Posted on: April 28, 2016
rosumek
Verified ownerGames: 146 Reviews: 26
Unbelievably boring
I'm a huge fan of D&D games and I tried this one game after loving all Infinity games and disliking both Neverwinter Nights. Isometric tactical goodness rules over 3D shiny stuff. But TOEE is a very different monster. Everything is so slow and boring that just the stronger ones could achieve the supposed fun at the end of the tunnel. And, unlikely a previous reviewer, I tried the game for several hours and days. Half of it just trying to fix the bugfest with the unnoficial patches. The combat is a perfect implementation of D&D rules, but fidelity should not overcome dynamics like here. The radial menu is cumbersome and applying keyboards shortcuts is not a definitive solution. In the dungeons, it's hard to know also where your characters could walk, or how many could attack an enemy at once, thus part of the tactical planning is gone. Besides combat you have the non-combat, that, as noted by many, is the weakest part of the game. Characters are boring, voices are boring, and walking around in Hommlet is incredible boring. It takes a lot of time to go from one house to another, and there is many of them. If you want iron stuff, go to one. Leather stuff, another. Very realistic, sure, but you will waste your life looking the little sprites slowly crossing the village. Graphics are good, but if you play in the high resolutions supported by the patches, everything will be very tiny. That is a problem because TAB key highlights doors and fallen equipment, but not containers (even if this is stated in the manual). Know that classic villain journal that sets the plot in motion? Yes, it is in that pair pixels hidden among many unusable furniture with the same looking. That was 2003, five years after BG1 showed that pixel hunt for little secrets is not so cool as it seems. The music, on the other side, could be desscribed with only one word. That one I used several times in this review, and, in fact, could substitute all the rambling before: boring!
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