ToEE - The most D&D Game

HiddenX

HiddenX

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PC Gamer thinks The Temple of Elemental Evil is a true D&D game:

Why The Temple of Elemental Evil is the most D&D game ever made

It may not be the *best* D&D game, but The Temple of Elemental Evil is the truest representation of the tabletop experience.

There's a drinking competition at the village inn, and I do like to get drunk in video games. My half-orc barbarian has the most hit points and the least intelligence, which probably makes him qualified for entry. Half a dozen locals and guests join in, and every time the innkeeper shouts “Drink!” they knock back an ale and drop a bunch of HP (non-fatally, of course). In the end it comes down to the barbarian and a traveler named Kobort, who eventually topples to join the rest of the competitors sleeping on the floor.

Then I have my rogue go round and loot all their stuff. Even clothes. Nobody seems to mind. It's a fair punishment for getting fall-down drunk. They're lucky I'm not drawing schlongs on their foreheads. For the entire rest of the game I recognize NPCs I beat in this competition because they stand around town in their medieval underpants. That's just how it goes in The Temple of Elemental Evil.

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Thanks henriquejr!

More information.
 
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The unfinished ending was the most disappointing part of this game, although I believe Co8 has now filled that part in.
 
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Never could finish this - too slow in combat and became so boring to work through each battle. I remember when it came out I thought this would be *the* game for me, better even then my fond memories of BG. Instead was one of the worst.
 
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The moathouse remains one of the most nostalgic moments for me. Which is strange, because I would never have associated that music with PnP - but for whatever reason, it just hit home perfectly. The whole scenario with the music, the frog and true PnP turn-based combat was really something ;)

That said, the rest of the game left something to be desired. The combat was too prevalent - and I still remember accidentally completing the game.

As I recall, I fell down somewhere and ended up near the end. I don't even remember what happened, except that I suddenly completed the game :)

That was… odd.

Never bothered to play it again.
 
The mechanics were great. I thought many of the npcs were poorly voiced, and there was a lot more potential to make something out of the story in the game. In a way I think its strange, Troika's other too games were extremely well done is the story department. I thought they could have made a lot more out of the npcs encounters in TOEE. I played through twice. Once with an evil, and once with a good party.
 
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The story left something to be desired, but this is a great tactical game. I've played this one through three times I think, and I'll be playing it again, that's for certain. Well worth keeping on the hard drive.
 
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The best tactical combat of any D&D game. It was actually challenging, something the cucks of today can't handle.
 
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ToEE is cool. I thought the gender/class-based dialogue with NPCs, even quests based on those aspects was pretty unique. I'd like to see more party-based RPGs do stuff like that.
 
luj1 said:
The best tactical combat of any D&D game. It was actually challenging, something the cucks of today can't handle.
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Only until you got that never miss sword. I gave that to my two handed weapon specialist with maximum power attack and Cleave and he murdered everyone including that avatar of the god. LOL
 
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Once my guy got swallowed whole by a toad I was sold.:lol: definitely the best implementation of the d&d ruleset imo.

Sad nobody took the engine and made a proper game with it.
 
I just replayed ToEE with the Co8 mod. It was fantastic. I also played their Keep on the Borderlands mod and I enjoyed that very much. The best tactical battles ever. Who needs story when you have played 100's of games and read 1000's of books. I can make my own stories while playing these games and the story goes where I want it :)
 
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The game was just meh.
It was visible from a plane the game could have been improved in several ways still keeping d&d system intact, yet developers were too scared to risk which resulted in what I said. Meh.
 
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Fantastic game. A sequel would be wonderful....
 
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Hands down the best combat system in any RPG ever!
Story and gameflow were meh. Wrong module I guess.

Next strech goal for Kingmaker: Implementation of ToEE TB combat.
 
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Yeah, no doubt the best combat implementation ever.
Absolute turn-based goodness.

The rest of the game, though… ouch. Probably the worst beginning of a game I ever saw. I'm sure most people quit before even setting foot in the temple, or before finishing the first real dungeon.
I'm thankful for my avatar, though! It's from the sheep in the starting town :D

At least with Temple+ and Co8 it lives up to its potential now (making the starting town mostly skippable, thankfully) and is getting improved as we speak.

The worst thing about ToEE is that it showed what could have been - yet nobody ever made anything living up to that "promise". Instead we got wave after wave of "meh" RTwP nonsense, which is always bearable at best.

Oh well… one day. And looking at D:OS2, that day may be closer.
 
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Agree on the implementation, awesome for the tactical play. ToEE isn't that great a module though. They tried to dress it up a bit more with the re-release in the late 80's but at it's heart it's still one massive dungeon slog/crawl. It's funny that Hommlet is so fleshed out but then the temple is mostly room after room of average mobs, gets a bit boring after a while. First time we played it I recall a TPK at the moat house from all the guys with the crossbows as we rashly charged in, totally blind to what was in the court yard with our 1st level toons.

Agree with the comment above, it's the only one that does D&D combat as it's actually played. I too get annoyed at producers dubbing things D&D and then throwing away one of the most central mechanics.
 
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D&D Tactics for PSP is also very "D&D". Might be a bit more complex than ToEE even, dunno. It does have Psychic Warrior and Psion classes.

Might sound funny, but that The Red Hand of Doom RPG Maker game probably had deeper turn-based combat than ToEE. You could do ridiculously cool things in that game, it had a really deep implementation of D&D 3.5. Shame it was never finished and then later ripped off for that Ellis Studios mess.
 
I didn't like ToEE very much. The combat is pretty cool, but I didn't like towns like Hommlet (which had very boring quests) so much and the interface of the game is awful to the point it actually spoiled a part of my enjoyment. I want to replay it with that famous mod one day, though.
 
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Think I've had this somewhere on my disk, nearly two years by now. So the combat is really good, I hear?
Kind of hard to imagine after that mess in Arcanum.
 
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