The Temple of Elemental Evil is one of the most beloved of classic Advanced Dungeons & Dragons modules, and its first iteration into a video game has always occupied a strange place in the CRPG pantheon as it was a case of immense potential and obvious love for the material, trapped beneath clunky mechanics and an overwhelming list of bugs – almost typical of Troika Games of Arcanum and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines fame. The developer’s original version captured the 3.5 ruleset faithfully, providing the most complete electronic D&D experience at the time. Initially published under the banner of Atari, it’s now in SNEG’s hands, who offers to the world a…refurbished version, with hundreds of improvements, most of which were fan made. How well has this been polished? More importantly, was it worth the trouble?
The prerendered towns, forests, swamps, caves, and dark evil castle rooms looked pretty darn good back then and now they look even better. Having said that, it’s clear from the first hour that this isn’t the big upgrade one would expect for something that is so old. Think of it less as a remaster (it’s not even advertised as such) and more as a restoration of a 2003 fantasy mural that someone found behind a vending machine, its surface now clean and shiny. SNEG’s goal was to deliver what modders have been working towards for almost two decades. In several areas it has pulled that off. In others… Well, the ghost of Troika still rattles the chains. For staters some bugs can still be found running around – not so much when it comes to quests, as this critic has yet to find a problem in those, but a couple of mechanics don’t work as intended. Thankfully they are very rare.
From a technical side this is an improvement and the fact that one can run this ancient relic on a modern system without having to fiddle with compatibility settings or mods is awesome, making it easy for fans to revisit the game they love in order to enjoy the new coat of paint, with the low price making it a neat pick for CRPG afficionados who haven’t tried this out. Would it kill SNEG to provide a changelog, though? What exactly are the “over a thousand fixes and improvements“? What was used from the player-crafted mods and what has been left out? Even with this issue this re-release of Troika’s (sort of) cult classic remains a great gift to fans of the original, even if the changes aren’t that easy to notice. There’s a bigger problem, however, and that’s how The Temple of Elemental Evil was never that great to begin with.
First things first: while the gargantuan manual mentions that one can simply stop reading and jump right in and start playing, no bigger lie has ever been said. Take character creation. Veterans will gleefully lose hours crafting their perfect five-member murder troupe. The rest, on the other hand, will open the character sheet, glance at all that…stuff, and immediately question their life choices. From Baldur’s Gate to modern classics such as Pillars of Eternity, CRPGs have always been like that. The problem is that here the needed info won’t always be that easy to get. Is this sword better? What does this feat do? Is there a point in picking this over that deity? How do I sell items with a simple click?
Even those experienced in role-playing mechanics, as well as somewhat archaic pieces of software such as this will occasionally resort to good ol’ Google for some info, or continue searching amongst the many, many pages of the manual. Okay, the UI isn’t bad and the mechanics are not that hard to understand. The in-game encyclopedia is somewhat hard to navigate, but it does exist and it does explain most of the things that there is to know – but since this is a re-release some additional fine-tuning and QoL changes would be more than welcome in order to ease people into what is an ocean of mechanics and rules. Oh, and why exactly isn’t there an option to rebind controls? Why is the camera movement so fast even at the lowest setting? Why doesn’t the UI scale when in a higher widescreen resolution, making it hard to read text without leaning towards the screen like a senior citizen?!
Moving on to the actual game, it should be noted that there’s little role-playing to be done, since this is at heart a glorified combat module wearing a thin trench coat labelled “story.” Yes, alignments influence a couple of things. Yes, many NPCs react to you differently depending on who you are. Yes, some choices will lead to different outcomes in some missions – but narrative depth? Rich dialogue? A sweeping plot? No. Look elsewhere. This is an adventure where the focus has always been dungeon-crawling. In fact, aside from a couple of tiny locations, the bulk of the gameplay revolves around exploring the titular Temple. This is basically a fancier version of Diablo.
The good news is that once you survive the paperwork and the boredom that is the first (and in many ways the only) hub town and step into combat, this finally remembers it’s supposed to be fun. The turn-based combat of The Temple of Elemental Evil is a tactical affair that expects far more than just ordering your team of fighters and sorcerers to swing their axes and magic staffs around. One must be mindful of position, resistances, offensive and defensive penalties, special moves and much more. Don’t expect to win on brute force alone. Buffs, knowing how all the various skills work, understanding how to combine the powers of your crew – everything here a is a must.
Word of caution: before attempting to brave this world be prepared for a bit of torture in the first hours. This is a game perfectly happy to let a housecat end your adventuring career before it even begins. Things get far more interesting around level five, when spellcasters finally feel like more than discount archers and the full combat toolbox opens up, but make no mistake, this game asks you to suffer a little before getting to the good stuff. Even then, it remains a bit repetitive when compared to others of its ilk, especially once the party enters the Temple proper, which offers relatively few breaks in tone or structure.
Don’t ever think that what has been said so far speaks about something that is bad. No, this is actually a good CRPG, it’s just that it’s not as good as its nostalgic fanbase will have you believe it is. It’s a niche kind of deal. A flawed piece of software, with lots of fun and charm that’s hidden under repetition and a lack of an engrossing story. Yours truly loves a couple of similar titles that are objectively full of problems (Gothic quickly comes to mind), but affection does not magically make the road less bumpy. The Temple of Elemental Evil asks patience but doesn’t exactly reward that patience that effectively – and that’s fine. Not every cult classic needs to be elevated into untouchable legend status. Sometimes a game can simply be what it is: a deeply flawed, occasionally brilliant CRPG that earns affection rather than universal praise.
