# A giant frog ate my halfling.



## Goblyn (Apr 21, 2005)

I just recently played *The Temple of Elemental Evil* for the PC for the first time. I was so happy to see the new rules used in a CRPG. It always seemed to me that they would work better, being more internally consistant and all ...

anyway, my point is that even with the 6-hour evaluation limit, it almost brought a tear to my eye. I loved it.

[Edit]: The title is the sumup of one of the battles I fought in the game, in case anyone is wondering.


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## silvermane (Apr 21, 2005)

What new rules? I've been thinking about buying ToEE. Does it have as many add-ons as Neverwinter?


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## Goblyn (Apr 23, 2005)

silvermane said:
			
		

> What new rules? I've been thinking about buying ToEE. Does it have as many add-ons as Neverwinter?




By new rules I mean the 3.x rules as opposed to all the 2e-based games.

About add-ons I don't know.  There are a couple of patches, but you can check out the website and download the 6-hour demo for free; at $30, I may buy it ASAP.  Also, I don't know anything about NWN.


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## TheAuldGrump (Apr 23, 2005)

I _really_ liked this game. But then I have enjoyed every game that I have tried by this team. Fallout, Fallout 2, Arcanum... all excellent. (Especially Arcanum.)

The Auld Grump, my only problem with Arcanum - no matter how much I want to try a Magic based character I end up going Tech...


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## drose25 (Apr 24, 2005)

I have the game and love it!  Got it new at Half-Price Books for $7.  It is a pretty faithful implementation of the 3.5 rules and is generally flexible in game play.  Your characters choose their feats and skills and create magic items, weapons, etc. just as the rules proscribe.

They are some fan mods available out there, visit www.co8.org I think.  The Atari patches are required to make the game playable (at least for me, the out of box version was terribly clunky) and the co8 group has a patch which adds more functionality.

I'm looking forward to the next D&D product from these guys as I have enjoyed this game more than Baldur's Gate or any other I've played in a long time.  Reminds me a lot of Daggerfall, where characters had a lot more options than they did in the standard games of the time.  (Boy, that magic item creator was great!)


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## Padril (Apr 24, 2005)

drose25 said:
			
		

> I'm looking forward to the next D&D product from these guys as I have enjoyed this game more than Baldur's Gate or any other I've played in a long time.



AFAIK they have gone out of business.

ah yes they did.

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/vampire-the-masquerade-bloodlines/590958p1.html


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## Goblyn (Apr 24, 2005)

Everything I hear about ToEE make me want it that much more, if only for a faithful CRPG conversion of 3e rules.

As soon as I'm settled and get a computer, it's gonna get got.

...

Is it available for Mac?


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## Greylock (Apr 25, 2005)

silvermane said:
			
		

> Does it have as many add-ons as Neverwinter?




Nope, and there will likely never be many. This game did not generate much love in the CRPG community when it was released. Atari rushed it, put it out in the market KNOWING it was buggy as hell, much worse than the piddling glitches you get with other games. Then they had the cahones to blame the developers, who knew of the bugs and protested that they weren't done yet. Bad karma, and many people are still, uhm, displeased with Atari about it.

But it always has gotten high marks for it's implementation of 3.5 rules.


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## TheAuldGrump (Apr 25, 2005)

Greylock said:
			
		

> Nope, and there will likely never be many. This game did not generate much love in the CRPG community when it was released. Atari rushed it, put it out in the market KNOWING it was buggy as hell, much worse than the piddling glitches you get with other games. Then they had the cahones to blame the developers, who knew of the bugs and protested that they weren't done yet. Bad karma, and many people are still, uhm, displeased with Atari about it.
> 
> But it always has gotten high marks for it's implementation of 3.5 rules.




Worse, I gather a lot of the bugs crept in when Atari ripped out the Evil plotlines, without much regard for the code.

Troika gone? D*amn! They were one of my favorite companies! I kept hoping that _somebody_ would do a sequel to Arcanum.

The Auld Grump


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## drose25 (Apr 25, 2005)

That's a shame.  I've really enjoyed the game once I got it patched and usable.  It was very buggy right out of the box.  I'm disappointed to hear Atari has such crappy business practices.


