Meant to post this on the release, but I feel I should note that the first half or so of this video got pretty corrupted during editing (to the point I was surprised I could save it). If there's some were audio issues or blurry pictures in the first half, that's why, as I couldn't go back and fix them. Otherwise, enjoy!
Great review, man. I also have the classic TOEE cd myself and have wondered if the circle of eight guys were worth revisiting it, but your review has inspired me to give it a go. Thanks!
Greyhawk boring? Obviously the guy who made this video was not very keen in digging out the lore around it. Greyhawk has so much storytelling, so much lore, so many interesting stories and magic scenarios that calling it boring is absolutely ridiculous. Just think about the best and most popular Dnd's villans, they were all created for Greyhawk. FR has taken a great deal from Greyhawk. I honestly think it's the best setting for DnD
As one of the Co8 Modders who has spent many years helping to fix, polish and expand the Temple of Elemental Evil CRPG, I offer my thanks to you for reviewing the mod and creating this video and helping to shine a light onto this gem of a video game. Co8 Mod Master Crafter, Allyx.
As an old AD&D player from the early 80s, I never understood the point of having an official campaign world unless you were planning on playing at gaming cons. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like it was perhaps more common back in the day for people to create their own modules and their own campaign worlds or use D&D modules but adapt them to one's own setting. It was the same with the rules: we took them more as suggestion than scripture. If something didn't make sense or was impractical, the DM would come up with a solution that we could all agree with. That said, I think perhaps the original Greyhawk was empty compared to today's campaign worlds so that players could populate it as they saw fit.
Tim Cain, one of the lead devs on this game is very into cooking and added recipes into most manuals for games he worked on. Fallout 1 and 2, this game, and even Pillars of Eternity all have a few recipes in them. Anyway loving your vids, keep up the great work!
I really disagree with your take on Greyhawk as a setting. I personally run all my games in it due to the fact it's relatively lore lite, and far darker and grittier than Forgotten Realms. Think of it as an outline or frame for a DM to work with when adding to it, and making the setting truly theirs. My issue with running games in Forgotten Realms is that it's so easy to violate canon, that you may as well change it as a DM anyway. That beign said, I love plenty of the Forgotten Realms novels and games. That isn't to say there isn't more interesting stuff going on it Greyhawk if you took the time to read the novels though. So I do think you're dead wrong about Greyhawk.
My thoughts exactly, first time I had seen this review I closed the video when he said the Critical Role setting was more inspired than Greyhawk. In hindsight, it takes guts to say something like that and stand your ground on it, and I guess I can respect that; thankfully the rest of the review is great and I left my thumbs up.
I played Greyhawk back in the day. Not sure I every felt it was dark and gritty. Plenty of other settings do that way better, regardless. Also, I think the Greyhawk novels were hands down the worst novels. There is a gem or two in the setting, but that is about it. I think Greyhawk rightly deserves it criticism which is why it being regarded as one of the worst settings isn't exactly unusual.
Some notes: the spacing and positioning of the buildings in Hommlet are placed precisely as the ‘80s original module’s notes. Also the lock pick takes some time to open because your character is “taking a 20” on his skill check, which is an RP element inspired by the pnp 3.5ed rule set(I liked your 20 years pun). 4:55 Temple+ mod allows you unlock alignment restrictions. In my humble opinion, you *need* to play TOEE with both Co8 and Temple+ mods. T+ modernises the game and resolves many of the complains you voiced in this video. Though I suspect you already know the above. :)
I disagree about Greyhawk/Oerth being boring: I found Faerun to be less interesting overall, likely due to its overuse in D&D video games. I simply wanted to know more about this old timey, brutal campaign setting!
Also seriously, I find it laughable to claim Forgotten Realms is somehow more interesting than Greyhawk, when Forgotten Realms blatantly copied so much of Greyhawk, and then jammed in a huge number of super wizards. To my mind, both are pretty boring, but at least with Greyhawk or say Mystara, you can see where things started.
