What's the verdict?

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Well, for those who rushed out to get this game, what do you think?

Is it another POR2? A dissapointment like Lionheart? A half-hearted failure like IWD2? An overhyped, but to be fair, still decent game like NWN? Or yet another legendary triumph like the BG series?

C'mon, let's hear it!

 

It's out? I didn't think it came out until the 23rd...

 

It's released TODAY indeed but store will not get it before say 17th to 19th. BTW that's for US and Canada, europe will get it the second of october and I'm not even sure it will be translated... you know for french, spanish, italian, german and any other language europe use... by the way the official title is

¨Dungeon and Dragon: The temple of elemental evil, a classic greyhawk game¨ or DDTTOEECGG for short...

 

You can read the review at Gamespy here (it get 4/5)

Though I dont trust this site much

 

I would buy it if I could play it on my computer but I can't. Be sure to read the requirements before purchasing.

 

I was close... stil DDTTOEEACGA isn't much better!

 

Well, I just bought it, but I'm a little scared to open it until I read a good review. Anyone else as impatient as myself?

 

Gamespy riview wasn't bad! okay Gamespy are jerk that always say no multi player is a con and we learn NOTHING in the review but it still got a 4/5 Star, not bad in my book.

You got a copy but don't play it? OMG Give it to me instead...! I'LL play it

 

No - I bought it on my lunchbreak and I'm not home from work yet. Don't worry - I will.

 

Stores here will get it tomorrow (Friday)... I can't wait!

 

Okay - initial feedback.

I didn't get very far last night; just enough to create a full 5 character party and wander through the first town a bit. But here's what I came up with:

The character portraits are even more horrid than I imagined. Terrible artwork. There are a number of interesting options for character creation, but the interface is terribly uninspiring. Very square, no cool fantasy fonts, nothing. It feels more like the SAT's or an online driver's test than an RPG, so it's tough to get really in the mood at first.

Once into the actual game, be prepared - the avatars are TINY, and the default is set at the lowest resolution dimension (800x600), so there's no way to "zoom-in." In character creation, you get to set the height and hair style of your character - which seems cool - but then you can barely see your character on the screen anyway, so big woop there. I found this disappointing, and I have a 19" monitor. Small monitor owners beware.

I will say that the environments so far are very pretty. In the first town, you come across a big oak tree with the leaves rustling and blowing in the wind. Very cool. The enviroments seem very much alive. I've been in one fight so far (against one mugger), and it was easy enough. I liked it, but if you hated the PoR battle system, you may be turned off a bit (turn based).

More to come tonight when I get home. But initially - My socks, for the record, are in fact not blown off. We'll see how it goes over the next few days.

 

Maybe its my ati 9800 pro... but theres a crap load of settings i could use, the geometric one seems to make the characters really stick out, all in all im not complaining to much.. Noone else can seem to make a a decent rpg, and so long as this one has SOME kind of story it will do just great... as for the small characters, are you guys feeling ok? Did you *PLAY* bg1,Bg1, IWD, IWD2... they are in no way smaller than that...
as for the fighting system, in a way its what bg2 would be if u played round by round... the menu is something to get use to but once ya get it... youll do fine

 

@ Iron Eagle.

Is the turn based like BG2 in the sense that it pauses at the end of the round and you have as long as you like to make decisions or is it like POR2 where there is a timelimit and you simply default to doing nothing for the round if you run out of decision making time?

I take a long time to make decisions sometimes and I would hate to be rushed. This is the main thing that would make me decide against purchase.

 

This question wasn't addressed to me... but I have the answer so here you go anyhow:
There is no time limit on rounds. A character's round is over after the character has performed a full round's worth of activity (or the character chooses to end his/her turn. So take all the time you want to figure out what you want to do.

 

Oh yes they are, especially when you are used to playing the BG/IWD games in 640x480, which I am. Maybe I'm being picky, but I like to fully see my characters. Not unplayable though, that's not what I was saying, but still not an exaggeration.

Continuing my review...

The battle system is decent enough, but the in-battle interface is a little confusing at first. I'm sure I'll get used to it, but at the moment it seems a little overthought on Troika's part. Pretty steep learning curve for newbies, especially D&D newbies. Visually however, the environments are awesome. Beautiful visuals all across the board; from the flowing cloth effects of your cape to the movement animations of the monsters and NPC's. The music and ambiant sounds are top notch as well. The voiceover work however is just plain bad, and sounds so fake at times it kind of hurts the mood a little, but then I am only in my first level still. There may be better voices to come. So far, NPC interaction is merely okay, and character developement seems downright non-existant at this point. I don't see many interesting dialogue options, and the voice sets consist of nothing but "Okay," "Huh?" "Okay." Pretty drab.

