Temple of Elemental Evil Review Retrospective

Temple of Elemental Evil Review

Welcome to my review of Temple of Elemental Evil, a cRPG developed by Troika and released in 2003. As it pertains to cRPG Design, ToEE is rated as Above Average.

The ToEE Dream

In 2003 Troika release Temple of Elemental Evil to critical acclaim. A few mainstream news sites attempt to paint ToEE as "too difficult" or "too complex" for mainstream consumption, but quickly change their tune and rewrite their articles when Troika shifts a boatload of units. 

Polished almost to perfection ToEE is built on the three pillars of design required for greatness in the genre; namely:

• Isometric perspective
• Turn-based tactical combat
• Full party control

Along with that Troika execute a near-perfect implementation of the D&D 3.5 ruleset, seamlessly integrating the SRD with hyperlinks embedded to stat panels and the combat log. 

Not only is ToEE mechanically supreme but its beautifully-painted backdrops coupled with slick mesh animations cement it as the most aesthetically-pleasing isometric entry in the genre.

Fans of traditional cRPGs and Pen & Paper D&D flock to Troika's site en masse, not to report show-stopping bugs, stability issues and broken mechanics, but rather to bestow praise upon Troika for what may well be the ushering-in of a new D&D era of computer role-playing games akin to the Infinity Engine of old.

Everyone is looking forward to the future of cRPGs spear-headed by a dev that has proven itself; first with Arcanum, now with ToEE. Fans clamor for another adventure set in Greyhawk as Troika patch their game of the few bugs it shipped with. ToEE is refined to masterpiece-level: in its final state it is a polished diamond. The money just keeps rolling in for Troika, who expand their team greatly as a result.

Within the next couple of years Troika have released several conversions of Greyhawk adventure modules along with a toolset that employs 2D tilesets for easy area-creation by modders. And over the next decade an army of modders build dozens of award-winning adventures for the full array of D&D campaign settings.

In short, Troika far exceed the era of Infinity and there is no end of happiness in sight. 

The ToEE Reality

This retrospective is based on the original, bug-plagued version of ToEE as released and patched by Troika in 2003 (patch2 ToEE). I post it for nostalgia, memories and future reference. It is important to record info on the original versions: I don't want people to forget what they were like. 

I love Troika games, bugs and all. 

Arcanum and ToEE are replayable despite their bugs, glitches and performance and stability issues. I should know: I've played them in their unmodded state, on and off, since they came out; they are flawed diamonds.

ToEE has achieved cult status among the hardcore crowd and respect has steadily grown for it over the years; in fact, I have long regarded ToEE as THE model for D&D cRPGs, combining a top-notch employment of the ruleset with genuine tactical combat that renders the Infinity Engine combat system to the comparative level of caricature. 

Troika Games Credits: Core Crew

Troika developed Temple of Elemental Evil in 1 year and 7 months. Fourteen people developed ToEE. The development and design of ToEE was headed up by Tim Cain; the lead programmer was Steven Moret; the lead artist was Michael McCarthy. The ToEE source code is owned by Tim Cain.

Contrary to popular belief, in its final patch2 form ToEE is Troika's best game, not its worst. And that's because combat systems and encounter design are the most important aspects of cRPGs (which stem from wargaming), and ToEE has the best combat outside of Jagged Alliance 2.

ToEE Origin

Troika's ToEE is based on Gary Gygax's tabletop adventure module published by Tactical Studies Rules (TSR 9147, 1985) for the World of Greyhawk campaign setting, which is D&D for grognards. The tabletop module is broken up into four parts, with an interlude:

• Part I: The Village of Hommlet
• Interlude: Hommlet to Nulb
• Part II: Nulb & the Ruins
• Part III: Dungeons of Elemental Evil
• Part IV: Nodes of Elemental Evil

Campaign progression for the computer game is basically the same as the tabletop one. Of course, concessions have to be made when translating a tabletop adventure into digital format. For example, the lore, intrigue and characters are nowhere near as fleshed out, NPC activity is comparatively static, and some of the dungeons are nowhere near as expansive or nuanced (though many have been faithfully recreated).

