Temple of Elemental Evil

FredSRichardson

I really enjoyed playing ToEE (the co8 modding community did some amazing things to make this game worth playing). Aside from content issues and serious pathing problems, the game had some really nice features: faithful 3.5E rule set implementation with crafting, turn based combat and a really nice combat interface.

I keep thinking that it would be great if some of these features made it into the infinity engine, although I guess turn-based combat could be a problem for multiplayer...

Anaximander

I kinda wish they had come out with the other modules in that series, ... while the game was kinda ghetto in the voice acting and q/a departments ... the module was faithfully adhered to, and the 3.5 turn based combat was awesome!; and was a real kick for hardcore dnd fans imho Atari pulled the plug on that one after a few patches ... any good dnd games since then, few and far between ...

FredSRichardson

If you want some interesting patches, www.co8.org (circle of eight) is worth checking out. They've done some amazing work.

I would love to see such a detailed rendition of turn-based D&D style combat in a future engine

Tsyrith

ToEE was definitely excellent. I was actually upset when I reached the title dungeon, seemingly so early-on in the game.

Little. Did. I. Know.

I think it was around the time I was

engaging in turn-based run-the-hell-away-from-the-god-you're-in-combat-with

that the game made sweet, unapologetic love to me.

>.>

Just...

Just me, then?

Truly, though, props to Co8, they don't mind helping a noob out, and they crafted a fine thing. Question, though, was Bigby ever a part of the Co8, and if he is, are we ever going to get the final-word on the name of the obviously implicative Nameless One?

*starts cranking the rumour mill*

Sick_Boy

Im playing ToEE right now without Co8 and im still enjoying it a lot, despite some bugs and some tedious tasks im forced to do since it is too faithful to d&d rules. This is a videogame, going back to town after each combat with the laughable pathing of the characters is a pain in the ass.

FredSRichardson

@Sick_Boy - I should warn you, the bugs will become very irritating While the co8 pack adds some very cool content to the game, it also fixes some really irritating bugs. Unfortunately they couldn't do anything about pathfinding which is really bad...

@Tsyrith - I agree, this game rocked my world! I've long sought for a game that gives the feeling of PnP old school style DnD (well with new rules). ToEE I think is about as close as I've ever gotten.

SionIV

I didn't like ToEE to be honest.

It was a bad game that had one thing going for it, the gameplay. I don't play RPG's with horrible story, dialogues and such for good gameplay. But i do play games with bad gameplay for good story (Torment, Arcanum)

FredSRichardson

Well, the ToEE story line came (more-or-less) directly from the old campaign. So I being nostalgic for old school D&D helps a lot

ZanathKariashi

The campaign wasn't bad......for it's day. ToEE was the first DnD module EVER (which is why it seems utterly bland and uninteresting (the other half is being based in greyhawk)). It was supposed to be a kickstarter proof of concept to make a new game series that would implement all kinds of adventure modules, as faithful as possible, to the original modules. The main issue was...they chose Greyhawk (as generic as DnD worlds get), and the first module ever (done so much every aspect has become cliche).....if they had used a FR module....that game would've likely sold like hot-cakes, even with the issues from a rushed release. Trioka never made enough back from it, Arcanum, or Bloodlines to recoup what they'd spent and a bunch of great game ideas died out when Trioka went under.

Aedan

I simply adore ToEE. I would be happy to play an enhanced edition of this awesome title. I enjoyed the campaign, the atmosphere, the dungeons, the art... Sure there are many things that should be polished, but it has a great potential. A pity that Troika could not do a sequel...

SionIV

Let's not talk about troikas amazing titles that they didn't do anything about.

Arcanum
Vampire Masquerade

Two games that were fantastic yet they failed it one way or the other.

Sick_Boy

@FredSRichardson I cant install Co8 mod without losing spanish translation in toee... This game is very complex and I need the 1st playthrough to be in spanish, im not good enough to understand everything in old-fashioned-epic-medieval english

One question, is Co8 New Content good enough? Im glad to see people trying to expand the game but I dont want to see myself playing some random amateur bad designed quests

FredSRichardson

@Sick_Boy - That's too bad they don't have a translation I was pretty impressed with the new content. They made the temple itself a lot more um interesting And they added a few epic encounters which are fun.

ZanathKariashi

The majority of it is just restored, cut content, or things left unfinished that were polished up and released.

FredSRichardson

@ZanathKariashi - co8 actually added a surprising amount of additional content which I thought was pretty well done.

- "The war for the golden skull" (an epic battle with interesting plot line)
- "moathouse respawn" (a smaller battle, but a lot of fun)
- "Verbobonc" (this is a whole new city with a decent side quests)
- "Hickory branch", "welkwood bog" (new areas)
- "Ronald Rynnwrathi", (new joinable NPC)

There are some game problems co8 hasn't been able to fix. But given that they don't have the source code for the engine, they've done some really good work.

