The Temple of Elemental Evil

After releasing Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura, Troika Games set two teams to develop games simultaneously. One of the their projects was Vampire: The Masquerade -- Bloodlines, which was released in 2004, and after which Troika Games closed their doors in early 2005. The other game was The Temple of Elemental Evil (released 2003). Like Bloodlines, ToEE is an RPG and -- sadly enough -- similarly riddled with bugs.

Luckily, a fanbase capable of modding emerged once again, and there's really no reason to play the game without Circle of Eight's modpack installed (either with New Content or just bug fixes). Even with the modpack, the game still got progressively more unstable towards the end, crashing quite a few times. And I could also spot a handful of non-fixed bugs throughout the game.

At first glance, The Temple of Elemental Evil looks like a good old Infinity Engine Dungeons & Dragons game; maps are beautiful pieces of art and it's often very difficult to spot containers and stuff laying around. This is partly because the highlight key doesn't function on the same level as the one in later IE games. Being a newer engine, ToEE is graphically more advanced, though, sporting full 3D models for creatures. The game runs well and the lack of loading times is appreciated, although in some parts the game responds to input with a noticeable lag. Like pressing Esc to bring up the menu can take up to three seconds (!).

Another thing that sets ToEE apart from Icewind Dales and Baldur's Gates, becomes clear the moment you enter combat -- ToEE is completely turn-based. The game uses the D&D 3.5 revisioned ruleset. Some compromises have been made but it's still the most faithful D&D PC game up to date. So you better know your D&D tricks, because getting information out of the game can be inconvenient or impossible at times. Spell or item information is often lacking, and ToEE seems to rely much on its in-game manual, which is pretty much a D&D rulebook in a web page style. I actually ended up pulling my D&D books from the bookshelf and playing the game with them open in front of me.

ToEE uses radial menus (think of Neverwinter Nights) for character actions. It works but I never personally saw the reason to move away from the IE's icon list system, because that worked as well. The radial menus can get tiring to use but you can set hotkeys, and probably should for the most common actions like Charge and 5-foot-step -- actions that you really should use; just clicking enemies to attack is far from the optimal way. Combat is very tactical and suprisingly entertaining. It's like playing the actual D&D by yourself.

Outside of combat, The Temple of Elemental Evil is not much. I haven't played the actual ToEE D&D adventure, but I'd imagine the PC game doesn't remove some great storyline from it. Because this is really what I've found premade D&D campaigns to be. The story is never very engaging or personal, just encounters after encounters with some backstory why you are attacking the place.

I ended up restarting the game a handful of times, making a new party each time in search for a perfect group. Thanks to that or not, I didn't find ToEE hard apart from few slightly challenging fights. You can create up to five characters. And up to three NPCs can join you during your adventures. The Co8 mod allows you to adjust these numbers if you so desire. I tried once with a six character party but eventually I just made a party of five as leveling is faster with a smaller group.

I settled upon five human characters simply because of the extra feat. ToEE's level cap is set at ten and that extra feat is very useful to have. The Co8 modpack increases the level cap to 20 by default, but you should probably set it back to ten as the later levels -- especially spells -- are implemented by the modders and are not completely there. I set the level cap to 12 after noticing this. I was almost at the end of the game at that point, though. The few levels bring you couple new spells and an extra attack (that never hits) for combat-oriented classes but not much.

This is what my party looked like:

Paladin with a greatsword because of general awesomeness and what class would be better to bring down the Temple of Elemental Evil. Also, after you get into the Temple, you cannot accept quests (from the priests) as your paladin fill Fall. Thus the only option is to just storm the place. I was totally fine with this.

Fighter with a glaive because the weapon has reach, and more importantly, ToEE doesn't have the "donut" limitation for non-spiked-chain reach weapons. I also took Improved Trip Attack for this character as standing up provokes an attack of opportunity (and is automatic in ToEE). Some enemies met a quick end after getting tripped and then receiving free attacks from my whole party. The fighter really dominated the battlefield when Enlarge Person'd.

Cleric of Pelor with Healing and Good domains. The Healing domain grants extra healing at lower levels but I should've gone with Law instead as I then could've crafted Axiomatic (+2d6 vs chaotic) weapons. The Good domain grants access to Holy Smite spell and thus to Holy (+2d6 vs evil) weapons. Both enchants come in handy with all the chaotic evil enemies in the game. Points for ToEE to be the first D&D game I've used the item crafting feats.

Rogue because every party needs someone to disarm traps and pick locks. The only traps I found were in chests, though, and chests are not that many in the game. The character worked as the primary Talker of the party as well.

Sorcerer for the arcane caster slot. Wizard would get more feats (good for a second crafter) but I went for the sorcerer because they get more spells per day.

I wonder why does the game provide a point-buy system for stats when there is a (default) option to roll the stats that easily gives you a much better character. I think with all the parties I made, the roll button saw couple hours worth of time spent. There is also an Ironman mode that has permadeath and stricter stat rolling.

I liked how the the game's ending sequence depends on the choices you made during the game. There was even a gay marriage with a certain pirate and my cleric.

D&D players will definitely find The Temple of Elemental Evil an enjoyable experience. The tactical combat of the ruleset is implemented with great precision. However, I didn't find the game as great as I did the IWD and BG games, the major factor there being how I didn't feel like caring about the story and the world. They so should have set ToEE in Forgotten Realms instead of Greyhawk. Who knows anything about Greyhawk anyway.