The Temple of Elemental Evil Review
Jeff 'EverythingXen' Layne, 2003-11-03

Temple of Elemental Evil is a CRPG by Troika games... the same people who brought us the often under-rated and frequently flamed Arcanum. I loved Arcanum, though I was pretty hard on its graphics for the first five minutes I played it and the gameplay hooked me, so when I heard that they were going to take a stab at the D&D license using 3rd Edition rules I cheered. When I heard they were using a modified Arcanum engine I nearly screamed. All I could imagine was ugly graphiced people running at each other in realtime and kicking dogs until they whimpered and bled out. Fortunately, my imagination was a little more critical than this game deserves. Featuring one of the coolest CGI intros ever made Temple instantly wins some 'cool' points with anyone who sees it.

Forget 3D - Style is everything

The graphics in Temple of Elemental Evil are 2D painted background with limited 3D character and monster models and spell effects. There is absolutely nothing new under the sun with TOEEs graphics: Hand-painted backgrounds, detailed character sprites, dazzling spell effects... it's all been done.

However, the way it comes together in Temple of Elemental Evil makes it look like there is something new. The backgrounds are fantastically painted and arranged... they make each area of the game look distinct. After you've visited each level of the Temple, for example, you'll be able to identify which floor you're on by tileset and lighting. I think that's pretty cool for 2D.

The character sprites could use some work, certainly. All you get to control is height, hair style, and hair coloration! There are no facial features, which is sensible considering that the camera is locked at a height where you couldn't make out facial features if you wanted. However, there is also no differing in body types and not even any way to change skin coloration. Your mage with an 8 strength has still got to be popular with the ladies, seeing as under those magely robes he's got a washboard stomach.

Thank goodness for the clothing and equipment layer of the sprite. It pulls it out of the fire in a big way: Robes flow, cloaks are visible and flow nicely when you move, each set of armor looks a little different, and even things like tiaras and gloves allow supreme customization in your characters appearance. Clothes are abundant and varied in styles and colors and flaming weapons flame beautifully. The clothing and equipment layer puts most others similar viewpoint games (Diablo, Baldur's Gate/Infinity Engine, Divine Divinity) to shame.

This amorphous blood ambiguity doesn't apply to creature sprites, fortunately. The quality in the creature models is fantastic and their animations are among the finest I've ever seen. How would a gelatonous cube attack? Exactly as its depicted in TOEE. When a giant swings at you it looks like it's going to hurt... a LOT. I've seen several 3D games with animations nowhere near as good looking as TOEE.

Spell effects are also excellent. For the first time ever Magic Missile looks like the spell is described... a swarm of bolts swerving around all obsticles to strike a target unerringly. Cone of Cold is jaw dropping in its depiction, for once. It's one of the best attack spells in D&D but ever since Curse of the Azure Bonds it has always been regulated behind fireball in usefullness and visual depiction. The little touches are great and abound in the spell effects as well... a good aligned cleric's hands glow blue when they cast a healing spell, for example, whereas an evil cleric's hands glow a blood red. It's a little thing but the little things add up to make TOEE the finest looking Isometric CPRG I have ever played.

Don't cast fireball while wearing headphones

Sound is always important in setting the mood of a game. At the same time, it's the most overlooked component of a game. Nobody notices when a game sounds good, but everyone notices when one sounds bad.

TOEE sounds good. Spells are powerful and varied in sounds (there is no tacked on pseudo-mystical chanting preceeding spells like in Baldur's Gate). Weapons make slightly different sounds when connecting, and the voice acting is enjoyable (though another dozen voicesets are needed for character generation, easy). All in all there was no part of the game where I said "Oh GOD... make this music stop! PLEASE!" or said "Tink? What kind of sound effect is TINK for a GREATSWORD?".

The music was actually pretty good. I never got tired of the combat music no matter how many hundreds of times I heard it, for example. I don't think I could whistle or hum any of the temple music offhand, so it's not particularly catchy... but I never turned the music volume down or off.

Oh, and don't cast fireball while wearing headphones. Seriously. At least not into a room filled to capacity with bugbears in web spells (that go up in flame for extra damage).

Decisions, decisions

Character generation is one of the funnest things about TOEE. It's actually a good way to lose about four hours if you can't make up your mind on what alignment you want to play and decide to 'roll up' a few parties.