I think it’s a very clear reflection of Gygax’s thinking. Greyhawk feels incredibly grounded, as if made by someone who referred to day/ration counting as an absolute necessity to the game and who’s magical flight rules were identical to that of that of his war plane title (oh wait) I think for many, the fantasy genre is appealing because it takes something entirely impossible in our world and makes it an accepted truth. Greyhawk feels closer to alternate history, an entirely plausible reflection of our world. I think the vast majority of players I’ve played with would much rather I run a game in which an awakened t-Rex learns how to cast enlarge self in order to fight a devil who’s climbed their way into the Chultan forest than they would to try and orchestrate a treatise between two nations. Of course, that’s not to say you can’t do awesome things with Greyhawk, but as a DM, it’s a much harder sell to a table
Tbf the main issue with Faerun is that 99% of the stories happen in one specific part of one specific country. There's lot sof cool stuff, but Salvatore fanatics just obsess about the sword coast
This youtuber is a big tool with shallow taste. D&D has become so comical and cartoonish that they have magical wheelchairs that shoot missiles and is even more cartoonish than world of warcraft with its goblin mech suits. Greyhawk is more similar to Conan, Witcher, or Tolkien. In other words: more realistic, darker, and overall superior to the cartoonish levels of magic in modern D&D settings like he described. As if Forgotten Realms or Critical Role are good examples of interesting worlds...lmfao....wtf?
Great videoessay about the game, but calling the Greyhawk-setting shallow is just being uninformed. Considering that much of the later settings from WotC have cannibalized much of its content. Turning away from Greyhawk was an act of distancing themselves from TSR, as much as it was creating D&D 3.5. Until then all Editions were compatible with the original White Box.
I disagree. It was a boring setting that had a few things of interest in it. Also, tends to be an opinion held by the larger community as a whole, from about the release of 3.X, (Though arguably late 2e,) well before Forgotten Realms was made the main setting. Forgotten Realms novels also tended to sell a lot better even back when it was first conceived. Greyhawk is shallow. There is a reason people trying to defend in the comments say you just have to really search through the lore a ton. If you have to do that, it is probably because it's shallow.
Finally for now, as the character creator and voice actor for Ronald Rynnwrathi and some of the mods on Co8, I thank you for your commentary and recommendation! Alleluia!
Thank you for taking the time to comment! I had footage of Ronald somewhere. It must've just gotten forgotten about in the editing process (I usually just pluck clips at random, if I'm honest). You guys are awesome and the mod is great fun.
I have it given a shot based on your recommendation, and it was a pleasant surprise at how many improvements have been made to the base game (all spells are working, all feats are working, the game doesn't crash, added content was decent). The problems and bugs start to pile up when reaching the end, though. I like the new town and all, but the new quests are abysmal and not very well explained, and I find myself struggling with where to go next with no guides. I'd commend the modders on a great job and employ them to work on the temple aftermath it still needs a lot more refurbishment to at least have you engaged and this can be narrowed to simply giving the NPCs a lot more dialogue to steer the player in the right way also summoning huge elementals on your weakest companion gets pretty old by lvl 12. enemies need more AI scripts.
Ironically, if I remember correctly, I felt somewhat similarly to you. However, I felt the purpose of the mod was clearly to fix the bugs and other issues. As such, it didn't feel right to go that hard into ribbing the modders for not being exceptional quest designers or writers. Your points are very valid, however.
There were D&D games before 1988, nobody talks about them now though. I remember one written in BASIC where I had to shoot arrows at many giant ants...
Greyhawk is perfect for a dungeon crawling game. And sometimes, less is more: you can modify the setting to fit your ideas without having to keep track of hundred of lore pages as in FR. But this is true only for board game rpg, not for a videos games: that is why the bg serie is awesome!
You’re doing great work brother! As someone in their mid twenties whose always been a big RPG fan, but, hence my age, missed out on the original DND CRPG phase- it’s an absolute treasure to hear someone as educated on the genre as you talk about older games. Will 100 percent be looking into this game and it’s modding scene- thank you for giving these artists and modders continued support and recognition
Troika had a third patch when the publisher stood on refusing to authorizing new patches past patch 2. Original developers, under the shield of plausible deniability, have worked with modders to get that third patch and further fixes out into the world.
Not sure it needed to be "saved". I LOVED the game. The one thing that I hated was the broken loot system, meaning taking loot was impossible sometimes and therefore, broke the game entirely in many cases. But once that was fixed, nothing else was needed. A savagely difficult but rewarding AD&D game. Brilliant. Everyone is so harsh on it and I never understood why. It's way better than BG1 or 2.
