It seems that you're using an outdated browser. Some things may not work as they should (or don't work at all).
We suggest you upgrade newer and better browser like: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera

×
avatar
CMOT70: The Temple of Elemental Evil (GOG)

This game took for fucking EVER to get going! First of all, after a lot of deliberating and a few experimental starts, i decided to install the Circle of Eight mod pack. I generally don't like mods that add stuff or modify gameplay, at least not for a first play through. But the Co8 mod comes in two flavors, a basic pack that mostly fixes a lot of bugs (but by no means all of them!) and puts in a couple of small quests that were left out of the game by Troika. Then there's the "extra content" mod that adds in a lot of new content. I went with the basic mod pack and it installed and worked fine for me.

ToEE is now my favorite D&D based CRPG ever, though most people won't agree with me i know! But to put it in context all my top 10 favorite video games are all turn based strategy games and turn based tactical RPG's. And in that respect ToEE is awesome...it is exactly the sort of turn based combat micro management i love so much. Some of the battles are truly epic and require thought and tactics, taking 45 minutes just for some single encounters to be resolved. But i loved every minute of it.
Not much of a story. You spend the first few hours dicking around in the village wondering if the game is ever going to get going. You learn about this evil Temple and you set off to do something about it. Short on story, does NOT mean short on role play. What you do about the Temple is up to you and your parties alignment. A Lawful Good party would want to clear the place out of every last scap of evilness. On the other hand a Lawful Evil party may just think that this place is just awesome and want to join their choice of evil cult. Chaotic Evil may want it all for themselves. Hard to go into detail without spoilers, but this is one of the few RPG's that really allows completely different approaches based entirely on the players morals.

The graphics are excellent, even now. Better than the Infinity Engine games. So the game has awesome depth of combat, great graphics, surprising role play freedom of how to approach and what to do in the Temple, and light on story. Just my sort of game!

What's wrong with it? Well not everyone likes the combat- it is SLOW i admit. But the depth is worth it for me. There are lots of D&D 3.5 rules here that don't really have any place in a CRPG and will never be used in this game by anyone. The engine was hoped to be used to build other modules, maybe some with far less combat focus, and all those useless skills and feats may have then been of use...but none of that really came to be.
The game, even with all of the bug fixes, is still buggy. Crashes to desktop are rare, but other gameplay affecting bugs are still common. Saves can become corrupted. Save often. Back up the saves before each session. DO NOT save during combat (one of the biggest causes of corrupted save files). The game, considering how old it is, also has performance issues...bad frame rates, stuttering play during big battle etc.

But, despite all the games issues, i loved every minute of it. It's on the replay list for a Chaotic Evil play through sometime- maybe with the full extra content mod pack. But first i want to play The Keep on the Borderlands total conversion mod..another of the great old D&D modules from the old days!

EDIT: My party, for those interested in such things.
Dwarf Fighter for tanking.
Barbarian for DPS melee.
Human Sorcerer for AOE DPS, though really only took off after getting Fireballs well into the game.
Dwarf Cleric for healing maybe? Pretty useful for tanking as well.
Elf Thief/Wizard- Two levels of Thief intially then Wizard levels after that with left over cross class skill points into thief skills on each level up. Good for scouting in stealth- something that works well in ToEE.
Good review! I love ToEE too much.I remember an epic battle with bandits in the early game!
My thief with bow was almost useless in the battles. I should have make him multi-class with wizard too. haha.
Offspring Fling

I really liked this one. It's a nice puzzle platformer that is clearly centered around speedrunning. The level design is great and quite often when I've already succeeded in a level I've replayed it several times again just to get a better rating or a new best time. For many levels you have to think outside the box and there were just very few levels that were frustrating (mostly the ones with the bees and the ones that needed perfect timing).

In the end I've completed all 100 levels and got a gold flower in 66 of them and a rainbow flower in 3. For the moment I'm done with the game, but I might return to see if I can do even better in some of the levels.

Complete list of finished games in 2016
Post edited February 13, 2016 by PaterAlf
Magical Diary

Despite me not being a fan of Time Management games, I liked this VN - probably because the time management involved magic, which I am a fan of. Well, no epic stories here, or if there are I avoided them all through my choices. It was disappointing how few chances there were to actually use magic though. I ended up casting only a very small fraction of the spells that I learned. I guess that should teach me to be less of a nerd and spend more time socializing than studying!

I might return to the game in the future and try other choices - I know that I probably saw only 10% or less of the content the game has to offer.

