I held off on getting it do to bad reviews and general perceived bugginess, but I can pick it up now for $10 at Gamespot. Anyone know if the bugs have been fixed? Is it actually worth $10?

No.

Sir D - responses like that don't really help inform or rationalise the reasoning process do they? [img]tongue.gif[/img]

I'd pay $10 AUS for it brand new, definitely. All depends how much a fan you are of AD&D products I suppose, which would be the deciding factor in the end for how much you'd be willing to pay. ;) Bargain bins might have it cheaper, obviously.

If you're in doubt, be sure to check out some of the threads on the game here. I know guys like Lucern, Betelgeuse and a few other turn based fans had fun with it...just be sure to have the latest patches.

I'm yet to find it locally where I live at a cheap price, but as a long term cRPG AD&D freak, I'd try it out at least, what's a few lousy bucks? ;)

I love D&D RPGs, but even with the patches this game was never fixed properly. But as CerebroDragon points out, for $10 go for it.

I got it for free and still couldn't stand playing it...

Cerebro, the less said about that horrific failure of a computer game, the better.

as he said, i got it cheap and enjoyed it enough. the turn based system was decent - even included initiative order. the radial menus took some getting used to. i didn't encounter many bugs. got through it twice ok. maybe i just have a hard time disliking things but for the first 3.5 game i thought it was good.

Betelgeuse, did you have any issues in the Fire Node? Did they fix it via patch? That was one of the worse, if not the worse, bugs in the game. By the way this game had well over 200 documented bugs and counting. Atari's official forum lists them.

i played this game pretty much all the way through. the dungeon has 3 levels and you finish the game on the 2nd level

after i had 'won' i didnt check out the other level because it was mind numbingly boring.

the content in this game is comparable to about um 1/10 or less of an infinity engine game. I mean not the first city area not the first chapter not much at all. It is an area without really a story... there are two cities with people who have nothing important to say, an area to kill a cleric and 3 levels of dungeon. Thats it thats all there is. and to describe the dungeon in comparable terms to say ... well say the warrens level of planescape torment because ive been thinking about that game. Well the entire toee dungeon is about 1/4 the size of the warren dungeon in planescape torment. like take one of the areas out of that, like one area you need four keys you fight one boss there are a few small stories none of them even as good. I mean that is the whole game of toee it doesnt add up to one chapter of planescape torment.... one area within a chapter. I mean it doesnt even really cover that much lol like pick out say the undead area of the warrens, theres much more going on just in there than toee.... anyhow im belaboring the point.
the combat is much more time consuming which is why it will take you maybe 20 hrs to beat the first time. Most of your time in the game will be fighting random monsters in a screen.

10$ is a tough call. It is interesting actually making your characters and i believe there is a fan mod coming out someday with more content. I would describe this game as mostly an engine with possibly what you would call a demo included.
edit i did not care about the bugs that much
I did have to play the game around the fire node room

[ 12-25-2005, 07:45 PM: Message edited by: the mighty stamar ]

Well, if you get a frog to latch onto your character, it looks absolutely HILARIOUS, so I'd get it then, to whoever else may be watching this thread.

This is news I didn't have before about the Circle of 8's continued work on the ToEE long after Atari bailed after their official second patch.

http://www.ataricommunity.com/forums...d.php?t=501212

By the way, you should see the list of bugs this game had/has. UGH!

From what I've read, there were a couple of real bad games that hit the shelves, for bugs, playability issues, and this was one of them.

ugh, the giant frogs. forgot about them. caused the death of many a character.
as for story, i doubt the original module had much to begin with.
i don't recall bugs in the fire node, didn't hang there too long. wee bit too hard for my liking.
i didn't feel the need to install the co8 patch. only used the official, and if i remember right, they finally brought out a second patch a few months back

What were the others?

What were the others? </font>[/QUOTE]Lionheart

i liked lionheart more. I would say lionheart is much closer to an infinity engine game ( it is by black isle studios)
It is about the length of one chapter of an infinity engine game. There is some content in lionheart that is quite good.

The ending of it is really boring its a definite unfinished game. But, I enjoyed it more than this game. I give lionheart about a 6.5 and toee about a 4. Neither of them is really terrible. Another game that came out I didnt like was dungeonlords I give that about a 6. It is probably even less complete than lionheart.

oh and ps, troika made another game called vampire the masquerade after this one, and its just excellent. Close to a must play its really great.

[ 12-26-2005, 07:54 PM: Message edited by: the mighty stamar ]

Yeah, I remember that era, kinda sucked, death of interplay and troika really. VTM:BL was cool though, I really liked it.

Dude, for that money just buy it an get the patch i thought the game was alot of fun especially the with the changes your alignment makes, plus if you play a theif/rogue he/she looks well gnarly :D

[ 12-26-2005, 09:42 PM: Message edited by: Madman-Rogovich ]

This might be 'so' last week for everyone else, but I just saw it. I had no idea about the modding that went on, and now I'm considering playing it again, so thanks!