Definitely worth a play so far. Visually pleasing and seems to be very true to P&P. Since I payed full price I'll definately be paying it more attention than most games, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed. More to come.

 

Started playing and like Death Rabbit said, the diffculty curve is rather steep.

But I agree with most of his points. Graphics are not bad, excellent tactical battle system. The storyline still leaves me puzzled, though. Maybe it's because I've just started.

Ah well, we'll see.

 

My party is level two now. It took me probably 30 minutes to get used to the interface, but now I find it quite usable (hotkeys are very helpful).

One major bummer was when my cleric turned undead and a bunch of ghouls all ran off in different directions. The game kept me in combat mode until I killed them all, and I had to run all over the map (1 character at a time) to find them. It took probably 20 minutes to kill five or six low level enemies.

Also, I'll probably start a separate post about this, but the game crashes on me when I go into the world map and try to go to a new location... I'm trying to get back to Hommlet from the ruined outpost. I'm not getting an error message when this happens. The game just shut down on me. Has anyone else seen this yet?

 

I'm finding the learning curve steep too - the interface is a little bit like Arcanum's but still pretty weird and new. If I wasn't already so comfortable with 3e rules I think I'd be too freaked out by the complexity of the game to be interested in continuing.

I think I'm going to re-read the instructions now that I've played for awhile, then start again and see if it makes more sense now. I've never had to do that with a game before, even Arcanum, which I know a lot of other people had trouble with. But maybe I'm just easily confused.

I have a very new and wonderful video card (unfortunately, since it means Mr. Husbandpants is always hijacking my PC to play on ALFA) and I am totally blown away by the graphics. They even put NWN to shame. They are more 'artistic' than realistic but there is a tremendous sense of movement and dimension.

Death Rabbit, I'm with you on the ugliness of the character portraits. What were they thinking? Ditto on the strangely un-fun character development screens. I only ended up creating one character and picking pre-fabs for the rest, and character creation is usually my favourite part.

[Edit: OMG. Stop the presses. Socks have been knocked off. The half-orc PC has just been swallowed whole by a giant frog. How cool is THAT?! This game RULES!]

[ September 20, 2003, 23:07: Message edited by: Sprite ]

 

Okay, a quick review based on about 2 hours of play

The appearance of the game is actually quite stunning and beautiful. The designers have clearly opted for atmosphere and look rather than realistic detail. To me it presents a more complete 'package', and makes it much more immersive. Although as already stated, the portraits could be improved on.

The combat system is very detailed and the most "true" to the PnP D&D game yet. If you aren't familiar with 3rd edition D&D (or 3.5 now, I guess) then you will likely find it very confusing at first. It is completely turn-based, allowing full and partial actions. One aspect I really like (once I figured out how it works) is that the game tells you what actions you can and cannot take, as well as whether an action is a full or a partial round action. This is very helpful as it lets you plan out a combat strategy, and alter your tactics as you play. At first, the number of options available during combat might seem overwhelming, but as you progress it begins to be very intuitive.

The NPCs, so far, seem to be very dynamic. Unlike many of the CRPGs based on D&D, the dialogue options do change and differ as you progress. For example, if you've spoken with Bob the NPC already, the next time you speak with them you may not get all of the same options. Many of the NPCs do not allow you to ask the same question 10 different times, and the options will change based on what you said the last time. The dialogue also differs based on which character in your party speaks with them.

There seem to be a lot of different options for 'personalizing' your characters, such as hair styles. A big improvement over many other CRPGs is the use of 'simple' or mundane clothing. Hats, gloves, cloaks, and boots all show on the characters. A nice touch is that robes and cloaks actually look like the character is wearing a robe, or a cloak, or both

Another small touch that I really like is that Gold is not the only currency. Just as in PnP, the monetary system consists of Platinum, Gold, Silver and Copper (1 PP = 10 GP = 100 SP = 1000 CP). It's a small detail, but it's a nice touch to be able to buy items that cost only a few silver pieces. It also makes bargaining through the appraise skill much more effective.

All in all, I'm very impressed with the game. The designers seem to have combined various elements from the preivous CRPGs, taking what worked and getting rid of what didn't. It's like a combination of PsT, BG, IWD, and Arcanum.

One thing to note is that it is not an 'action' oriented game; it truly is a roleplaying game that has been translated to the PC. Combat is neither quick, nor fast-paced, but that doesn't detract from the 'excitement'. After getting used to the interface, and the combat options, combat became a lot more fun to play through.

There is definitely a learning curve involved, however. It might be worthwhile making a 'throw away' party to start off; get into a few fights, learn the interface, and then start 'for real'. The character creation is extremely detailed and involved, so it is probably also worth it to have a mixture of custom characters and pre-generated ones.

And for the record, having my half-orc warrior get swallowed whole by a giant frog was pretty cool Being grappled by its tongue was kind of gross though