The Temple of Elemental Evil: A Classic Greyhawk Adventure

aka: Der Tempel des Elementaren Bösen: Ein klassisches Greyhawk Abenteuer, El Templo del mal elemental: Una aventura clásica de Greyhawk, Il Tempio del Male Elementale: A Classic Greyhawk Adventure, Le Temple du Mal Elementaire: A Classic GreyHawk Adventure, ToEE, Świątynia Pierwotnego Zła
Moby ID: 10490
Windows Specs
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Description official descriptions

Temple of Elemental Evil is a turn-based role-playing game using the AD&D Greyhawk campaign setting with 3.5 version D&D rules. The game plot revolves around the (suspected) rise of evil, originating from the Temple of Elemental Evil.

In this game, players start with five generated (or pre-generated) party members in the start of the adventure (a maximum of eight, the later three comprising non-player characters). Unlike most AD&D games, the maximum level cap for characters in this game is the 10th level.

The party itself has an alignment (in addition to individual character alignments) which greatly affects the plot and choices the party makes throughout the game. Character alignments and the party alignment are now closely related. For example, a Lawful Good or Chaotic Evil character may not be selected within a True Neutral party alignment. Additionally, Paladins do not want to be in the same group with anyone evil.

Thus, depending on the party alignment (nine default alignments to choose from), players may either take the course of being the good heroes ridding evil from the land or be the evil raiders butchering anything that moves, all of which (may it be good, bad or neutral), may effect the party reputation.

Spellings

  • 灰鹰:邪恶元素的神殿 - Chinese spelling (simplified)

Groups +

Screenshots

Promos

Credits (Windows version)

142 People (125 developers, 17 thanks) · View all

Lead Designer / Project Leader
Producer / Designer
Production Assistance
Lead Programmer
Programmers
Lead Artist
Conceptual Designer / 3D Artist
3D / Environment Artists
Character Modeler / Texturer
Character Animator
2D Artist Intern
Map Implementation
Map Implementation / 3D Art Assistant
Voice Director
Compatibility Test Lead
Music
Snr VP International Product Services
Republishing Team
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 74% (based on 37 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.4 out of 5 (based on 52 ratings with 7 reviews)

Passes the time well, but won't be your favorite cRPG.

The Good
Despite all the flaws (and yes, I'm afraid most reviewers are mostly right: there are plenty), I found ToEE an addictive dungeon crawler. Imagine Diablo slowed down to a turn-based crawl...and turn back the graphics a few years. The monsters will often try your favorite cRPG tactics back on you: archers will move to the corners, avoiding getting caught in your fireballs; enemy "tanks" will close on your weakest party members; "infantry" will flank you to deal more damage. Plenty of bosses and huge assault teams make combat my favorite part of the game.

ToEE does a journeyman's job of putting the 'R' back in cPRGs: your party's starting alignment affects nearly everything you do in the game...and you can't play nice with everyone; you must make choices. (Of course, you're limited by the draconian AD&D rule set, but some people like that.)

Finally, there a couple of nice Troika-like touches: the male NPC who sings his way into combat, the female NPC who's a real battle axe, ...

The Bad
Like the original Gary Gygax module after which it was named, ToEE has plenty of dungeon spelunking and combat...and little else. If you don't know AD&D rules inside & out, you'll want to restart your party 4-5 times before you figure out key survival skills. You'll want to create your own party, rather than bother with NPCs for more reasons than in Baldur's Gate (annoying dialog, 'theft' of your loot, inconsistent alliance with your team).

And, although I didn't encounter any show stopping bugs and although most bug reports I've seen turned out to be have user-error or misunderstanding of ToEE's interpretation of AD&D, there are still too many bugs requiring work-arounds.

The Bottom Line
I think AD&D was great...on paper, but its rules were developed to support people without personal PCs. I prefer games that take advantage of the computer to allow new gaming systems (Morrowind, Wizardry, Diablo) rather than those that try to recreate the arcane system of AD&D.

All the more surprising to me, then, that I really liked playing ToEE.

I'm not sure if it was the smaller world...or mondo monster battles...or limited item set that forced you to be careful about party composition and development.

ToEE is a good way to pass the time between other games. It won't be your favorite cRPG, but then it doesn't need to be.

Windows · by Tennessee Ernie Ford (16) · 2004

Decent combat rules implementation - really really bad UI. What happened to Troika?

The Good
If you are looking for a PC game with some of the tactical depth of the better console RPGs, or are bothered by the liberties that Neverwinter Nights takes with the D&D3 rules, you might like this game.

It's also pretty, and it even sports the rules updates for D&D 3.5.