There are two methods... the tried and true Roll Until Godhood Is Achieved that most CRPGs have used in the past... basically, roll 3d6 until you have two 17s or more and everything else is above 12. I was happy to see this method make a triumphant return after being put on hold by Pools of Radiance 2 (*shudder*) and Neverwinter Nights. Both games had reason to remove it, of course. Being multiplayer compatible games they wanted each character to be built on the same amount of character attribute points. Temple is Single Player Only and so all hail the return of Ubermensch, the Monk with 17, 17, 17, 16, 16, 16 for stats.

Not since control-8 to give you straight 18s in BG2 has a high stat good time been had. Of course, BG2 was second edition so nothing less than 15 really mattered as a stat. When converted from second edition a straight 17s character in 3rd edition is actually straight 14s... so in Temple those super-stats are lethal.

The second method is point buy, just like Neverwinter and The-Game-I-Will-Not-Name-Twice. This way is more 'balanced' and is the method around which D&D 3rd edition is balanced.

But where's the fun in that? :) "Half-orc with 20 strength and 18 con SMASH puny balanced man!"

I will join your party... In exchange for your *SOULLLLLLLL*

Man, I hated the NPCS in this game. I really did. Probably the greatest dissappointment in the game for me. Of course, that's nothing new for me (see my Shadows of Undrentide review for a good old fashion NPC lynching).

Still, the NPCs in Temple reach a new low... they hit you right where it counts. Forget a share of the experience, which they get... no, no... they want your STUFF.

Ok, sharing the wealth sounds fair. After all, they need to eat too. Unfortunately you don't get to pick what you're 'sharing'. The NPC apparantly just screams "DIBS!!!", slide dives across the orc feast table to tackle the rogue who opened the chest, and fends the rest of the party off with cries of 'MY ONE, MY OWN, MY PRECIOUSSSSSS'. The end result is that if an NPC fighter sees a sword in a chest, he will grab it. And he won't give it back. Even if his is already better.

Armor, gems, money... each one has a 'nab' switch and each one executes it no matter where they are on the map. The two or three NPC thieves in the game merrily grab EVERYTHING, as does a certain evil cleric who can co-erce into your party... but at least he's got an excuse: He's actively out to screw you over and kill you. These other guys are supposed to HELP you.

Fortunately, you don't NEED the NPCs in this game. At all. You can make a party of five adventurers and you are then good to go. There is only one NPC in the game worth taking... a wizard in the first inn. All he wants is all the wizard magic scrolls you find. He's welcome to them.

Oh, and don't take Elmo. I see a lot of people who do... it's as good as shooting yourself in the foot. By the time you're level 10 you've basically paid Elmo 50,000 gold or more. He's not THAT cool (though he looks it at first, being a level 4 fighter that you can hire at level 1 and all). That money could have gone to making your own magical items.

No more baked paladins

The control scheme of Temple of Elemental Evil is very simplistic. Simple is good. You right click and then navigate a radial menu. That is all. Town, combat, whatever... right click and navigate.

Of course, soon you will get tired of navigating three menus to get your rogue to hide... Troika anticipated this and left you pretty much every key on the keyboard to assign as a hotkey as you wished. Simply navigate to what you want hotkeyed (for example: Hide) then press control-a and assign a key (press s and s get assigned to hide). Done. Works for everything from spells to talk to pick pocket.

In combat the most wonderful feature Temple put in was the area of effect masks from pen and paper. They're cut out masks you can put on a battle-map to get an opinion as to who exactly you're going to bake when you throw a fireball, etc. Being computer generated masks you can move them so that a fireball missed a paladin by a half foot. It's more accurate than you get with tabletop, but it certainly doesn't diminish a game's quality to have perfect control over where your spells land. I loved it. And it made cone effects (fear, cone of cold) useful for once... in other games you almost always hit a friend with a cone because they're so hard to aim properly.

Most aspects of D&D 3.5 are handled excellently in Temple... though there are a few glaring discreprencies. Strength does too much damage thanks to a bug that always applies your strength bonus as if you're using a weapon in both hands (+50% hit and damage due to extra control and leverage), even when you're using a shield. That's a bug. Sorcerers cannot spontaneously apply metamagic. That's a (very poor) design decision. Which means they can't use metamagic (kick in their teeth). But nothing stops a player who doesn't know that from blowing a hard earned feat slot on metamagic anyways (oversight).