ToEE Walkthrough

The adventure path of ToEE is classic Tournament Gygax: a party of adventurers arrives in the village of Hommlet, seeking fame and fortune. 

In Hommlet, they find out about the ruins of a moathouse which used to be an outpost for an evil cult.

Beneath the bugbear-infested moathouse, and through a series of caves and crypts, the party encounters a drow Cleric, Lareth. At this point, the party also finds a diary that points to the village of Nulb. 

In this swampy, run-down village populated with agents from the Temple, the party pinpoints the location of the Temple itself.

Having tied up quests in and around Hommlet and Nulb (Emridy Meadows, Imeryds Run), leveled up a bit and outfitted themselves appropriately, the party delves the mega-dungeon under the Temple and explores its elemental nodes in order to gain access to and vanquish the evil dwelling in its depths. Or join it.

In short, there is a bit of questing in two small towns, a few wilderness areas, several waylay zones, one minor dungeon and one mega-dungeon. It's a hack n slash campaign and therefore right down my alley.

"Let's face it; combat is the mainstay of an adventurer's life... combat is inevitable, so you may as well get good at it." - ToEE Manual.

ToEE Features

If we break it down into easily digestible, bite-sized chunks, what makes ToEE stand out from the crowd?

ToEE employs an elegant, powerful and precise turn-based tactical combat system which is beaten out only by Jagged Alliance 2, the greatest turn-based tactics game ever. In other words, no imprecise RTwP plagued by poor pathing routines during combat. 

The system employs multi-shaped spell-targeting visual aids for accurate AoE placement, and the feature-packed radial menu offers tactical options other RPGs can only dream about, such as:

The 5-foot step/Withdraw (avoid AoO):

Special Initiative actions such as Delay and Ready vs. spell/approach:

Special attacks such as Feinting, Grappling, Tripping and Charging:

Holding down the Alt-key will expose Attack of Opportunity instances and give exact movement paths/distances before you have committed to an action.

Those are just a few examples of the tactical options that you won't find in other RPGs.

Below left: Spell-targeting visual aid for Lightning Bolt. Note how you can clearly see who is going to be affected. There are other shapes, too: Fireball aid is circular and Cone of Cold is cone-shaped. With Magic Missile, you can choose who gets hit with each and every missile (fire three at that guy and two at that guy, for example).

Below right: The potential for movement is clearly shown before the player commits to the action, complete with Attacks of Opportunity.

Also note the portraits nested at the top which represent each combatant in the battle and the order in which they may act. We can reshuffle the order of our party members in this initiative line. Say, for example, we are up against undead but our Cleric is fourth in the initiative order. We don't want our guys in order 1-3 to waste time and resources fighting the undead, so we click-hold-drag our Cleric's portrait to the forefront and have her disrupt the undead in a single action. Battle over.

Initiative is incredibly powerful in ToEE: if we get to act first, our chances of winning a battle are greatly increased. Therefore, high Dexterity along with the Improved Initiative feat are recommended.

ToEE admirably employs the Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 ruleset. Here are the seven races and 11 classes selectable in chargen:

There are 21 skills, 79 feats, 22 domains, 19 gods and a couple hundred arcane and divine spells built in. Unimplemented feats include Mounted Combat, Mounted Archery and Ride-by Attack, and unimplemented skills include climb, ride, swim and use rope. Provision for these feats and skills exist in the game files in which there are 648 feats, 51 skills and 568 spells listed. Such was the built-in extensibility of the ruleset from the outset.

Many of the 3.5 rules are accessible from hypertext links; the ruleset is built into ToEE. And the best part is: the combat log is also hypertexted so that the player has full access to the rules DURING COMBAT. The Help.tab is about 90,000 words in length, and it's all well-written.

There is no crit like a ToEE crit. Note the hyperlinks in blue; they link to pop-up windows detailing the rules:

Unlike other cRPGs, ToEE hides nothing from the player.