If you try to stay out of the towns, talking to the characters in each building only once to get them to put things on the world map for you, and replace the minor XP you would have gotten from doing their quests with lots of random encounters (just camp in "yellow" areas), you will play to the strengths of the game and avoid the worst of the weaknesses.

The Bad
The UI is terrible and sluggish. The in-town side quests are arranged to maximize travel back and forth within the town, which is painful. The automap doesn't auto-note what's in each building, and if you try to manually note that you will hit a maximum number of notes before you are done. Some of the quests are broken if you don't do them just right. In combat, there is no way to tell what areas are passable/impassable. There is no adjusting the camera angle, so clicking on bodies to loot them is hard. The treasure share distribution for hired NPCs gives them first pick on everything, so if a monster was carrying only one thing they will hog it.

The Bottom Line
Some nice ideas, combat is fun, but overall I'm terribly disappointed. I really wonder how Troika, who brought us the Fallouts (back when they were working for Interplay) and Arcanum, could have made a game that's so unplayable.

Windows · by weregamer (155) · 2003

Design and code flaws ruin yet another Troika RPG

The Good
The graphics are quite nicely rendered, and very colorful. The idea of mixing rendered backgrounds for jaw-dropping scenes with 3D animated character models for life-like animations is very well implemented.

The game also has the advantange of being licensed from the AD&D 3rd Edition rules, which are well designed and balanced, and make for great hardcore role-playing. Some conversion ideas are also well implemented, like the ability to use skills during conversation (for persuasion, i.e.) and the different storylines for different alignments.

The Bad
Aside from the endless and shameful bugs, and the fact that performance is really bad most of the time, the design also seems rushed out of the door.

The game simply lacks polish and variety. While the alignment storylines could make for excellent replayability, it is so vaguely implemented that it practically makes no difference in the progression of the game. The main story in itself is vaguely implemented, and makes you feel like the game was made for someone who already knows the pen-and-paper TOEE module, which is absurd. You can play almost the entire game without even having a clue what you're supposed to be doing, which is good for open-ended games like The Elder Scrolls series, but utterly absurd in this overly linear RPG.

Variety is lacking both in weapons and items as it is on locales. The idea of spending an entire module in a temple might be good for pen-and-paper, but in computer games it simply wears out too quickly.

In the end, the game strikes out to me as a pityful attempt to copy design elements from Bioware's Neverwinter Night series, but falling ridiculously short.

Frankly, after having played Arcanum and being a bit disappointed (again both in code and design) I expected Troika to make up for those mistakes. Instead, it delivered a much inferior game, leaving little hope for future endeavors.

The Bottom Line
A below average RPG, interesting only to nostalgic Greyhawk pen-and-paper players. Go play Neverwinter Nights instead.

Windows · by tbuteler (3021) · 2004

[ View all 7 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Troika Patching Nightmare v3.0 Indra was here (20756) Oct 9, 2007
What's wrong with this game? St. Martyne (3648) Aug 5, 2007

Trivia

Cut Content

Most of the content, unique to playing an evil campaign was taken out of the game due to pressure by the publisher (Atari). An entire area with subquests (the brothel) was also removed because they were afraid to lose the T rating.

Luckily, the 'Circle of eight' fan group re-enabled the "Brothel" Map, NPC's, quest, and companion in their unofficial patches.

Patches

Upon release, the version out of the box was plagued with bugs: quests not ending properly, glitches in the D&D 3.5 rules, bugged items, crashes, monsters spawning in walls, ...

An eager fan community listed all the bugs on the Atari forums, hoping for a quick fix. When time passed and no patches appeared, one of the Troika developers stated in a post that Atari had ended the contract with them when TTOEE was released, so they wouldn't get paid for developing patches.

There's nothing worse than a bunch of angry gamers, so some fans decided to reverse engineer and decompile some of the code. They were successful and a group called 'Circle of eight' created custom unofficial patches that fixed all the bugs.

This was too much of a stain on the Atari corporate image, so they announced an official patch on 30th september, 2003. Almost two months after the release, on 10th november, 2003, the patch was finally available, but without the efforts and persistence of fans, the game would have stayed bug-ridden.

Awards

  • GameSpy
    • 2003 – Old School RPG Award (PC)

Analytics

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Related Sites +

  • Circle of Eight
    A fan group that has developed unofficial patches fixing various issues and restoring removed content such as the Nulb brothel and the quests associated with it.
  • The Temple of Elemental Evil
    Official website

Identifiers +

  • MobyGames ID: 10490
  • [ Please login / register to view all identifiers ]

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by kawaii.

Macintosh added by Foxhack.

Additional contributors: Unicorn Lynx, Indra was here, JRK, Atomic Punch!, Sciere, Patrick Bregger.

Game added September 30, 2003. Last modified March 27, 2024.