One thing I really did like was to see all the 'social' skills represented in the dialogues. It made having a bard along worth the party base (as if he wasn't already). Knowing there were other options to dialogues made it hard to play through as my half-orc barbarian neutral party because I knew I was missing little twists and quirks. Of course since those twists and quirks normally resulted in a lack of combat, I'm sure my Barbarian Boys didn't lament the loss much.

Bugs abound in this game, sadly... little ones that begin to wear away at things. Item creation, finally put in a game, seems to be 90% busted... but since a fan patch (I didn't try it) has apparantly fixed that, I have hopes that the official patch will as well. This game needs about a dozen little things addressed and a few big things (while I have never crashed to desktop I know several people who have... I do, however, have a savegame that is unplayable due to a DirectX error.)

Magic items could use some description as to what they do. A Cloak of Elvenkind adds +5 to Hide, for example... but nowhere in the game can you find that out without looking at your hide skill and seeing a +5 misc bonus. I know what all the items do... but someone new to D&D quite probably wouldn't. Feats could certainly use a better in game description of what they do. One that stands out nicely is "Improved Turning". In the game, that is all it says about it. Really handy.

It really surprised me how little info there was... considering how huge their in game database is. You can click on hyperlinked skill checks, attack rolls, saving throws, spell descriptions... just about anything that shows up in the 'results' box you can turn on... and it will explain it fully. It's a great feature that makes the lack of information Troika provides elsewhere baffling.

A work of literature it ain't

The story in Temple of Elemental Evil is very simple. There is this Temple. It is Evil.

That is all, really. There are no surprise twists in the plot, no sudden reversals of fortune, no rallying of forces. Just a Temple you get sent into for one reason or another... and then do what you will.

Into this simple story, though, they wove 9 distinct intros and several possible endings. In fact, the variety of endings puts Arcanum or Fallout 2 to shame. There are many ways to achieve these endings... including one or more that involve not fighting the final enemy. It's a simple story, but it's a good story. Keeping things simple seems to be what Troika was trying to do and it works. This is a dungeon hack, but it is not as linear as Icewind Dale and is much more enjoyable than Dungeon Siege's 'story'.

As for the quests... if you hate the 'delivery' style quests in games stay away from the quests in Temple of Elemental Evil. The ones in Hommlet are just lame and the ones in Nulb make no sense for the evil party (I understand this is because Atari QA neutered the games content for whatever reason, which is a pity). Fortunately you don't need to do ANY quests in Temple. Just keep running forward and blowing things up, really. If you kill everyone in the Temple of Evil you'll get what needs to be gotten to complete the game. Also if you have a good 'face' character who does all your talking for your party you can often lie and say you've done what they asked even when you haven't. Worked for me all the time with my evil test group.

Go for the eyes, Boo

Combat is the heart and soul of TOEE. The module it was based on is a hack fest even by the standards of the day (and this was back when D&D was still a wargame first and foremost, but if you wanted to shout things 'in character' it was ok.). TOEE lives up to it (though it's much lighter on both the random encounter strength and the frequency of traps... thankfully).

Don't come into TOEE expecting Lord of the Rings (or even Bored of the Rings... look it up, fun read). Just come into it with the expectation of making a party to fight evil/avoid evil/put evil off/bind evil to your all consuming will and run with it. The mechanics of the rules used in TOEE are 90% more accurate than the rules used by NWN. This does have a few downsides (familiars suck as opposed to the super-familiars in NWN) but overall it makes the game feel much MUCH more like D&D than any other 3rd edition game to date.

In conclusion

I stomped the living hell out of the Temple with three different parties and each stomping felt a little different and played out a little differently. I did NOT play the single player campaign of NWN three times. I did not play Pools of -- ack almost said it a second time - That Game a second time. I did play TOEE a second (and a third) time. What that says? I enjoyed it, bugs and all, immensely and am looking forward to a sequel.

May Troika have as long a run as Black Isle did. And may whatever publisher they use next time QA do a better job of bug-hunting.