ToEE Party Control

We can create one to five characters and then add NPCs in the gameworld for a maximum party of eight, which is two more than Baldur's Gate allows. This doesn't factor in +summons (some are perma) + pets + perma-dominated monsters etc. 

ToEE companions vary from pretty useless up to grossly OP. There is some companion-based reactivity, too (most notably, in regards to Prince Thrommel and Lareth the Beautiful).

I generally create five characters and ignore the companion pool, though newbies might like to at least recruit Elmo outside the tavern in order to receive a little help in the early going.

Party of 8:

ToEE Graphics

ToEE features pre-rendered 45-degree isometric backdrops along with slick mesh animations, not sprite anims. The backdrops are some of the best to have graced the genre. ToEE is a stunning game to look at. Take the starter-hub of Hommlet for example: streams are animated to give the impression they're gently flowing, trees wave in the wind and leaves fall from them, chimneys plume smoke, the waterwheel rotates gently at the mill, the blacksmith strikes hammer to anvil, and lanterns flicker by night. 

McCarthy and his team of artists deserve to be commended for the backdrops and mesh animations. The meshes are modeled on the 3.5 Monster Manual for authenticity. They look gorgeous as they move around smoothly on the silky backdrops.

Meshes have different anims to accentuate crits: a twin-blade character will spin in the air like an acrobat before unleashing a flurry of piercing thrusts whereas a great-weapon wielder will bring their weapon right back over their head and send it crashing down on the victim. Monks have unique anims, too.

Victims don't just "chunk" or appear on the ground without anims; instead, they buckle over and collapse to the ground in a satisfying manner. 

• Left: 256x256 *.tga texture.
• Right: the texture applied to the mesh, in-game. Some creatures are environment-mapped/glow-mapped (multiple *.tgas layered on the mesh). The appearance of all creatures and equippable items (arms and armor) are impacted by area-lighting.

A paladin decked out in full plate, wielding a bastard sword on-hand and a tower shield off-hand: it doesn't get any better than that.

Visual effect for Fireball and Cone of Cold spells:

cf. Baldur's Gate graphics.

Including the intro cinematic, there are 20 FMVs. Only a few of them are pre-rendered animations (those are good); the rest are simply static images which the cam zooms into or pans across (not so good).

User Interface ToEE. One thing I didn't cover in UIE is the paperdolls. ToEE paperdolls are rotatable meshes that can be viewed in any pose:

ToEE Aurals

ToEE features meaty and satisfying casting and on-hit sound effects. Fireball-launching just sounds so good. A stab sounds like a stab, a hack like a hack and a bludgeoning like a bludgeoning. You might think, so what? Well, lots of cRPGs can't get it right. ToEE mostly does. 

Sounds effects are stored in 1,463 .wav files. Most of the creatures in the game have on-appear, on-death and fidget/idle sounds. Some ambient sounds, such as crickets chirping and frogs croaking, are annoying or even painful to the ear due to their volume and incessancy. Some spellcasting sounds are also hard on the ear.

Speech and narration is stored in 4,409 MP3s. The VOs and narration are mostly newsreader-like, but serviceable.

OST/music tracks are stored in 27 MP3s. With the exception of the Hommlet theme and general combat track, the music is forgettable. The track that plays in the finale is as annoying as hell, perhaps the worst I've had the misfortune of hearing in a game of this kind.

ToEE Itemization

ToEE cRPG itemization is static or hand-placed; it is unrandomized and does not change from game to game; it is not level-scaled. Some of the weapons are unique in the genre. For example, we can wield exotic spike chains such as the Thorned Chains of Love, which is finessable.

My "wyvern tail" martial:

cf. ToEE Item List.

Here we can see that ToEE supports about 40 weapons. Some weapons are greyed out because we need the Exotic Weapon Proficiency feat in order to wield them properly ("Ray" is erroneous). Note that bastard swords are not considered exotic unless we want to wield them one-handed, and that katanas and mauls are omitted (though they're in the files themselves).