I bought the original copy years ago. I had to stop playing do to issues that you mentioned. 3.5ed is my favorite D&D and I am a Pathfinder fan too. I appreciate this video because I never really got to enjoy this game and now I can try again. I guess I should just buy the digital version on GoG since you mentioned booting problems. Too bad they don't have it on Steam though. On another note, I liked the alignment system on D&D 3.5ed, but I am glad that they opened up paladins in later editions. I hated the strict rules they were forced into back in the day. Many of my table top partners hated the pallys rigid roles.
I only found this after I played through the original TToEE in my regular game. By the gods, every playthrough of the videogame brings me back, fond memories. Gotta love it, bugs and all.
I got this from electronic botique (EB) when it came out. I played it all the way through and really enjoyed it. Sure there were issues but when your a pc gamer from the dawn of pc's you deal with, work around, patch, etc. I loved the combat as well, almost thinking of a play through again. Thanks for the memories and a great video.
I have this game, and still pull it out to play it every so often, I've even got a current campaign I'm taking a break from. Even with the player-fixes, the game is still flawed. At the endgame you'll face at least two monsters that require magic holy weapons to damage at all, and all of the ones in the game are polearms or other two-handed weapons (except the longsword you can get from one of the Hommlet in-town quests.) Giving up your shield to do +1 damage on average just wasn't worth it. What if one of my PCs was a two-weapon ranger? Players had to expend too much effort having their own characters be able to craft all the magic items they needed themselves. Despite the flaws though, I really love that a character can marry Melony the druid, and get a +1 holy longsword as a wedding gift from her dad, before even going to the moat-house (first dungeon). And despite the fact that her strength is unbelievably low, she's still got stuff to contribute to a party with her healing and offensive magic. BTW: Troika folded after producing this game, the two bug fixes were created by Atari who had the license to all D&D CRPGs. At least that's the rumors I've heard from inside the fan community. One of the biggest, most egregious flaws in the base game is that NPC hirelings all have a loot system implemented, they all have a chance to swipe some of the loot you found on the field, and they don't care that they are loading up with heavy rusted weapons. Once they've looted something, it's THEIRS, with no real way to get rid of it, they will not sell loot they've taken, but everything you give them? Even the magic items, if it's not in their in-use inventory they'll sell it at the first opportunity. IMHO that was a huge bug that Temple+ fixed. Before Temple+ the looting fix was to buy each NPC an entire inventory of gloves so they didn't have room for any loot and thus wouldn't take any.
Too bad there are only so few locations to explore. Kills replayability for me. There always need to pass at least some years before I can touch the game again.
I own the game, and although I haven't played it in forever, I enjoyed its presentation and atmosphere. Also, I never knew about the mods. If I had known about them, I would've definitely installed them. And not because I found it a buggy mess; I only saw the creature spawn bug, so hearing about the rest definitely surprises me. If I can get it to work again and apply the mods, I would love to return to one of my favorite dungeon-delving games (behind Neverwinter Nights).
You mentioned other mods -- which do you recommend? Also, can you point us to an installation guide, given the challenges with making this work on modern machines?
Circle of 8 and Temple+, the most important two, can be found in the description and feature installation guides on the website. As for other mods, there's the Keep on the Borderlands conversion (which might become the subject of a future video) as well as a number of portrait packs and editors found over at sites like Sorcerer's Place.
I played this and IWD2 because of your reviews and had a great time with both. Have you ever tried "Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor"? Surprisingly enough it has pretty much 0 youtube reviews, though from what I've seen it isn't very much loved.
I would like to take a look at Ruins of Myth Drannor at some point, but it's a matter of getting my hands on it. It isn't available through digital retailers (and probably never will be, unfortunately).
So many times as a kid buying those old D&D PC games hoping it will play I can figure out how to make it run and never being able to make it run, disappointing
70 games?? that sounds hard to believe?? Edit; As I thought.... Wiki counts Baldur's Gate and Tales of the Sword Coast as 2 different games. Same with Icewind Dale and Heart of Winter. etc.... ;)
I am fairly certain that's an accurate number. If I remember correctly, there are something like 100 total entries on Wikipedia; the 70 number should account for expansions and rereleases.
