd never heard of this game. I should have. Someone at Troika LOVED D&D, there's a lot of effort poured into this. There's a lot of customisation and the detail of the D&D system is (I assume) faithfully recreated to the last painful dice roll. You can tell it was rushed though - for example, it looks like the spell list goes all the way up to level 9, but you won't find any spells scrolls above level 6. TOEE apparently has a vibrant modding community with a site called the "Circle of 8", I didn't use their mod but I'm told that it removes a lot of the bugs and adds a lot of content. I spent WAY too long playing this game and yet it felt oddly light on content, it's a game crying for DLC in the days before they had DLC. Overall - 4 stars.

I Love this game... I keep getting nostalgia to play this game every 3 years or so. I know that the game is not very accessible today if you are new D&D and you do need to research a lot. But if you do have some prior knowledge of D&D rules you will probably figure out a lot of the game by yourself. It took me a few years to realize that as a Cleric or a Druid you can just click and hold the shift key to make all your spells into heals or summon spells in case of druid (this is while in the radial menu interface). There are good guides and Lets play on youtube that you can check out for a first run with the game. I haven't play the game in a few years but I wish that some professionals game designers would make an Enhanced edition of this game that could make it compatible with win 10... I am not interested in better graphics or new UI.. Just stability and a bug Free TOEE would be a enough... There has been for years a community known as Circle of eight that did a lot of work on mod the game but I always had tremendous difficulties installing any version of those mods. Even with win 7 I had troubles but I did finish the game twice. Always played Lawful good cause I wanted a Paladin as my leader. If TOEE Enhanced Edition is made I will buy it on release day.

As a young player ( my first game I actually played properly ) I never completed it until last year , I found it so amazing, so many possibility's , you could just go on and on (and even though the max level is ten ) so many skills to learn ,as I said the possibility's are endless , and even though this is a old game , I reckon this epic game should still be on the shelves to buy !!!

This is probably the best and truest DnD game ever made, the combat is perfect in every single way. But it is very, VERY obvious that the developers ran out of money halfway through the game. You first town you visit is has a ton of side quest and interesting characters. The second town feels completely empty. And when you finally reach the Temple of Elemental Evil, the whole quest is over in a couple of hours, less if you know your way around the temple. And the ending is pretty much; "hey here is this quest, looks like any other quest, NOPE! its actually the ending which we didn't set up at all! Sorry but we didn't have enough money to actually make an ending" Such a shame. I've anyone ever decided to make a spiritual squeal, I would buy it in a heartbeat.

If you so allow me, let me start by using an example. Picture this with me: Your 5 man party have just entered a cave rumored to be inhabited by a tribe of cannibal magic-thirsty goblins. You know that they are used to trap invaders, using the many tunnels you, however, are too small to enter. You come to a narrow and long corridor, that reeks of an ambush. Any worried leader would pretty much decide to prepare the front and the back against attacks, while readying everyone on the middle to start blasting both ways with anything that fires, freezes or explodes targets. Now, in most real time strategy games you'd be expected to pause and move everyone at the same time, select spells and struggle to hold your formation against the AI of your characters who desperately charge against the enemies that might come. In ToEE you don't. With a simple right click you so much decide your fighter to stay his ground and automatically strike any incoming creature, as choose the target for your wizard's magic bolts. Every action of the game takes in consideration the real P&P rules, and does this in a way that feels not only easy to experienced users and beginners alike, but on a way that actually feels natural. While the mechanic of the game really is its own pearl, the history also holds it ground. Having excellent variations of itself - each one depending on your party's alignment - and intelligent dialogues and quests, it actually doesn't feels that heavy to read all the lines. And trust me when I say there ain't much to read if you don't want to - fighting is pretty much a click away of any action packed scene on the game. Now, you might be asking me, luc, you gave this game four stars out of five. Where are it's flaws? The answer? Length. The game is extremely short. Anyone used to Baldur's Gate or the infinite expansions of Never Winter Nights will notice how the game progresses too fast for it's own good, as it rushes to the final scenes. Doubling the game length - or even tripling it - would pretty much be what I'd be looking for. Conclusions? A real master piece of it's time. ToEE makes an excellent addition to any RPG fan's shelf. The party setup, the spells, feats, equipment, story, side-quests... Everything that matters is there. And, if you don't really mind, the game's so addictive that it's length actually awards it with an extreme high replay rating.