However, weapons are not itemized fairly in their generic, masterwork or magical variants. That is fine except in the case of not itemizing masterworks because non-masterwork (generic) items cannot be crafted and sometimes no magical variant can be found or bought in the gameworld.

D&D 3.x is big on builds. Thus, if a player takes Weapon Focus, Weapon Specialization and Improved Critical for one of 40 weapons (logical), and a masterwork variant is not itemized for them, they're going to be pissed off by that. Specific example: there are no masterwork or magical dwarven waraxes itemized. However, a workaround exists but it's technically an exploit: temp-enchant a generic weapon with the Greater/Magic Weapon spell and then craft it while it's enchanted.

cf. Craft Wondrous Item ToEE and Craft Magic Arms and Armor ToEE.

I like the crafting system. Want to craft +3 holy/axiomatic weapons? Well, you can. Want to craft elemental burst weapons? You can do that, too. It's a bit buggy, though, so you'll have to experiment.

Itemization is cool but imbalanced. Foreknowledge is required in order to make the most of it. We're not getting optimal on our first run. 

The two legendary wields in the campaign are Fragarach and Scather. In the original module by Gygax, they are broadswords.

There is a nice set of armor and robes as well. These are looted from the corpses of Temple top-brass, Hedrack and Senshock.

(The warhammer is two-handed and therefore cannot be equipped with the shield.)

Nitpick: The artist should have widened the armor mesh as per the robes.

ToEE Combat Encounter Design

ToEE combat encounter design is laregly mob-based; that is, the party is outnumbered by at least two to one in most scenarios. Therefore, AoE immobilizers, direct damage and divide & conquer spells are in high demand. Fireball and Empowered Fireball are King in ToEE [ToEE Spells], as are reach weapons, such as Glaives, coupled with Combat Reflexes, Great Cleave and Whirlwind feats. As a rule of thumb, crowd control and buffing are essential.

Not including on-rest spawns and waylays, there are approximately 720 hostile enemies in ToEE, of which 20% are human, 18% are bugbears and 16% are some sort of undead. There are also many giants, and giants are as tough as nails and hit like trucks. Therefore, Rangers should take goblinoid, human and giant as Favored Enemies, and parties are advised to enlist the services of a Cleric with a solid Turn Undead ability.  

The phased encounter with Lareth the Beautiful is one of the best low level encounters in the genre; it can play out in several ways. 

The Broken Tower also hosts a solid low level encounter, pitting the party against humans again. It's cool to fight humans and not monsters all the time:

Indeed, Greyhawk is a human-dominated campaign setting, so it makes sense that we battle them often.

Also, the people who complain about there being too many enemies are just scrubs that don't know how to build combat units or how to compose adventuring parties.

Bugbears:

This is one of the biggest combat encounters in the game. There are more bugbears and ogres that come in from off-screen, too. Love it.

I love how ToEE punishes players who don't bother learning how to play with tedium, frustration and death.

Barracks-based human mobs:

Ogres are heavy-hitters when the party's max level is 10:

It's nice to see non-squishy enemies as well. I don't doubt new players will have problems with galeb duhr 10/adamantine damage reduction.

Molds and fungi are the province of Zuggtmoy's Beloved:

As you can see, there are lots of enemies standing around waiting for you to come along and rip them a new asshole. Some enemies do wander, however, but there are no proper patrols.

ToEE Bosses

In addition to mob-based encounter design, there are also singular toughies exemplified by the elemental node guardians found in the bowels of the Temple. They are the sub-bosses in ToEE, representing each of the four elements: air, earth, water and fire:

Each guardian drops an elemental power gem upon being vanquished which can be set into the Orb of Golden Death, an artifact of doom crafted by Zuggtmoy and Iuz. It is described by Gygax as "a gold sphere shaped to resemble a human skull without its lower jaw". Once the gems are set into its crown, the orb allows us to summon the guardians as minions, as well as cast other spells.