And to think that i wanted to play this game and actually finish it... But i was afraid of the bugs and all that stuff that happens with npc companions (taking your loot, being encumbered all that stuff)... Well, with these modpacks i might give it a go though.
I won't say there's no chance of it happening, but I believe the main modder behind it stopped updating it somewhat recently, so the chances did decrease a bit. Still, I think there was enough done that it could be worth the time. We'll see.
@@Zylo587 Yeah, apparently there were intentions to release a 2.0 version of the mod, but as of recently it doesn't seem like it's going to happen. KoTB is still on the shortlist as of now, so it could still happen.
I bought the game on DVD + printed manual in 2003 (I still have it today), but I never managed to get past the beginning in Hommlet, but I realized that there was an excellent adaptation of the D&D 3.5 rules in that game. News that it was extremely buggy took away my desire to play at the time, but today I just bought the GOG version, added Co8 plus Temple+ and I intend to go all the way and then add the Co8 expansion. Beautiful video doing justice to an old but very good game.
The first dungeons and dragons PC game I played was curse of the Azure bonds on an IBM 486, I played a lot of dungeons & dragons PC games and Temple of elemental evil is one of the best it's actually really close to playing d&d the combat everything
Hrm. I never modded fallout 2 and got through it just fine. Bloodlines is what I presume you are talking about, rather than Redemption, and it is playable as well. Super buggy, but easily manageable to get through. Just keep two saves just in case. However, no reason not to patch it.
I really enjoyed the combat system etc of this game.... sadly randomly in extremely low level stumbled into the place where I was able to also finish the game in mere hours or so.... Which sadly then kind of... well, left me to leave the game there, cause its weird to continue playing when you in such a short time managed to finish it. I wish I had not, and probably could have had a nice time with it.
This youtuber is a big tool with shallow taste. D&D has become so comical and cartoonish that they have magical wheelchairs that shoot missiles and is even more cartoonish than world of warcraft with its goblin mech suits. Greyhawk is more similar to Conan, Witcher, or Tolkien. In other words: more realistic, darker, and overall superior to the cartoonish levels of magic in modern D&D settings like he described. As if Forgotten Realms or Critical Role are good examples of interesting worlds...lmfao....wtf?
@@Foreverredlips Traditional tabletop gamers have higher standards of immersion than cartoon loving woke 5th edition critical role "players" who want futuristic sci-fi magic wheelchairs shooting missiles and The Last Airbender Nickelodeon cloned Monk characters.
@@nowayjosedaniel Greyhawk isn't good. If you want to make this needlessly political and mention woke shit, there is plenty of stuff out there like Dark Sun, which is anything but, it is immersive, and also has many aspects to the tabletop play of Greyhawk as well. Greyhawk novels never sold particularly well, unlike Forgotten Realms, or even Dragon Lance. Dragon Lance is also a very grounded setting. More so, even, and on average was a lower level setting. There were plenty more settings I've yet to even mention that were plenty good. Greyhawk has never been good. If you want a super basic, bare bones setting so you can just fill in with your own lore, you're better off making your own setting from the start.
The game look so pretty and combat system is cool, but damn, lots of fetch quests with just nonsense fuckery. They are also pretty bugged ( if you don't complete em in certain order, you can't finnish a lot of em). It is sad cause game is pretty interesting.
