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Temple of Elemental Evil: A Greyhawk Adventure (Jewel Case) Review
User Submitted Temple of Elemental Evil: A Greyhawk Adventure (Jewel Case) Reviews
Date: 2008-11-04
Good game, despite, being buggy.
Temple of Elemental Evil is a mixed experience, but most negative aspects can be avoided by looking for game patches online. I'd reccomend not downloading the 1.3 patch, just the preceeding patches.
After that you will be pleasantly suprised. This is one of the best games based on the 3.5 D&D in terms of the tactical combat options available to you. They absolutely nail it.
There is also differences in plot based on what alignment you choose so there is a lot of replay value. The story, while not epic, is decent. This games strength is the strong dungeon crawl/combat aspect though.
On the downside, even with the patch, load times and pauses are long in some spots. It takes a second or two for the load/save game menu to come up for example.
Overall though, an enjoyable experience.
Date: 2008-05-27
Pleasantly Surprised
Definitely not the greatest roleplaying GAME I've seen for the PC, but it's probably one of the most enjoyable gaming EXPERIENCES I've ever had.
I would strongly recommend it... but only if you're experienced in the pen-and-paper Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 game. Those who haven't played D&D 3.5 will be completely lost when it comes to things like initiative, skill points, and feats. I found myself sitting with the D&D Players Handbook in my lap at some points in time, especially when it came to playing more obscure classes (druids for example).
Anyone that has played the actual D&D modules "The Temple of Elemental Evil" and/or "Return to The Temple of Elemental Evil" will recognize characters such as Terjon of St Cuthbert, Lareth the Beautiful, Jaroo the Druid, Burne's Badgers, and so on.
A warning: this is an older game meant for an older operating system. My 2007 Windows Vista hiccuped when I tried to run it, and it took me hours of frustration to find the right patches. It runs fine with XP, but anyone with Vista should be wary.
Initially getting the hang of the controls and dealing with sometimes frustrating camera angles takes a while to become accustomed to, but don't let that deter you from this game. If you're a D&D fan, you have nothing to lose from picking this title up.
Date: 2008-01-19
Nowhere near the worst, Nowhere near the best
Graphics:
I Really enjoyed the graphics to this game. Of Course, they're not up to date with other games out on the market today. However, I am just a fan of this visual style (the top down third person view), there is a simplistic elegance to it. A beautiful wash of vibrant colors just pull you into this digital game world, (I have a high res monitor so it may look a bit different for others). The graphical animations of spells is very well done as well, very smooth movement and once again very vibrant colors. However, I can't say they even come close Baldur's Gate's and Icewindale's hand-drawn graphics (Which in my opinion, even if someone invents Star Trek Style Holodecks, the graphics in those games will still be better.) Also, for some reasons there are areas you can walk into on a map that slows everything down into clunky frames, but when you get away from those areas on the map, everything returns to normal.
Sound:
I enjoyed the sounds to this game, although they weren't the best I have ever heard, the music and sound effects did there job. The Battle Music was Battlie, and the Scenic Music was Senikie, and the voice acting was ok. For example of music when entering into the first town in the game, the ambient music in the back ground felt distant, quite, and peaceful. Which only emphasized the fact that the town was far away from anything, and small. So I would say that their sound department did it's job.
Gameplay:
Character creation is very simple, which is nice if you really don't want to take the time to obsessively pay attention to every detail of your characters development. Also, the game is turn based, which I enjoy because I usually get overwhelmed in not turn based RPGs, such as Baldur's Gate (I usually turn the real-time off). However, I know turn based is not everyones cup of tea. The in game combat menu is easy to figure out. However, other menus are kind of clunky and are accessed in ways that take some getting use to. I think this was a game that came out a little too soon in its production. It has an overall sense of feeling incomplete, there are large are maps with only 25% of it being utilized, this make it so you frequently stumble upon large empty rooms. Sub Quests are too short, as well as the story arc is fragmented to the point of almost being non existent(If you're looking for a well written, epic Story Line, with plot twists, and protagonist character development like many other D&D games, you are definitely barking up the wrong tree with this game). The overall world map is sparse in areas you can visit, and if you know what you are doing, you can actually beat the game in about 2 hours. There is also a Level Cap for players at level 10, (However, that problem is easily correctable).
System Bugs:
There can be some nasty bugs, however, the game has been out for awhile now, so most of those problems have been fixed. There is a particular nasty bug that I encountered when I tried to run this on my higher end computer at home.
My System Quick Specs.
- 2.66 Ghz intel core 2 duo processor (overclocked to 3 Ghz)
- 680i EVGA mother board
- Nvidia 8800 768mb GTX Graphics card
- 4 gigs DDR2 800mhz
- Windows XP Pro x64 edition / Windows XP 32bit
The Problem was after installing the game, I would try to run it, but the game would always exit itself after about 12 seconds making it unplayable. I believe the problem was with the video card. I swapped the 8800 out with a EVGA GeForce FX 5200 I had laying about, and it worked fine. However, I finally got it to work with the 8800 by applying a nocd Exe. That was the only way I got it to run.
Date: 2007-07-11
Classic PnP Adventure works well on PC after patching and modding
This Dungeons & Dragons game was based on the eponymous pen & paper adventure, The Temple of Elemental Evil, which was voted the fourth best D&D adventure in 2004 (the 30th anniversary of D&D). Although the original adventure was written with the first edition AD&D rules in mind, this game uses the more varied 3.5 version D&D rules, which is a good thing. The characters begin at level one, and depending on how many you use (5-8 recommended), they can get to levels 10-14, even higher if you use just one or two.
You have a full control over the creation and doings of your party, and you can hire a couple of NPCs in addition. If you install the Co8 5.04 Mod pack, as you should, the looting bug will also be gone.
The best feature of this game, however, is by far the turn-based combat system. The D&D rules have been more thoroughly employed than in most other such games, so that if, for example, you run through or away from a hostile creature's square in combat, the creature will get an "attack of opportunity".
The combat system makes most of the battles at least somewhat interesting, and some of them even more interesting than the few really interesting ones in the Baldur's Gate games. The balance is pretty good. There aren't very many battles you can take casually (you should use the point-buy system at the beginning so that your characters won't become too powerful). Sometimes, though, and even with all the tactics involved, the battles seem to depend a bit too much on chance. This is an ingrained quality of the D&D rules, and tends to make the game more exciting whenever you don't find yourself losing a battle because the enemy got three critical hits and you got none.
The reason I gave the game only four stars is that the battle and party control are really the only things that make this game interesting, even unique at the moment. The story and dialogs are pretty poor. This is true of games like BG and Fallout as well. But The Temple of Elemental Evil also pretty much lacks any interesting side quests that would involve something other than combat. Fallout had some such quests; Baldur's Gate, not really, although it pretended to.
In any case, this game is very much worth buying and keeping. Get it while you still can. There aren't any comparable games in sight. Just be sure to check out the Co8 forum, and follow the installation instructions that you can find there.
Date: 2007-03-12
Bugs a major issue
The game was fun to play, but the bugs are significant, even after installing the 3 patches. The biggest pain with the play was that in certain areas when there is a lot going on, the play would slow to a crawl. My fight with the boss in the fire elemental node took about an hour, but should have been over in about 10 minutes if things went smoothly. Also, in these areas, doing a save takes 1-2 minutes sometimes. Other than the slow play in some areas, the game was fun. Just be patient.
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