No level-scaling. With the exception of hostile overworld waylays and on-rest respawns, every enemy/encounter is what it is regardless of party level/size. What I mean is, a brigand is a brigand regardless of party level/size. He does not suddenly get +HPs, +attack rate and better equipment just because the party is bigger and more powerful. He remains a brigand, and that's how it should be.

ToEE Maps

ToEE has no map-by-map contiguity [pic] like in Baldur's Gate. It's just, you're here now, now you're here. 

As in Fallout and Arcanum, there is real-time traveling over the map, time does pass, and there are waylays that can be avoided with the Survival skill, along with non-hostile, scripted waylays, but it's just an overall disappointment.

Note the low resolution of the map, how it's been spliced together, and how you can't read what's written on it. cf. Infinity Engine world maps.

Custom overworld waylays featuring rival adventuring parties are rare, unfortunately:

ToEE Ironman Mode

As in Jagged Alliance 2, ToEE offers an Ironman mode. From the help.tab:

Ironman Mode is a special mode of the game where you are not allowed to Load and Save games, although you may Quick Save, Exit and Quick Load to return to the game. You are also not allowed to reroll your characters once you have selected them. - ToEE help.tab.

What that doesn't make crystal clear is that, when a character dies in Ironman mode, we can't just reload and try again because there is NO option to do so: the character IS dead and STAYS dead until we raise it (5,000 GP + penalties through our Cleric or 1,000 GP through Terjon). And if everyone in the party dies (TPK), the game is OVER.

Point-buy is also not an option: we get one roll per character only, and we must accept that roll, but we can choose which roll to assign to each stat.

Ironman is the best mode of play available in tactical RPGs because it forces sub-optimal stats and makes us consider every action we take in combat. One does not become a tactician unless one is forced to.

ToEE Opening Vignettes

There are nine opening vignettes representing each of the alignments in D&D. By way of dialogue, FMVs and combat encounters, what these do is set the scene as well as set up the initial questing in Hommlet: the party's reasons for being there.

The Lawful Good OV can be problematic for players in that it pits the party against aggro straight off the bat. If the enemy wins initiative and fires a bolt into the Wizard's guts, this can result in a death before the player has even had a chance to do anything.

In fact, for those noble souls who do not min-max, and who also lose initiative badly, OVs can result in TPK, and that's just poor game design. Instead, they should have allowed for some breathing space and time for buffing/equipping, as no party is so stupid as to walk into battles unprepared. Troika needn't have bothered with OVs at all; I can only imagine how much time they took out of the dev cycle.

Hommlet

Indeed, the faithful recreation of Hommlet and Nulb no doubt took a lot of time out of the dev-cycle as well. What Troika should have done is downsize and abstract the village areas, and turned the campaign into a full Gygax tournament-style one. Here is a high resolution map of Hommlet, recombined by cRPG Blog (3 megabytes):

Note that Hommlet does allow for fast-travel to the inn, the tower and the church, but it takes the steam out of the campaign when new players have to explore the hub, looking for things of interest such as quests, vendors and companions (and there really isn't much of interest, other than gawking at the artwork).

The fog of war should at least have been removed as in the above-posted map. Veteran players won't think it's a problem because they know where everything is and can therefore replay the campaign in tournament-style with out any tedium, which is great.

ToEE Dialogue System

Dialogues check several social skills. The Intimidate skill at work:

As you can see, ToEE's dialogue system is able to handle the role-playing aspect with consummate ease. It supports phased encounters like the one with Lareth, in which combat stops, dialogue kicks in for some parley or scripted movement/action, and then combat starts back up again or the situation is resolved non-violently. This is all done smoothly and seamlessly.

cf. Iuz ToEE.

Temple of Elemental Evil Factional Reactivity

There are 35 identifiable factions in the campaign, though most are minor and their reactivity mostly pertains to combat, such as "who goes aggro when NPC x is attacked".

There are three main factions in the village of Hommlet: the church of Saint Cuthbert, the Old Faith, and the Temple (agents: spies and assassins).

The leaders of the Church and of the Old Faith are good-aligned and also the guardians of Hommlet; they are both allied against the Temple, which is evil.

