GregHowley.com

I'm a huge fan of Troika Games. Ironic then that I've never completed any of their games, although I've played all three. The three games Troika made are Arcanum, a great Steampunk game which I played probably 30% of before putting it aside, Vampire Bloodlines, of which I played probably 75% before I hit a bug where someone told me I had to go upstairs in a 1-story building, and Temple of Elemental Evil.

Temple of Elemental Evil really had a lot going for it, but it had a lot of problems too. The biggest of the problems was that out of the box, the game was buggy as hell. The worst of these bugs was those that would happen towards the end of the game, when you'd enter the elemental realms. At this point, the game would slow down and then freeze completely, and I could never actually play those last few levels, so I never finished the game.

But as a D&D experience, the game did a stellar job of implementing the D&D 3.5 ruleset. You can ready actions for if enemies cast spells, take five foot steps, attacks of opportunity, and even use counterspells if you're so inclined. That amount of detail creates opportunities for some really great strategic turn-based combat.

But as I said, out of the box, the game just didn't work. Luckily, a group calling themselves The Circle of Eight has apparently just completed fixing all the game's bugs. When I heard this last week, I was overjoyed, and Friday night I reinstalled the game. By the end of the weekend, I had a party of fifth level characters.

And it's true: the bugs are fixed. This doesn't add up to 100% of the experience I'd want, but I plan to now play and complete this game. The scroll acceleration still gets on my nerves: when you scroll the screen the movement starts slow and then speeds up. In the end, it just feels klunky. Also, viewing the map pauses the game, so I can't watch and navigate from the map like I could with Baldur's Gate. And the pathfinding is still horrible. At one point, I was unable to charge an opponent because you need a straight line for a charge. There was in fact a straight line, but the pathfinding routed the path through an off-center waypoint, so the game interpreted the path as slightly V-shaped. This kind of pathfinding is common in the game.

The graphics are incredible - I've got nothing to complain about there. Watching your characters run through knee-deep water and create ripples is a great effect. But sometimes overhanging trees or other scenery will obstruct your view of characters, and that's annoying.

There are some great monsters in the game too. The giant frogs at the moathouse which you hit at first level are a great example. They're actually able to grab you with their tongues, then reel you in and swallow you whole. All according to D&D rules - you actually have a chance to break free, and then you can stab the frog from inside if you have a small weapon.

The game also allows your spellcasters to create magic items, brew potions, and take other crafting and metamagic feats. And when you target area spells, it highlights the spell's area of effect to let you see who will and will not be affected, which is incredibly useful. But I can't help but wish there was more mindless experience-building content available. More animal lairs, thief dens, and non-plot dungeons. The Circle of Eight mod I just installed adds some, including custom quests, voice acting, and music - even a goblin rock band that had surprisingly good original music. I even encountered Gwenno from the Ultima series, who called me "Avatar" and gave me a crossbow crafted by Iolo. That type of random encounter is the type of thing you'd see in a game from the Fallout series, and I got a huge kick out of it.

If you've never tried this game, it's probably dirt cheap by now, and with the Circle of Eight patches, it's more playable than ever before. I recommend it.