tbh i will never understand for the hype of the ToEE Adventure Module. If you read it you have: one village to interact with and a dungeon (the hideout), another village with bad people (nulb) and a weird dungeon with no real explanation
I know this is an ancient comment, but it's two things: 1) T1 [The village and moathouse] was the first official adventure for TSR made for AD&D [rather than Basic] that was suitable for low level players. [The full T1-4 that includes the temple came out much later.] All their previous adventures were high level convention competition modules, were for a variant system [Into the Unknown & Keep on the Borderlands were earlier but for the Basic system], or were unofficial releases from companies like Judges Guild. This means that a lot of people have a lot of nostalgia for T1 because for several years, *almost every AD&D table played in it*. Even if they didn't use the moathouse, a lot of people used Hommlet. I didn't play at the time, but I still steal stuff from Hommlet. It's a pretty well-constructed town for a certain type of adventuring. 2) Modules at the time were just written differently. Modern adventures tend to impose a lot of story on the adventure. Very early modules generally did not. They *implied* story, or were designed such that story could happen, but were generally designed more as play areas for players to interact with things and see what the consequences were. They often didn't have significant hooks because the assumption was that all you needed to get the players in the dungeon was to tell them there was a dungeon. There are clearly drawbacks to both styles -- players in the more open setting can feel aimless if the DM doesn't do work to hook their specific players and let them direct play, and players in modern adventures can feel they're on rails, simply going from point A to point B on a script. There are certainly adventures that do a great job of finding good balance between aimless sandbox and storygame, but generally there was not a lot of story in adventures at the time T1 came out, and Gygax never really put much explicit story in his adventures. There are a lot of interesting *hooks* that can turn into story, but they're hiding deep in the paragraphs of room description text a lot of times. ToEE is beloved for the idea of it mostly, and because it's huge and has a lot of interesting stuff to steal from for better games. Run completely straight, it's actually a bit of a mess, and the dungeon falls apart near the end anyway. It's certainly not my favorite old school module, or even my favorite "here's a dungeon, go mess around in it" adventure, but a lot of the reasons people like it have a lot to do with the time it was released.
Great video. Co8 patch is able to get it to work even on Windows 10. But it still locks up and totally fails sometimes.. you lose the whole game and need to start over. Especially the quest line that gets you to the temple..
For me ToEE was succesor of Baldurs Gate and not Neverwinter or how it should look. Not ideology but how D&D aftere Baldurs Gate should like but milions bug make it unplayble. Well who rulling world dont like changes 😆 and izometric D&D with diffrent begin and endings probabyly is not there ways. 😆
I'm in the same camp as the reviewer feel. I somehow ONLY play CRPGs that are based on my favorite DND world settings (FR, DL, RL, etc.), if a setting is boring then I'll feel empty, like "What's the point?".
TOEE (once updated and modded) is simply a mile better than Icewind Dale and 10x more fun to play. You like ID, which is fine, but for me that is an unimaginative and really tedious hack and slash (so much worse than BG1), while this I enjoy and have played several times. To each their own, I'll just disagree with you and leave it at that.
@@michasmarzewski3670 TOEE is pretty good and worth numerous replays (especially with the modding done to it). BG1 is also very good, given its age, I have sunk more hours into it than I care to count. Icewind Dale developers thought that if they just threw more monsters at the party, players wouldn't realise how thin it was as a game. For all the times I've played TOEE and BG1, I've never actually finished Icewind Dale because I found it , well, just boring. BG2 is better still, but that's another story, it does boost BG1 more as a game because you can continue with the same character in BG2 you made in BG1 (and complete it with TOB). ID is a stand-alone. If you don't appreciate the endless charm of BG1, I think you are beyond help and beyond convincing of your egregious error.
@@Swizz12 I was amazed BG1 was released after Fallout. It was such a downside on every level I couldn't imagine. I also didn't play BG2 then, because Fallouts washed floor with all other games. However, after all those years I'm finally able to play BG2, IWD, PST. So after great BG2 I tried BG1, but except title and setting those games have nothing in common. BG1 has terrible quests, timed quests (also in BG2, but they're not as bad), terrible companions, terrible level design. There's endless frustration and disappointing, there's no charm. When comes to IWD it's boring, but its design is much better.
Why is your gay thing is so important for you American of your generation ? Is it the only virtue with recycling that important to you ? I'm genuinely wondering. What about all the other virtues your parent or the designers of these games had?
It's not "recycling" a virtue. I spent the overwhelming majority of this video extoling the virtues of this game and the people that made it (and I'm not even going to dignify your mentioning of my parents), so if you take such an offense to small tidbit about how the game included a gay character, then that's your problem. It's not my "gay thing", either. I'm not gay, myself, but I'm not so foolish to believe that there isn't a place in these games for gay characters. TOEE took a step that was pretty bold, evidenced by the fact that it generated a good bit of controversy shortly after release, so the idea that it doesn't deserve inclusion in this video is preposterous.
