Any reasonable quality checking department, given sufficient time, could have reduced these problems to a manageable level. The obvious inference is that Q&A didn’t get the product, or didn’t get it long enough, or performed poorly. The result is just not suitable for primetime, in my opinion. A patch is in the works, according to Atari, but Troika has unabashedly stated that it’s collecting data for the patch from player reports. We apparently paid our money for the game (and yes, I bought my copy) for the privilege of being a developer’s baseline beta testers. Makes you feel warm all over, doesn’t it?

In short, even if you passionately like the kind of RPG described above, I would suggest holding off the purchase of TOEE until the patch is released—and check forum websites like GameBanshee to make sure it addresses all the problems.