This is a great hack-and-slash game brought down to earth by lots of bugs and poor documentation.
User Rating: 7.5 | The Temple of Elemental Evil PC
Temple of Elemental Evil is a very promising game, but it lacks some basics. For better or worse, this is unlike any game you have ever played. This is a true, nut-and-bolt recreation of pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons. The rules are extremely complicated and detailed, and the game takes place in turns. Thus, it plays more like a turn-based squad tactics game than past RPG’s like Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter Nights. True role-playing is almost non-existent. A simple combat against five bandits might take 60 seconds in previous games, but it can take 15 minutes in this game. In general, the pace of this game is very slow. I think that Troika did a great job of making a game that is both faithful to D&D rules and fun, but the game is really lacking some basic features. By now, you have probably figured out that this game is not for everyone. It isn’t. If you don’t like +1 bonuses, die rolls, and inane rules, then you are going to hate this game. However, if you are like me and you like a lot of this stuff, then this game seems like Nirvana. It’s almost a perfect recreation of D&D, and it’s very efficient. All of the rules, feats, skills, spells, and actions have been distilled down into a simple set of menus and screens that you can access with a few mouse clicks. For the most part, it’s intuitively set up and very easy to use. The radial menu system works great. If you know the D&D rules well, then you will be at full speed in no time. It’s impossible to overstate what an accomplishment this is. You just right click on a character and by navigating the mouse, you can either drink a potion from your inventory, use the “Power attack” feat, or cast a Magic Missile spell. The ease of use is one of the reasons why the game stays fun. Combat in ToEE is the most fun and satisfying part. The battles are extremely hard and they require you to utilize all of the tactical tricks that you can think of. The turn-based system is what allows you to do this and get anything out of it. I enjoyed the combat in this game more than Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights for this reason. The game doesn’t blow by too fast for you to use your abilities without pressing the space bar over and over. This game has surprisingly good graphics. The pre-rendered 2D backgrounds are simply the most beautiful that I have ever seen. They are not only gorgeous, but full of variety. The monsters are also richly detailed, not to mention menacing. The monsters are also the best that I have ever seen in an RPG. My only complaint with the graphics is how tiny your party is on the screen. You can hardly tell your characters apart without squinting, and you can’t tell what they are carrying or wearing by glancing at them. The inventory screen is also very unattractive and the items are very bland. Baldurs Gate and Neverwinter Nights have much more attractive inventory screens. I love the soundtrack for this game, but the voice acting is pretty sub par. A few of the characters have good voice acting, but for the most part, it’s not very good. This game does have some problems that slow it down unnecessarily. One of them is the inability to set hotkeys. Customizable hotkeys was one of the great things about Neverwinter Nights. Unfortunately, in Temple of Elemental Evil, in order to give a command 20 times, you have to go through it in the radial menu 20 times. It gets old. In many places, the rules get extremely annoying – like having to spend 100 GP to cast an “Identify” spell. How lame is that? The developers made no attempt to compensate for rules like this by changing the treasure you find or the monsters that you encounter. The map screen stinks, because you can only place a limited number of flags on it, and because you can’t use it to jump to a spot on the big screen. This means that you have to point and click your way across every screen. Finally, the manual that comes in the box is totally inadequate. You need to buy the Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook to understand a lot of what is going on (if you don’t already know). I see this as being a huge flaw for someone who is not intimately familiar with the rules. I really enjoyed this game. I sincerely hope that Troika will make another D&D game with this engine (plus a few tweaks). There could be a lot of great adventuring done if they improve a few things. As I said previously it is not for everyone. If you like planning and strategy, then I think that you will like this game. You might want to get a strategy guide with it, because this is also the hardest D&D game ever made. 
