The Temple of Elemental Evil

Right, so, this lovely mess. First of all, get the Circle of Eight and Temple Plus mods - the game works so much better with them and is a virtual hive of bugs without. With that out of the way, what to make of this? The Temple of Elemental Evil is an new approach for Troika: their moment-to-moment gameplay is passable at best, but the story, the story remains in the minds of all who brave the jank. This game is the opposite. It's the single most faithful recreation of the 3.5e Dungeons and Dragons ruleset on the market barring actual virtual tabletops. That's the main selling point here: turn based combat in an RPG system that defined the 00s. The problem is that 3.5e is also, with the benefit of about twenty years of game design, a hot steaming pile of design ideas that falls appart beyond level... 6? 8? 10 if you're generous. Magic is king and everyone else is slave to its whims. This game works around this by having a lot of monsters geared against spellcasters in the later stages as well as, well, being a video game, which prevents a lot of the bovine excrement associated with the use of high-level magic. However, to say that's the only bad part of a system is a gross understatement. Full attack actions, trap feats, XP costs to crafting, inpenetrable chains of requirements, the billion ways to completely negate a specific style of play... The point is, the baseline system is a mess, and this game puts it onto your electronic storage medium of choice, carbuncles and all. Furthermore, a lot of the fun of this system lies on the character sheet and the myriad ways you can fundamentally break the playing board, and this game is a bit barebones compared to other 3.5e/Pathfinder ports. With the system chatter out of the way, what about the rest of it? The story is barebones, some of the design decisions beyond the system baffle, the interface is often a big ol' pile of jank... so why rate this 3/5? Because I like 3.5e. And you probably do as well, reading this.

Temple of Elemental Evil is a game which fans of the genre know as one of the last top-down crpg but most of the gamers never tried or played because of its bad fame as a buggy, badly written, mostly dungeon crawl oriented mess of a game. Myself haven't tried it for years because of the above mentioned notions, but now here we are and after 45 hours I can safely say that I'm happy with my purchase. Some of the criticisms still have valid points. It is not a story oriented rpg, it very faithfully simulates an actual pen and paper adventure which happens to be very dungeon heavy and I think here we can end with the critisism. Because the patched Gog version is surprisingly stable, I encountered only a handful of bugs, nothing game breaking and furthermore there are fan made patches (Circle of 8) which smoothes the experience further, add extra content ecc. So why I liked it? First the turn based combat in the game is excellent. In the first 4 levels it is very tactical, which magic spell you learn and use actually matter and it is rewarding and varied. I actually really like the combat in this game. Second is the graphics and artstyle. I think it is one of the most beautiful and detailed isometric rpgs out there. It puts Pillars of Eternity to shame despite the fact that Toee is a decade older than Poe. There is a huge amount of detail in the locations and environments. And here is the famous dungeon. Generally I prefer the more story oriented rpgs. I always considered extensive dungeons just a padding and lazyness from the developers. This is the first time however that I found a dungeon actually interesting. It is not just about corridors, halls, infinite monsters and loot. The dungeon is built up as a believable environment where people actually live and of course do evil things. It has its own society, own npcs, quests and combat encounters, but it was interesting and exciting to explore all the way around. True the game's story is not good, nor it is a focus. Still the game manages to show some well written npcs, some reactive choices in the quest, multiple endings. And owerall I enjoyed the writing. Same as the story it is not the focus of the game but I had my fair share of laughs. The game uses some decent humor and doesn't take itself too seriusly which I really apreciated. So I could beat the game and I enjoyed it enough to continue my adventure with Keep on the Borderlands which is a standalone story mod of Circle of 8 team. Sadly it didn't have a good relationship with my laptop as it caused so many bugs and glitches that I needed to uninstall it as I became more and more frustrated with it. But this review is about the base game right? Final thoughts: Temple of Elemental Evil was a very positive surprise for me, I enjoyed it and I start to understand why it still belongs to the pantheon of classic crpgs despite its bad rep. If you like the genre I definitely recommend you to try, you won't be disappointed.

This is definitely quite the 'Jekyll and Hyde' game. It does some things better than any RPG, but it also has some serious flaws that conspire to pull it down. The good: the engine and combat mechanics are fantastic. ToEE has simply the best and most faithful implementation of the 3.5 ed. D&D ruleset that I have seen in a video game. The attention to detail is amazing and the turn-based combat works very well. The bad: the Circle of Eight mod pack fixes a lot of bugs that plagued the original game; however, it can't fix the fact that the campaign that has been built on the engine is quite lacking in several ways: The plot is very thin and the game is rather directionless, especially in the early stages before you reach the temple. It can be confusing and frustrating trying to figure out what you are supposed to be doing. Many of the areas you visit also seem somewhat sterile and there is a distinct lack of loot to find. There are many barrels and containers in the temple that are just empty, which somewhat dampens the fun of exploration. There is also a notable lack of traps, locks and in general things for a thief-type character to do. I don't believe the Moathouse (one of the first areas you will explore) has a single trap to find or lock to pick. The game also has a nasty habit of dropping the player straight into combat on area transitions and/or springing ambushes. This seems unreasonable and removes the possibility for the party to scout ahead to assess potential threats. I think whether you will like ToEE will come down to what sort of RPG fan you are. If you are the sort of player that prioritizes combat, stats and character progression, this is the RPG for you. However, if you place more value on plot, characters and dialogue, you will probably be less impressed. I dearly wish there had been more RPGs made using this engine, as it is fantastic. Overall, I would like to give the game 3.5 stars, but I will up it to 4 as I have a soft spot for it.

I checked a lot of D&D video-games, and TOEE seems to be simply the best implementation of board game, will all the efforts community put into it (CO8 and Temple+). Regardless generic story, everything else gives tons of fun and challenges, and I really love the graphics and design. After Arcanum, where almost everything looks like a placeholder, TOEE locations, animations and visuals look incredible even today

This is one of the best turn based games I've ever played in my life, which makes me wonder why there were no more turn based D&D. It's combat focused adventure through the aforementioned Temple. Circled menus with dozen of tactical option available at any moment let you deal with most situations. Dozen of skills, spells and items to gather and craft. Like dungeon crawler but in different perspective with different mechanics. Played with Circle of Eight (both additional content and vanilla) and Temple+, it's the best combo to play the game. One tip - abuse camping ambushes to gain 2nd level for your group, game starts from there. You can feel growing power with every level (up to maximum 10th, but you can set it to even higher for even more ridiculous power).