The Temple of Elemental Evil

Almost all my CRPG experience comes from playing the NWN, BG and IWD games. I think this game fails in a couple ways. I am maybe half way through and I still don't give a hoot about a single NPC, I don't care about my own characters and I can't even think of the names of my hired help off the top of my head as I write this. We'll call him "Oaf with a hammer". The best part of these games is getting to know NPCs and your own characters and being emotionally invested in them and what they are trying to do. TOEE does not offer this. As many have mentioned, the beginning of the game forces you to spend a few hours wanting to claw your eyes out by asking you to play town go-fer in Hommlet. It's excruciating, a bit confusing and not the least bit rewarding in any way. Even with all that being said, the dungeon crawl and combat aspects of it are pretty satisfying. I hated only giving this two stars because sentimentally, I am a total sucker for almost anything with the DnD name slapped on it, but I frankly don't particularly love playing this game.

Big, BIG detail that i noticed, its a PAIN to make the game work on windows 10, seemingly needing some outside mod to do so. Got it as part of the D&D bundle and if you got it like that? Okay, rest works fine. If you want just this one, make sure you read up about how to make it work first and then decide.

Tjhis game is FULL of "role playing" goodness. You just have to understand that the "role playing" part of the term "Role Playing game" does NOT refer to what actors mean when they 'search for good roles to take'. The "role playing" in RPGs refers to the TACTICAL role of characters in a party. RPGs are a direct descendent of table-top war games. Where war games emphasized 'armies' or entire crews(i.e. tanks) within larger armies(and 'divisions', 'brigades' etc.), the RPG emphasized single 'characters' as units within a 'squad'(called a "party"). So they are4 technically squad-based tactical games. D&D, even in it's best form(re: the 3.5 ed. rule set) is fraught with nonsensical, illogical game mechanics. "Hit points" being nonsensically defined to rationalize their equally nonsensical increases with experience(RuneQuest did away with this way back in the late 1970s but most RPGs are still playing catch up here), the "Fire and forget" spell system(ugh! How did this ugliness survive for decades after better systems were introduced?!), etc.. But ignoring problems of logical consistency within the rules set, ToEE is a great game. Whereas Baldur's gate forced you to create a single character and then recruit others(unless you use the multiplayer work around) and Icewind Dale does not allow for recruiting RPCs at all, ToEE makes a nice compromise by allowing you to create five and recruit three. This allows you to make sure you have the party you want while still allowing you to recruit additional members who may offer unique benefits. The radial menus used here are a crappy feature and make the interface kind of screwy but this is a minor quibble I suppose. Being a more combat-oriented game than say Baldur's Gate, it is a good thing they went with true turn-based combat. In this respect ToEE is far superior to both of the Baldur's gate games because you do not have to struggle with pathing issues when you give orders to your characters(not to mention the 'feats' and such of 3rd edition D&D).

Not very fun. Too janky to play!

Its an old game that got revamped by another company that knows what they are doing. Circle of Eight is the company. Original it was Troika that created the game. Circle of Eight did the improvements and fixed the game.