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## Goblyn (Apr 25, 2005)

My real hope is that this is the start of a trend of games using 3.5 rules, but not a trend of really buggyt DnD games.  I see NWN is available for Mac. Is it good?


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## Welverin (Apr 25, 2005)

Goblyn said:
			
		

> I see NWN is available for Mac. Is it good?




Depends on what you expect from it, based on comments here if you're expecting another BG2 you'll be disappointed, if you take it for what Bioware was going for (the RPG ecquivalent of Quake/HL, I highly modable multi-player game), you'll love it. Also people around here seemed to consider the expansion campaigns better than the one in the main game.

Gamefaqs and Gamerankings have all of the reviews you need to decide for yourself.


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## mattcolville (Apr 25, 2005)

TheAuldGrump said:
			
		

> I _really_ liked this game. But then I have enjoyed every game that I have tried by this team. Fallout, Fallout 2, Arcanum... all excellent. (Especially Arcanum.)
> 
> The Auld Grump, my only problem with Arcanum - no matter how much I want to try a Magic based character I end up going Tech...




I would not describe the Temple team as being "the same team" that did Fallout.


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## Goblyn (Apr 26, 2005)

Welverin said:
			
		

> Depends on what you expect from it, based on comments here if you're expecting another BG2 you'll be disappointed, if you take it for what Bioware was going for (the RPG ecquivalent of Quake/HL, I highly modable multi-player game), you'll love it. Also people around here seemed to consider the expansion campaigns better than the one in the main game.
> 
> Gamefaqs and Gamerankings have all of the reviews you need to decide for yourself.




Thanks for the links. What I expect is a crpg with a faithful conversion of the 3.x rules.


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## TheAuldGrump (Apr 26, 2005)

mattcolville said:
			
		

> I would not describe the Temple team as being "the same team" that did Fallout.




Take a look at the team members, not the name of the company. While not identical they share a fair number of people.

The Auld Grump


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## Lazybones (Apr 27, 2005)

Goblyn said:
			
		

> My real hope is that this is the start of a trend of games using 3.5 rules, but not a trend of really buggyt DnD games.  I see NWN is available for Mac. Is it good?



NWN2, which is being done by Obsidian (KOTOR2) with support by Bioware, will be 3.5e and is expected some time in 2006. Obsidian has a lot of the Black Isle people (Icewind Dale series).


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## ragboy (May 4, 2005)

I just picked up ToEE for $10. What was buggy about the 'out-of-the-box' experience? I've played for about 6 or 7 hours and haven't encountered any major problems (no patches applied yet).


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## drose25 (May 4, 2005)

For me, the user interface worked poorly.  The screen would not follow characters as they moved so every time you moved the party to the edge of the screen, you either had to use the mouse to (very slowly) scroll up or hit the home key to re-center.  The slow scrolling and screen centering issue was fixed with one of the patches.


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## ragboy (May 4, 2005)

drose25 said:
			
		

> For me, the user interface worked poorly. The screen would not follow characters as they moved so every time you moved the party to the edge of the screen, you either had to use the mouse to (very slowly) scroll up or hit the home key to re-center. The slow scrolling and screen centering issue was fixed with one of the patches.




I haven't had this problem. Interesting. The game was on a bargain shelf as a single jewel case with a cardboard slip cover, so maybe this release included some patching. What's funny is that on the other side of the shelf in the 'new games,' they still had the 'big box' version at $40. I'll have to check the version when I get home. 

I haven't even done much of the 'role-playing' story. I basically equipped my party and headed out to the moathouse to fight. From reading some of the stuff online, it looks like there's a rich role-playing element that could keep me playing for a while.

I was so disappointed with the stock Neverwinter Nights adventure and the Pool of Radiance game... this has been a welcome surprise and great implementation of the 3.x edition rules in computer gaming.


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## satori01 (May 5, 2005)

One good thing about this game is if you have any player that has a hard time grasping Attacks of Opportunities and how to avoid them, mandate they have to play TToEE.

Best trainer out there.


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## ragboy (May 5, 2005)

So, I uninstalled and reinstalled the game last night and added all the various patches as suggested on the fan site mentioned earlier in this thread. I actually hit one of the show stopping bugs and couldn't recover. Looks like it's all working nicely now. If anyone else is having problems, I'd suggest going over and reading their forums. They fixed a huge amount of bugs with a community patch.


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