OH, SWEET MERCIFUL CRAP! NO!!!!
...and that's enough of that. Sorry. Point is, it's been quite a bit since I reviewed a game based on Dungeons & Dragons. And why is that, exactly? I love Dungeons & Dragons! Besides being my favorite tabletop game, it's also something I've written several pieces on in what is totally not a shameless rip-off of an idea that TheSpoonyOne did with Counter Monkey (by the way, on the off-chance that he reads this: big fan, please don't sue!). Regardless of the lawsuits pending against me (either real or imagined), I love tabletop and Dungeons & Dragons is where that love was inspired from to begin with.
So, naturally, I picked up The Temple of Elemental Evil and took a crack at it to see if it was up to snuff. After all, it ran off of the 3.5 Edition Ruleset, which - as we all know - is the very best ruleset and is totally better than that 2nd Edition crap where they calculated negative hit points or...um...or...
Okay, yeah, truth be told, I only know about 2nd edition from my folks and have only even played editions past 3rd. 3.5 has just been the one my group and I have most consistently used. We've actually started using Pathfinder more after we started a rousing game in that setting, and I honestly like it a lot better...and this is just proof that I need to bring back Tabletop Tales and get back on track, sorry.
The Temple of Elemental Evil actually has its origins in a D&D module that was written by none other than Gary Gygax himself, the creator of Dungeons & Dragons. I've never actually played said module myself, instead only knowing about it by reputation (unlike Tomb of Horrors, but that's a story for another day...and also, Tabletop Tales). I've been told that the game is actually a faithful recreation of events. Without mods, you show up to the town of Hommlet destitute, penniless, and must build themselves up into an effective fighting force to battle the forces of naughty evil running around in the world of Greyhawk.
And indeed, the game only lets you (without mods) go up to about level 8 unless you use exploits and the like. You can build a party of up to five player characters that can be any of the D&D vanilla races and any of the D&D vanilla classes. Like in a good D&D game, it's good to have a good party balance. Like in an actual D&D game, you're probably not going to have that, but that's okay. The good news is, for anyone who is bored by doing your own dice rolls (and, if you are, why are you playing a Dungeons and Dragons game?), the game does it for you much like other D&D-based video games do.
The bad news? Combat is still turn-based...but that's not necessarily a bad thing here. The style makes the player work on strategy and tactics...though if you're like me, your tactics basically amount to "beef everyone up with the appropriate feats and then make them hit the thing until it dies". But, in all honesty, this is about as close to an actual D&D game as you can get in a video game.
That being said, it isn't perfect. I had to work very hard to get it to work on my computer (something that Troika Games has an unfortunate history of and is buggy and sometimes crash prone even when it does work, but I don't necessarily count that as making it a bad game. It didn't have any game-breaking bugs like Bloodlines did, and I even still gave that game a positive review, much like I'm giving this one a positive review. It's not perfect, but it's definitely nothing to turn your nose up at. If you want a good representation of what playing the 3.5 edition of Dungeons & Dragons is like, you could do a lot worse than this.
It may not have the polish of Neverwinter Nights (the Bioware game, not the MMO), but it definitely shines, albeit with a little more dully.
The Temple of Elemental Evil is now available from Atari and Troika Games.
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