The Temple of Elemental Evil

"Great game, huge buglist"

This is a remake of the classic Dungeons and Dragons 1st edition module by Gary Gygax set in the Greyhawk universe. Trioka sold this game as an exact computerized version of the original, except with the new 3.5 rules set for D&D. Unfortunately, the publisher, Atari, can be blamed for the low score, as the rushed they production of the game, as well as meddled with the game's content, evidently to win a lower ESRB rating.

Graphics 7/10
For a 2d game, it actually looks rather good. Trees move with the wind. Very fluid animations. Spells look great. Magic Missiles fly randomly about on their path to strike opponents. Every set of armour has a unique drawing that affects your characters' avatars. There are several bugs related to animations however. Move your mouse over an area that cannot be reached by characters, such as a deep river or a dungeon wall, and the game ''hiccups'' and slows for 1-5 seconds. Fog in the game also causes slow downs and choppiness.

Sound 5/10
I didn't expect sound to be a big part in this game, but I was still disappointed in the quality. The game's music is acceptable at the best of times, and horrid at the worst. After finishing the first part of the game, I turned the music volume sound down to zero. The voice acting is especially bad for NPC's. It can best be described as ''not rehearsed''. On the plus side, there are quite a few voice sets for player characters, many of which are very good. There are more in quantity then Baldur's Gate, but they each have only a few phrases (so no Easter Eggs like in Baldur's Gate I). I found the death sounds of some of voice set to be annoying and/or unrealistic. Some of the monster's voice sets were very well done, others, not as great (monsters don't make that much noise in the first place, actually). Most of the games sounds are bug free, luckily.

Gameplay currently w/o patch 6/10
The biggest attraction to the game but, ironically, the biggest let-down. I am really impressed at how thoroughly Troika implemented Dungeons and Dragons rules. Pretty much everything you can do combat-wise in 3.5, you can do in ToEE. Charge, spring attack, full defense are all things that I've never before seen in a D&D computer game, and that just to name a few. The action bar, comparable to Fallout I and II's turn based system (the major difference is all characters and creatures get the same about of time, only some can move faster then others), is very well done and bug free, one of the only aspects of the game that is.

The game's list of feats (a type of special skill for the non-D&D savvy) is impressive and they open many different character builds. For example, you could make a fighter with high strength and specialize him in two handed swords, or a high dexterity fighter and give him two short swords and the weapon finesse feat, which allows a character to use his dexterity instead of his strength to fight. Another option is make a fighter specialize in long swords with shields. These are just three examples of the open ended-ness of the 3rd edition rules of D&D.

Most of my gripes with the game have to do with a mile long list of bugs. More than half of these probably could have been squashed with another couple weeks of play testing and bug squashing. Rumor has it that Atari will not let Troika patch the game. Troika is being pressured by it's fans to release an un-official patch, but it is unknown if they will do so. You can be sure that many fix packs will be released in the style of Baldur's Gate.

Some of the non-bug related problems with the game include a shortage of rare weapons known as ''exotic weapons''. Some of the race-specific weapons, like the Dwarven Waraxe simply do not appear in the game. Only if you start a character with the feats to use that weapon will they be in the game. This means no magic weapons and no chance to enchant them using craft item feats that are available to magic users. I also found the number of times I had to cast the spell Identify annoying. Though the spell is low level, and a high intelligence wizard has many spell memorization slots for first level spells, it was disappointing to be forced to memorize three Identify's instead of three Magic Missiles.

Overall, the game has a great engine but it was used poorly and was not refined to perfection. I would recommend that you either: wait for a price drop, as 50 dollars American is a little high for such a buggy (and relatively short) game; wait for an expansion to fine tune the game engine (hopefully); or at the very least wait for a patch or fan-based fix patch.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 09/28/03