Hommlet has a Council headed up by village elder Kenter Nevets (a wise ex-farmer), who is also Justice of the Peace and leader of the Old Faith. Also sitting on the council are Terjon (chief cleric of the Church of St. Cuthbert), Jaroo (druid of the Old Faith and agent for the druids of the Gnarly Forest), Elmo's father (Captain of the Militia), Ostler the innkeeper, Mytch the Miller (Old Faith) and Burne and Rufus (a wizard and his associate).

Under the village elder, Jaroo Ashstaff is of the Old Faith and also an agent of the druids of the Gnarley Forest. He has set up a grove to safeguard Hommlet and keep an eye on the Temple. Kella, an associate of Jaroo's, is currently within the Greater Temple, spying on it for the Old Faith (brave). The Miller, Woodcutter, Braumeister, Cabinet Maker, Blacksmith (Brother Symth) and Hersdsman are also of the Old Faith, along with their families. Some villlagers are being converted from the Old Faith to the Church of St. Cuthbert.

Canon Terjon heads up the Church in Hommlet, with Lesser Cleric Calmert second in charge. Burne, Rufus and Elmo are also of the Church, and are agents for the Viscount of Verbobonc.

Rannos Davl and Gremag of the Trading Post are Chaotic Evil spies in service of the Temple. They can be attacked, slain and looted with impunity. No one in Hommlet will react to them being attacked, and news of their death does not reach Nulb or the Temple. Zert, a warrior staying in the Welcome Wench Inn, is also an agent for the Temple.

In general, and logically, attacking anyone in Hommlet other than Rannos and Gremag causes the town to go on high alert, but there are oversights. For example, Calmert may be attacked and slain without any blowback.

In some cases, this reactivity extends to the town of Nulb. For example, if we slay Terjon then word gets around that we are the Butchers of Hommlet, causing Otis, the Blacksmith of Nulb, to attack us on-sight.

Nulb is mostly a hive of scum and villainy (Temple agents) though there are also adherents of the Old Faith and Church of St. Cuthbert sprinkled about, such as Otis (Elmo's brother).

Lareth the Beautiful is a drow Cleric overseeing the banditry from the moathouse ruins east of Hommlet. He is unusual in that he serves both Lolth and the Temple, which are sworn enemies. If recruited, he turns on the PCs once they reach the broken tower adjacent to the Temple, when they are outnumbered.

Temple of Elemental Evil -- its dungeons -- are guarded by seven factions vying for dominance: there are the four Elemental Evil factions as well as the adherents to Iuz, Zuggtmoy and Lolth. All are evil.

The four elemental factions are the Water, Earth, Fire and Air temples. Each one is headed up by a chief cleric that offers the party a few quests related to wiping out opposing factions. In this respect, the party can change the factional landscape of the first two levels of the Temple. The quests involve convincing unallied forces to join a faction, convincing already-allied forces to defect, desecrating rival shrines, stealing artifacts and assassinating faction leaders. Social skills are checked in dialogue.

Unfortunately, the factional landscape is not particularly engaging in the Temple, and it's also glitchy and illogical at times (e.g., the disguises are buggy), so many players may just throw their hands in the air and end up treating one faction like another -- as enemies to be slain (which they are, anyway).

If the factional questing doesn't glitch out it can be mildly amusing, but it's not the strength of ToEE.

Other features:

• Powerful utility spells as exemplified by Teleport. Deep in a dungeon and need to get back to town in order to rest, heal and restock? Cast teleport to bring up the overworld map! What other cRPG has this, other than Troika's own Arcanum?
• Resting Restrictions. Rest-spamming is not possible in ToEE due to the high frequency of on-rest respawn. Other than inns, it is possible to rest in safe zones such as the tower outside the moathouse and the stairwell in the temple, but that's it.
• The campaign can be beaten without fighting a single foe or even drawing aggro. It's rank blasphemy to conduct a passive run, but still: eat your heart out, Planescape: Torment.

Ok, that's enough of the salespitch. Let's move on to Part II: ToEE Character Creation.

***

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