Go! Go! Nippon! ~My First Trip to Japan~

Well, it's been a long ride. Not the game itself - it's not very large. But I started playing in April 2014! The cringe factor from the most clueless weebo player character imaginable was just too strong to bear, so I needed many months between each gaming session in order to avoid brain damage from the constant face palming. So yeah, player character - painful.

Exceptionally low production values went into this game's art as well, as there are entire scenes of nothing but sky, or empty dining room tables whenever the "artists" couldn't find any backgrounds to reuse from other games which had the content described in the text.

The actual "tour guide" sections were pretty interesting though, and I learned a lot of neat info about Japan which I forgot soon after. But it's the thought that counts.
Post edited February 13, 2016 by kalirion
Damn, I only get to play a game once or twice a week atm when I'm in town, but I finally managed to finish something of the games I'm playing now.

Time Mysteries 2 (Android Tablet)

One of the better Artifex Mundi games but the addon sucks.
Can't say much about it which I didn't already said in the previous posts about their games since they use the same formula over and over again.

List
Post edited February 14, 2016 by Klumpen0815
I finished evoland 2.
Uncharted 1 it was ok I guess but what I started uncharted 2 it seemed a lot better game.
Fuck Watch Dogs.
Fuck Aiden Pearce, he's a piece of shit. >_<
The story is this game was just awful.
avatar
omega64: Fuck Watch Dogs.
Fuck Aiden Pearce, he's a piece of shit. >_<
The story is this game was just awful.
Woah, sounds like you had a lot of fun!
avatar
omega64: Fuck Watch Dogs.
Fuck Aiden Pearce, he's a piece of shit. >_<
The story is this game was just awful.
well.. at least it had clara lille or what ever.. =)
<span class="bold">Book of Unwritten Tales: The Critter Chronicles</span> (played on Wine using PlayOnLinux)

Following 01kipper's steps, I've just finished the second instalment-although-it-is-actually-a-prequel in KING Art's saga of fantastic and spoofy adventures. As I already hinted earlier, I did enjoy this game significantly less than the original The Book of Unwritten Tales: even though it's shorter it felt like it dragged a little, I never really did care much about the critter's problems and their fate, and some of the puzzles do indeed lack some logic.

Like in its predecessor, pop cultural references abound. However, I missed the constant breaking of the fourth wall that took place in the original game, which is almost completely absent here.

My last complaint is about this game's failure at being a perfect prequel to the events of TBoUT: yes, we do get to know the Critter's origins (more or less), but on the other hand there's no clue or explanation about how Nate and Critter end up as Ma'Zaz's prisoners aboard the Mary. The OCD-inclined and closure-seeking part of me was truly upset about this particular fact.

Otherwise, here's a well-produced, politically incorrect adventure, that drinks from the classics of the genre (sometimes up to the point of blatantly parodying them in its own gameplay). Despite being a prequel, since it appeared after the original game it contains several references/jokes about The Book of Unwritten Tales, but not as many as I feared so I won't advise you against starting to play this series with any game in particular (well, except TBoUT2, of course :P). But maybe what I'd advise you against is playing them all in succession one after another: I think it's better to get a brief rest between them. I know I'm gonna do it before tackling The Book 2, so I can enjoy it as it deserves.


My list of finished games in 2016
avatar
omega64: Fuck Watch Dogs.
Fuck Aiden Pearce, he's a piece of shit. >_<
The story is this game was just awful.
avatar
Klumpen0815: Woah, sounds like you had a lot of fun!
Not really.xD
Not even sure why I finished it.
I guess it kept hoping it would get better. :P
avatar
omega64: Fuck Watch Dogs.
Fuck Aiden Pearce, he's a piece of shit. >_<
The story is this game was just awful.
avatar
Antimateria: well.. at least it had clara lille or what ever.. =)
Too bad she dies before she ever gets real character development. Oh wait it's the end of the game anyway. :P
Post edited February 14, 2016 by omega64
avatar
Klumpen0815: Woah, sounds like you had a lot of fun!
avatar
omega64: Not really.xD
Not even sure why I finished it.
I guess it kept hoping it would get better. :P
avatar
Antimateria: well.. at least it had clara lille or what ever.. =)
avatar
omega64: Too bad she dies before she ever gets real character development. Oh wait it's the end of the game anyway. :P
Nooo.. I just tried to get away from cops. It sucked.
Uhm.... spoilers?
avatar
Cyraxpt: Uhm.... spoilers?
Indeedlio but it isn't a new game. Still.. "Nooo" You were better than aiden..
avatar
Antimateria: Indeedlio but it isn't a new game. Still.. "Nooo" You were better than aiden..
It's a two year old game, i didn't even played it yet...