Rating: 
Summary: A great game that might have been
Review: The Temple of Elemental Evil starts with a good opening sequence and then some impressive graphics, but savor these first few moments of elation because the gameplay is terrible. Characters often cannot find their way around objects, even other members in your own party. In one area I sent the party to an open spot only to have members going all over the place. There were several times that I entered a home in the village and was unable to start a conversation until I moved the entire party around; possible due to movement being blocked. The combat system takes forever to finish, although I did like the area of effect being shown before casting spells. I found the game to be many of the Dungeons and Dragons rules without the imagination or great storylines that were the hallmarks of my D&D experience. After being given the initial "wow" of graphics and the original Temple of Elemental Evil as a backdrop I would have expected much more than this product delivered.
Rating: 
Summary: Finished at last, and boy is it great.
Review: About a month ago, upon creating my party, doing the 1 minute alignment specific beggining sequence, and seeing how beautiful the game's artwork is, I attempted my first quest. The only problem was; the npc who I had to talk to mysteriously disappeared. I then realized the game wasn't exactly finished. Troika just recently released a patch and I have redelved into the world of GreyHawk. I have found one of the best games of the year. Being a jaded computer role-player, I am quite hard to please. Diablo II and Baldur's Gate II seem to be the template for just about every RPG nowadays, sticking with recycled mechanics and a fresh coat of paint. Which is a safe, albeit uninspired, route. Apparently the creators of TOEE have enough respect for what they create, and enough interest in what they are doing, to break this slump. Upon entering the game the player is greeted by instant gratification visually. Every detail of what one might expect in a cookie cutter (not a bad thing) fantasy universe is smoothly implemented. In other words; everything flows and fits. The wisplike fireflies of the night, the town drunkard, the random encounters with "bandits", and the political church all are there. They aren't there because the developers were trying to be different, they're there because they should be. PS: They are also there because this is a faithful adaptation of the module with the same name. As you do the mildy uninspired quests to get to the first mini dungeon (leading up the the epic temple dungeons of course), the main meat of the game is introduced: combat. This is more of a D&D creation than any game before it, going with nothing less than an ambitious turnbased mechanic. Every tactical endeavor must be preasent for success. And oh boy, is the challenge fun. But of course, there are several ways to do many of the situations, and many of the confrontations can be avoided. My main strategy though is to charm the biggest monster I can find and then kill everything. With all this killing, you may be wondering about the story. Well, there isn't really a story. This game is all about Dungeons and Dragons. The nostalgia many of us have about it, the aptmosphere behind it, and the feeling you get whith two criticals in a row. Nothing could stop the developers from achieving their clarity. Now go buy this game.
Rating: 
Summary: This game is unfinished!
Review: I bought TOEE at it's release based on the overwhelmingly positive feedback on previews in game magazines, sadly this game
is not a finished product. Items lack descriptions, items do NOTHING (including all boots), characters do not get spell progression they should (cleric domain spells, NPCs don't level up correctly) and the game world is pretty darn small.
The major positive for this game is the combat, which is interesting and tactics intensive (although there is a long stretch where all you are doing is fetch and carry quests) and the wizard spells and turn undead spells which are pretty devastating.
The game is somewhat buggy, even after the extremely delayed patch but is playable all the way though if you can get over your annoyance at how many game aspects just DIDNT GET DONE!
If you buy this game you will want the Circle Of Eight Fanfix which will make it less annoying and more playable, but I would save my money for a game the publishers actually let the developers complete. Jessica
Rating:
Summary: You'll love it
Review: If you like the real D&D rol playing game you are going to love this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Worth a look
Review: I just played through the demo that I downloaded from Atari's site. It was a lot of fun, if a bit challenging at first. I've been so conditioned recently by other AD&D games into expecting to be able to rest/heal/regain spells at will, that not being able to do it in this game took a bit of getting used to. However, once I found a safe area to use like a "base of operations", things really took off for my party. Also, for me, the turn-based system is a welcome change from the "real time" trend and feels much more like the pen and paper game. It also reminds me of the great gameplay from "party-building" classics like Wizzardry I-III and the SSI games like the *original* Pool of Radience or Neverwinter Nights. In my opinion, this type of design is closer to what playing AD&D is supposed to feel like. On the downside, some aspects of the user interface could be better, but nothing too bothersome. I didn't encounter much in the ways of bugs in the (limited) demo, but I understand that Atari has released a MAJOR patch that fixes something like 300+ issues for the full game. Now that the patch is available, I intend to buy the full game.