Sick_Boy

Just killed ToEE's final boss, and I have to say that this game have instantly become one of my favourite games ever. It's very very frustrating that there is only one game that uses this engine, because I have never enjoyed so much a combat system. Now I understand why modders put so much effort in creating new content for this game, it had the potential to became the best CRPG series ever. Very sad.

Even with the level 10 cap, the game has got really epic battles thanks to the summons. It's a shame that they are pretty bugged and 50% of the time they are just standstill.

Most of the time when I didn't understand why something happens, I didn't really know if it was meant that way of it was because a bug cause rules are very complex.

Now that I understand the plot and most of the rules, I'm downloading Co8 to replay it without the fu****ng bugs.

FredSRichardson

@Sick_Boy - very nice!

I also wish the ToEE engine had been further developed. I actually like play BG2 in turn-based mode for the same type D&D style tactics.

ZanathKariashi

Just imagine BG, on the ToEE's engine, with all the major bugs ironed out....bliss.

FredSRichardson

I thought that would be a cool port, but I doubt it would be possible without reworking pretty much everything...

Drugar

Sick_Boy said:

Just killed ToEE's final boss, and I have to say that this game have instantly become one of my favourite games ever.

What amazed me is that the Hedrack fight gets considerably powered up by the appearance of his god if the fight draws out long enough. However, if you have a cleric of St Cuthbert with you, the round after Iuz appears, St Cuthburt himself comes down, reprimands Iuz for taking personal part in mortal's affairs and beats the shit out of him, before both gods dissappear again. Epic indeed!

FredSRichardson

Both gods are supposed to appear and battle each other, but this part of the game is really buggy without the co8 patch.

saffon69

really love the game , gonna get the patch's as well : )

FredSRichardson

The patch and extended content are great. I'm going to have to play again now that the co8 team resolved a stuttering problem that plagued them for quite some time.

randyroo

this was definitely my favourite dnd engine it was a great shame that it was so buggy and discontinued, the exploration was basically non existant and the story well... not the greatest. but despite its cons i love that engine. it ran true dnd 3e with a team of 8 adventurers. i just wanted to keep playing through to lvl 30.

ajwz

One improvement they could have made to the engine was to give tooltips to what all of the games spells, skills and feats actually do in game.
The information in the game is seriously lacking which would be problematic for anyone who isn't already intimately familiar with 3.5 rules before playing

FredSRichardson

I always thought the ToEE engine was a really good prototype. Parts of it would work really well in combination with the Infinity engine. Especially the way combat works.

ZanathKariashi

The combat was the strongest part. Though the rule enforcement was also lovely and actually kept the classes relative power where it belonged. Instead of giving Arcane magic users a free pass to break the game.


And the difficulty was just right (after the fan-patches fixed all the major bugs), as long as you didn't do anything stupid, you generally wouldn't die but had to treat each area with respect or almost any battle could result in a TPK. And is the only CRPG to date to capture just how truly annoying fighting Trolls really is.


The crafting system was well-done, only really cutting out the crafting times involved, but was otherwise PnP-accurate.

And I actually enjoyed properly applying the penalties for spell-casting. It was a little frustrating at first, coming from NWN and BG where they basically gave casters free-reign, but really does open your eyes to how Mages should be played, and when spells are and aren't really needed.


I still think the game would've done really well despite the bugs if they'd just used a FR module instead of THE FIRST DND MODULE MADE EVAR! And even then it was still well done, if a bit boring and trite after 20-ish years.



The game tells you fully what everything does, the tooltips just aren't very obvious with where they are. (you right-click an ability to bring up it's description of what it does, which is cut pretty much out of the PHB). Though some combat actions do lack explanation in-game...hence why they gave you basically a miniature PHB with every copy of ToEE (there's a PDF in your main directory if you didn't get the boxed version with a physical manual).

FredSRichardson

@ZanathKariashi - Nice review of the game! There's a bit of old school charm to the old ToEE module, but I agree that it's an odd choice without some revamping (which they probably couldn't do).

Drugar

ZanathKariashi said:

I still think the game would've done really well despite the bugs if they'd just used a FR module instead of THE FIRST DND MODULE MADE EVAR! And even then it was still well done, if a bit boring and trite after 20-ish years.

I really think it wasn't the bugs but this what killed it.
I want to love the game and the Moathouse is awesome but once you get to the Temple it quickly becomes confusing, boring and just a grind through an endless pit of monsters without really knowing wtf you're doing there.

The final boss is awesome, the million ways to get there are awesome, but 9/10 times I gave up way before that.
A more varied and exciting module would've been very nice.

FredSRichardson

I agree that the temple is kind of a drag and not very deep from an RP perspective. But I do think this is reflecting of the age of the module (but I don't know - I've never looked at the ToEE campaign).

ZanathKariashi

It's pretty much word for word, with just a couple little minor tweaks here and there to help it flow better in lieu of a DM.

It also depends on how you built your character. ToEE is much deeper roleplaying-wise then BG is...but if you built like you were playing BG, you'd never find it due to being too stupid, too unsociable, not being able to innately detect evil at will...etc, since like Torment, it only offers responses your character can actually conceive based on their stats/skills.