The Temple of Elemental Evil

The Temple of Elemental Evil is the latest Dungeons & Dragons based game to come from developers Troika, who were also responsible for Arcanum: Of Steamworks & Magick Obscura. This is the first game to use the newly revised Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 rule set and so has an advantage over other D&D titles on the market, which are only using the version 3 rules. Although the new rules do create a better balance within the game they are likely to only be noticeable to serious fans.

Hardcore

Troika have done a serious amount of research into the AD&D rule set and as such this is a pretty hardcore title. The 170-page manual will be essential for any gamers who don’t know about the AD&D rules already and this presents a pretty steep learning curve for the novice. When you start the game you select up to five party members based on your chosen alignment. There are nine possible categories, from lawful good to chaotic evil and depending on the category you choose different character types and races will be available to you. Choosing the characters to join your party can keep you occupied for hours, deciding how many warriors you need and how many sorcerers.

Once this is done you embark on the story proper. Your party is sent on a mission into Hommlet, where you are to track down a party of pirates – who the villagers are worried may have awoken an age-old evil. Your quest takes you through the village of Hommlet and, primarily, inside an old palace where the evil is thought to live.

The devil’s in the detail

The attention to detail in the rules of The Temple of Elemental Evil is its biggest asset and its biggest problem. Right away it scares off casual RPG gamers leaving only intermediate and advanced gamers. The intermediate gamers are likely to struggle with having manual control over every aspect of the game, just as you would in the paper based AD&D. Leveling your party’s abilities is paramount to getting them through the game but you are given no help in doing this by the system. You are expected to know which abilities to improve and how to go about doing it.

The game quickly becomes difficult, if not impossible, if you don’t get a good grasp of leveling early on. Other RPG titles such as Neverwinter Nights include an option to automatically level up your characters and this would definitely help out the less experienced gamers. For experienced gamers there is plenty here though. The rules have been faithfully followed and so the combat tends to go the way you would expect it to. The spells and magic items work as expected, although there are a few bugs that mean that occasionally the combat seems a bit off.

Teach me

The Temple of Elemental Evil does feature a rather brief tutorial, which covers the basics of the interface, movement and combat. This only scratches the surface of what the game can offer though and whilst it does give you a feel for the interface, the only way to really get used to it is to jump into the campaign and find out for yourself. The absence of any sort of multiplayer mode takes the social element out of AD&D and means that you don’t have the chance to learn the ropes from a master.

Fortunately the single player mission is long and winding with plenty of sub-quests to be had, that it should keep most gamers going for some time. The game has been well written and doesn’t really suffer from a lack of a human dungeon master, except in the handling of non-player party members. You can recruit two other team members from locals in Hommlet and these are generally hired for a share of the loot. The problem with not having a human DM is that the recruits immediately take their share of the loot as soon as battle is over, which means that they often take essential quest items which they will sell to merchants so that you can buy them back at an inflated price. At least with a DM you can barter with these characters or get in for the loot first.

Music to my ears

The presentation of this game is pretty good. The graphics are well animated, although projectiles tend to look as though they fly out of the character rather than their weapon. Dropped items on the map are rather small, especially at higher resolutions, and monsters do occasionally appear inside walls. Aside from these minor graphical glitches the graphics are good. The camera is set at an isometric angle and so don’t have the depth of other titles, but the graphics are generally well animated and have a good level of detail. The outdoor and indoor scenes are vast and well detailed, with a good use of lighting.

The sound is equally up to scratch with good quality sound effects and a decent enough background tune. The voice acting is good enough with a variety of voices being used to give all of the characters a unique sound, although there does seem to be a lack of interaction with NPCs.

Good or Evil?

The Temple of Elemental Evil is likely to appeal primarily to hardcore AD&D gamers, who will be sold on just the fact that it uses the 3.5 edition of the rules. This is a double-edged sword as the detail will put off a lot of gamers but will attract others. In a nutshell, if you are only a casual fan of RPG games and don’t have much of an idea of the rules of AD&D then this isn’t for you. If you’re an AD&D fan then there are other games out there that will follow the AD&D rules, but will offer a little more help than this game, especially with character development.

If you’re the sort of person who will notice the difference between v3 and v3.5 rules then you probably already know that this is exactly the game for you.