Rating: 
Summary: Horrible
Review: the mapppin system is atrocious the whole game is horrible. Absolutely do not buy this game, i love roleplaying games and this was painfull just to even attempt to play. The best part is creating ur party at the beginning, however when ya get into the game to actually play its not even worth it. DOn't waste ur time or your money
Rating:
Summary: Fun, but a little chalenging
Review: Are you people on drugs? i have been playing this game for a while and i have encountered no noticeable bugs. did you ever stop and think that maybe your computer is a little bit challenged by this game. for gods sake it takes a gig minnimum to install. the game is emmensly adictive, even if a bit frustrating to start. and no, it was not because of bugs. it was because when you first start your party is almost always outclassed by whatever you are fighting. true there are some simple enemies like the giant toads and bandits in the moathouse. but what about the zombies. i kept lossing my scorceror and rouge. once you get your party decently biult up it levels out to a very fun challenging game, with NO GAME CRASHING BUGS!!! maybe my computer is just really lucky but i think you all need a beter video card or something
Rating:
Summary: Great game- but needs some QA
Review: I am a semi-biased fan of the original D&D module. I am thoroughly enjoying this game...the combat system, graphics, accuracy with the original module, etc. But the other reviewers are right- eagerness to get this product out probably resulted in some QA team's bug reports being ignored. I am surprised that they didn't take some more time to fix some of the bugs. I haven't experienced game-crashing or other catastrophic bugs, but there are quite a few serious ones that either inhibit play or are just generally annoying. (example: when faced with a locked, magically-barred door, some of your characters can mysteriously pass right through the door-this one annoyed me quite a bit). In summary, this is a truly outstanding game that was released too early. Atari should listen to their QA teams- I'm sure some people are reading these reviews and not buying. When more of these bugs are fixed, this game will be a *****.
Rating:
Summary: Too many challenges to enjoy an epic adventure...
Review: In a world where the D&D CRPG venue has been established by games such as Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, taking a classic epic adventure such as TOEE to the CRPG world should have been a sure thing. Unfortunately, TOEE doesn't rise to level of BG and IWD. Several challenges await anyone who buys TOEE. The need for a patch has been well documented so I leave that to the other reviews. First there are a whole new set of D&D rules. Granted, TOEE is a CRPG that follows the new 3.5 D&D rules very religiously while the other previous games have "simplified" previous version of rules much to the chagrine of hardcore D&D fans. However, these simplifications followed the 80:20 rule in which the simplifications reduced the complexity to the point that 80% of the target audience could have an enjoyable experience without adding significant product complexity to satisfy a minority. The next challenge is the UI which is completely mouse centric and requires a greater degree of hand/eye coordination to deal with. Where as in other games a keystroke could cast a spell, now its a sequence of selecting the right character, a mouse dance of mouse button clicks while manuevering over a very small piece of screen real estate to do the same action. There are very few "short cut" key strokes in many secondary "admin" type screens. Can't select spells or skills by hand, have to drag and drop. Can't sell multiple items at once to sell, have to drag and drop each one (huge pain). And if you mess up the drop, start over. May not seem like a big deal but my eyes aren't what they used to be and lack of hand coordination skills is why I don't buy action/first person games. Its not that the UI isn't intuitive, its just not consistent with other D&D games which compounds the frustration. Last challenge is the game performance. Partially as a result of staying "true" to the rules, subsuquent design decisions have a considerable drag on performance. For example, calculating "fog of war" (what is visible to the party) is determine per person in party. Not bad when you have 5 PC but when you have 10 or 15? BG/IWD approach was to have smaller maps (areas for the company to explore) that didn't require as much "remasking" when one moved the party. TOEE uses many large maps (some the size of BG city) and does FOW rendering against that. Combat doing turn-based is even worse as the now the enemy position (from the POV) are calculated and rendered/not rendered on the big map. Go up against 20 skeletons and you feel like you could have hand rolled the entire battle quicker.
As a result, this game fails to meet experience expectations set by other games in this genre. They should have tried this approach on a lesser game setting (i.e. IWD3), rather than a classic epic where the challenge was finishing the game not playing it. Thus the expectations exceeded the resulting product here, unfortunately...
Rating:
Summary: Excellent game with some irritating shortcomings
Review: The game itself is excellent and you can play it very creatively, which is the whole idea behind DnD: the storyline is not as straightforward as the typical linear questing in Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights, which is a welcome difference. The fact that you can create your own items is also great - you no longer need to bash in the head of some ogre to get an artifact. However, for some unknown reason it is very hard to guess what you need to know as to make a flaming longsword +2 as to plan when to make it and what spells to learn as to make it. Also, you get several items which are obviously magically enhanced but you don't know their effects - say boots and cloaks of Elvenkind. OK, you can just put them on and start looking through each and every inventory screen to see what changed (maybe it's one of your attributes or a new feat or a skill, or bettered a saving throw - you can check this, but what if the thing gave you magic resistance or increased your movement rate?). So, this is a good game which only needs better documentation of items - I have had the luck to buy several TSR / WOTC based games, so I have learned by heart the properties of most items and with the help of the DnD manuals it is relatively easy to guess stuff; still it does decrease the joy of playing this otherwise excellent fantasy RPG.
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