@@fandraxx I"m a foreigner. I'm just amaze how fast the gay agenda is so deeply important for your generation. The generation before you was having very different familly virtues that yours. You did made a very good job for your video. Thank you for your reply
@@fandraxx One more thing, I am confuse, in your media they say you are born gay and also that woman and men are cultural invention .I don't understand wich one is it ? Can I be gay and not knowing it?
Those are some questions that are way above my pay grade, my friend. I am fairly certain that there are a lot of articles/studies pertaining to your questions, though. A quick google search should find a lot of those answers for you.
dude you have not read any thing greyhawk if you dont think there are heros and villans and story. its designed to be a world that is grounded, and not over the top silly like all the other dnd worlds you talked about. Grey hawk leaves room for the players to become heros with the inspiration of the lore to follow. but in fairness grey hawk is my favorite setting
I agree that Greyhawk is boring. It was clearly made up for 5 year olds (Gygax’s kids). I mean some of the names. Zuggytmoy? Wee Jas? They sound like some nonsense kids book. I’ve not played much of this game. Because I got lost and bored in Hommet. Love your channel!
Meant to post this on the release, but I feel I should note that the first half or so of this video got pretty corrupted during editing (to the point I was surprised I could save it). If there's some were audio issues or blurry pictures in the first half, that's why, as I couldn't go back and fix them.
Otherwise, enjoy!
So you're saying it was pretty buggy?
Maybe some modders could help out.
lol
Great review, man. I also have the classic TOEE cd myself and have wondered if the circle of eight guys were worth revisiting it, but your review has inspired me to give it a go. Thanks!
Greyhawk boring? Obviously the guy who made this video was not very keen in digging out the lore around it. Greyhawk has so much storytelling, so much lore, so many interesting stories and magic scenarios that calling it boring is absolutely ridiculous. Just think about the best and most popular Dnd's villans, they were all created for Greyhawk. FR has taken a great deal from Greyhawk. I honestly think it's the best setting for DnD
As one of the Co8 Modders who has spent many years helping to fix, polish and expand the Temple of Elemental Evil CRPG, I offer my thanks to you for reviewing the mod and creating this video and helping to shine a light onto this gem of a video game.
Co8 Mod Master Crafter,
Allyx.
Thank you for all the great work you did! It was a pleasure to play through.
Dude...thank you.
You, rock! I miss being active on that forum.
What is the way to get and play Co8? Can Co8 be played or modded on the GoG download version?
What is the way to get and play Co8? Can Co8 be played or modded on the GoG download version?
As an old AD&D player from the early 80s, I never understood the point of having an official campaign world unless you were planning on playing at gaming cons. Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like it was perhaps more common back in the day for people to create their own modules and their own campaign worlds or use D&D modules but adapt them to one's own setting. It was the same with the rules: we took them more as suggestion than scripture. If something didn't make sense or was impractical, the DM would come up with a solution that we could all agree with. That said, I think perhaps the original Greyhawk was empty compared to today's campaign worlds so that players could populate it as they saw fit.
The recipes in Troika game manuals are Tim Cain's mother's recipes, something he recently confirmed on his own UA-cam channel
Tim Cain, one of the lead devs on this game is very into cooking and added recipes into most manuals for games he worked on. Fallout 1 and 2, this game, and even Pillars of Eternity all have a few recipes in them. Anyway loving your vids, keep up the great work!
That is awesome! Thank you!
He is also gay. So, maybe that's why the game had a decent gay relationship.
I really disagree with your take on Greyhawk as a setting. I personally run all my games in it due to the fact it's relatively lore lite, and far darker and grittier than Forgotten Realms. Think of it as an outline or frame for a DM to work with when adding to it, and making the setting truly theirs. My issue with running games in Forgotten Realms is that it's so easy to violate canon, that you may as well change it as a DM anyway. That beign said, I love plenty of the Forgotten Realms novels and games.
That isn't to say there isn't more interesting stuff going on it Greyhawk if you took the time to read the novels though. So I do think you're dead wrong about Greyhawk.
My thoughts exactly, first time I had seen this review I closed the video when he said the Critical Role setting was more inspired than Greyhawk.
In hindsight, it takes guts to say something like that and stand your ground on it, and I guess I can respect that; thankfully the rest of the review is great and I left my thumbs up.
You're completely right!
I played Greyhawk back in the day. Not sure I every felt it was dark and gritty. Plenty of other settings do that way better, regardless.
