I am at my wit's end with Temple of Elemental Evil. I knew that it was "unfinished" and had "problems," but this is just fucking maddening! Even with a fan patch installed, it's still utterly broken and bug-filled. I tried launching the game today to find that AVG had deleted the game .exe in the middle of the night because I had to crack it since the DRM that protected the game was broken and would say that there was no CD inserted in my machine even though there was. (Thanks AVG! False positive taken care of!) After re-downloading the crack, I find that when I load up the game, none of my saves work! ... Seriously? Screw this.
I have no wish to waste more of my time on this game. I really want it to work, because what I played (and when it worked), it was pretty good. I'd rank it above Neverwinter Nights, but below the Infinity Engine fair (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment). It wasn't especially user-friendly for someone who hadn't played a D&D-based game before and the interface could use some work since many of the descriptions are fairly ambiguous and useless, but the combat was pretty good and the game was easy on the eyes, lacking the dearth of darkness and fog that plagued Neverwinter Nights.
Troika has been dealt many a bum hand over the years and their games are infamous for being unfinished, but this is just unforgivable. Whosoever is responsible (I'm guessing Atari forced a ship date on them or didn't fund any QA?), you should be ashamed. This could have been a game that people enjoyed and had a great deal of fun with, but here it is bug-ridden and incomplete. Some would say that a game is "never finished," but that doesn't mean you should ship it as an unplayable mess.
You know what I'm going to do now though? I'm going to play Arcanum. At least I don't remember that game ever giving me much trouble (it's another Troika game for those who don't know). Am I mad? Perhaps, but I really just want to play an isometric RPG. Preferably it would have been based on D&D, but Arcanum's setting is interesting enough that I don't mind one bit. Plus, like I said, I remember it actually working the last time I played it.
I have no wish to waste more of my time on this game. I really want it to work, because what I played (and when it worked), it was pretty good. I'd rank it above Neverwinter Nights, but below the Infinity Engine fair (Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape: Torment). It wasn't especially user-friendly for someone who hadn't played a D&D-based game before and the interface could use some work since many of the descriptions are fairly ambiguous and useless, but the combat was pretty good and the game was easy on the eyes, lacking the dearth of darkness and fog that plagued Neverwinter Nights.
Troika has been dealt many a bum hand over the years and their games are infamous for being unfinished, but this is just unforgivable. Whosoever is responsible (I'm guessing Atari forced a ship date on them or didn't fund any QA?), you should be ashamed. This could have been a game that people enjoyed and had a great deal of fun with, but here it is bug-ridden and incomplete. Some would say that a game is "never finished," but that doesn't mean you should ship it as an unplayable mess.
You know what I'm going to do now though? I'm going to play Arcanum. At least I don't remember that game ever giving me much trouble (it's another Troika game for those who don't know). Am I mad? Perhaps, but I really just want to play an isometric RPG. Preferably it would have been based on D&D, but Arcanum's setting is interesting enough that I don't mind one bit. Plus, like I said, I remember it actually working the last time I played it.