And $10 is the going rate for sub-par games from 2003 that you're ambivalent about. It can't get much lower. I just bought Hidden and Dangerous 2 for that much, which fits the bill ;)

Pros: Best combat in a D&D title to date if you like the tabletop. The last games that came close had shiny gold boxes :D

Excellent character creation and advancement, letting you test your character ideas, with a good implementation of alignment and reputation, and the very cool implementation of crafting skills (scrolls, potions, magic weapons, amulets/rings/ect).

Basically everything shows up on the character models, and they start looking cool

I think something like 53 different characters can join your party (up to a party of 8 I think), ranging from the useless to the awesome, human peasants to hobgoblins and an ogre

And it's at least stable with all the patching, though my HD crashed and died when I was in the fire node the first time lol. Coincidence?

Cons: Releasing it in the awful state that they did ensured that no more like it would be made. It has small character models, and it's kindof a dreary world. It's short, especially if you just fight and don't talk to enemy groups (which opens up several quests). Its shortness hurts the most. Atari didn't even release their world editor. A twinked out party could probably blow through the game in 8-10 hours without knowing what they were up against if they went to the right places.

So unless anyone's willing to form a crack team of infiltration experts to retrieve the world editor, it remains as is: I think $10 is worth it. Buy it, patch it, mod it, finish it, and move on if any of the pros sound appealing.

the crafting was another thing i liked. there was no stressing about being inefficient with who gets scrolls to write into their spellbook. if you think another mage might miss out, have the first scribe a copy so they can learn it too. it cost a bit of xp but it felt justified

Even though it's a short game, I liked it. The combat system is really good, and some other things about it that were good (like the alignments actually making a difference). I'd definitely recommend it for $10.

Marathon, or anyone else, did you play this game with all patches provided by both Atari and the Circle of Eight? I'd like to know how it plays fully patched.

first time through i only used official patch one. 2nd time the next official patch was out so i used that. never used the co8 one. only had a handful of crashes. if you save often enough, and being an rpg i'd say quite often it shouldn't be too much of an issue

If you haven't bought it yet, PM me and i'll sell you mine for the cost of shipping. -- i.e. free.

It was a decent game. Lots of bugs, but still playable (if you save often!). It does run out rather quickly, but I found that the challenge of trying to solo the entire thing with a wizard made it worth it.

I just played with the original patch, but the only part that slowed me down was the fire node. Nothing game stopping, just very slow graphics in there.

You're lucky if all you experienced was being slowed down in the Fire Node. Too many people could not continue from there at all.

Yes it's worth $10, the combat engine is worth it. But it was sad to see such a great combat engine, that could have been used as a cookie-cutter for other campaigns ala the Gold Box series IMO, be bogged down with so many other bugs that it was basically abandoned and won't be reused. Not sure how I feel about giving Atari the $10 though at this point ;)

heres a good reason to get it right here


http://www.keepontheborderlands.org/

looks interesting

I think the engine of toee is pretty cool actually so if there was an actual game made for it it would be pretty nice.

So what's news Dbear, did you purchase ToEE? [img]smile.gif[/img]

Having just recently finished the game for the very first time, I have mixed feelings on it. The combat engine itself was an improvement over the horrendous tragedy of the Ruins of Myth Drannor (that game doesn't deserve the PoR in its title as far as I'm concerned) and I really enjoyed both creating my characters and the ambient soundtrack.

However, it is very short and the roleplaying interaction wise is fairly shallow, limited and weak compared to the might of the infinity games; the doyen of the isometric cRPG. I also suffered from a fair few game lock ups (some requiring me to reset the PC) and the performance degraded noticably into the node areas, late in the game, making me cringe in the attempt to get the mouse on the precise location I want it.

Personally, I think playing any of the goldbox games would take me longer and offer more enjoyment storywise - but that said, I had moments of fun with ToEE. The combat dynamics are quite well done and it made me very nostalgic for the turn based days. I might have to play Wizardry 8 or Devil Whiskey now as a consequence. ;)

I'm tempted to write more of a review, but i'll hold back for now. ;) Is it worth a tenner? I'd say that would be relative to the amount of value one has for their cash and the price one places upon the value of their entertainment. :D
(Give it a shot at least from a friend and see if you like it first maybe...)

Cheers,
CD

Question: is there not a version of Temple of Elemental Evil for NeverWinter Nights in the form of a module? I am sure I saw one somewhere, and from what I heard (of course, I could be mistaken and this was all for Diablo) that it played far better than the original. I would have to go and look that up in order to be certain, though.

Not if it had NWN's far inferior combat engine it didn't :D

(Granted, I haven't touched NWN since mid 2002 when it came out, and it certainly was stable, but apples and oranges comparison there. If you like D&D combat, NWN is a poor substitute, because there's not a lot of story to work with)