WarGamer Editor-in-Chief takes ToEE out on the Battlefield

There's an <a href="http://www.wargamer.com/reviews/temple%5Fof%5Felemental%5Fevil/">in-depth review</a> of <a href="http://www.greyhawkgame.com">the Temple of Elemental Evil</a> over at The Wargamer. It talkes about bugs, gameplay and well, pretty much everything. There's too much to pick a best part, so here are two random paragraphs of text from the review pasted between some HTML blockquote tags:
<blockquote>The game's introductory movie plays out the history of the town of Hommlet. Though no words are used, a good picture emerges: the town has already weathered one assault from the nearby Temple of Elemental Evil. Gradually, through a series of quests and side quests, the player comes to understand that those within the Temple are yet again seeking to take control of the region. Troika selected excellent source material for their game: plots don't get any better than this. The major non-player characters (NPCs) have depth. Relationships are interwoven with other NPCs, and I quickly found that some missions that I thought would be simple FedEx-style side affairs turned out to be more complex than I had bargained on. At times keeping track of everything could get a bit confusing because some plots became interwoven with each other. I often had to refer to my logbook to keep things straight in my head. I found that having an official strategy guide by my side wasn't a bad idea, if only for the map it provided of the town and the corresponding locations of the NPCs I was visiting.

Setting aside the issue of porting the pen and paper rules to the PC, there are still a few blemishes that players should be aware of. Most noticeably absent is a lack of structure in the flow of the game, specifically as it relates to the opponents the player faces. Several times I found myself facing situations where my party was in over their heads. The level of difficulty between monsters found in what appear to be sequential encounters varies enough to be deceptive. The ability to beat opponents in one room would belie the fact that my party was sometimes woefully unprepared to take on what lay behind the next door or down the next set of stairs. In Ironman mode this would have been totally disastrous.</blockquote>
If you haven't already, <a href="http://www.wargamer.com/reviews/temple%5Fof%5Felemental%5Fevil/">go on over and have a read</a>. It's quite a good review (at six pages long) and even has some links to recommended reading at the end.

Spotted @ <a href="http://www.rpgcodex.com">The Codex</a>