Also, I think the Greyhawk novels were hands down the worst novels. There is a gem or two in the setting, but that is about it. I think Greyhawk rightly deserves it criticism which is why it being regarded as one of the worst settings isn't exactly unusual.
Some notes: the spacing and positioning of the buildings in Hommlet are placed precisely as the ‘80s original module’s notes. Also the lock pick takes some time to open because your character is “taking a 20” on his skill check, which is an RP element inspired by the pnp 3.5ed rule set(I liked your 20 years pun).
4:55 Temple+ mod allows you unlock alignment restrictions. In my humble opinion, you *need* to play TOEE with both Co8 and Temple+ mods. T+ modernises the game and resolves many of the complains you voiced in this video.
Though I suspect you already know the above. :)
I disagree about Greyhawk/Oerth being boring: I found Faerun to be less interesting overall, likely due to its overuse in D&D video games. I simply wanted to know more about this old timey, brutal campaign setting!
Also seriously, I find it laughable to claim Forgotten Realms is somehow more interesting than Greyhawk, when Forgotten Realms blatantly copied so much of Greyhawk, and then jammed in a huge number of super wizards.
To my mind, both are pretty boring, but at least with Greyhawk or say Mystara, you can see where things started.
I think it’s a very clear reflection of Gygax’s thinking. Greyhawk feels incredibly grounded, as if made by someone who referred to day/ration counting as an absolute necessity to the game and who’s magical flight rules were identical to that of that of his war plane title (oh wait)
I think for many, the fantasy genre is appealing because it takes something entirely impossible in our world and makes it an accepted truth. Greyhawk feels closer to alternate history, an entirely plausible reflection of our world.
I think the vast majority of players I’ve played with would much rather I run a game in which an awakened t-Rex learns how to cast enlarge self in order to fight a devil who’s climbed their way into the Chultan forest than they would to try and orchestrate a treatise between two nations.
Of course, that’s not to say you can’t do awesome things with Greyhawk, but as a DM, it’s a much harder sell to a table
Tbf the main issue with Faerun is that 99% of the stories happen in one specific part of one specific country. There's lot sof cool stuff, but Salvatore fanatics just obsess about the sword coast
This youtuber is a big tool with shallow taste.
D&D has become so comical and cartoonish that they have magical wheelchairs that shoot missiles and is even more cartoonish than world of warcraft with its goblin mech suits.
Greyhawk is more similar to Conan, Witcher, or Tolkien. In other words: more realistic, darker, and overall superior to the cartoonish levels of magic in modern D&D settings like he described. As if Forgotten Realms or Critical Role are good examples of interesting worlds...lmfao....wtf?
What I find funny is how spell names with Greyhawk character name origins like Bigby, Melf, Leomund... Are the same in the Forgotten Realms.
There is a useful amount of Greyhawk lore, but you have to be a fan and a scholar of many GH works to assemble a more complete picture.
Also, Diablo's Tristram is effectively Hommlet. Just look at their maps!
Great videoessay about the game, but calling the Greyhawk-setting shallow is just being uninformed. Considering that much of the later settings from WotC have cannibalized much of its content. Turning away from Greyhawk was an act of distancing themselves from TSR, as much as it was creating D&D 3.5. Until then all Editions were compatible with the original White Box.
I disagree. It was a boring setting that had a few things of interest in it.
Also, tends to be an opinion held by the larger community as a whole, from about the release of 3.X, (Though arguably late 2e,) well before Forgotten Realms was made the main setting.
Forgotten Realms novels also tended to sell a lot better even back when it was first conceived. Greyhawk is shallow. There is a reason people trying to defend in the comments say you just have to really search through the lore a ton. If you have to do that, it is probably because it's shallow.
Finally for now, as the character creator and voice actor for Ronald Rynnwrathi and some of the mods on Co8, I thank you for your commentary and recommendation! Alleluia!
Thank you for taking the time to comment! I had footage of Ronald somewhere. It must've just gotten forgotten about in the editing process (I usually just pluck clips at random, if I'm honest). You guys are awesome and the mod is great fun.
@@fandraxx Pathfinder Kingmaker felt like the world-spanning D&Dish game that ToEE was seemingly expected by the fans to be.
I have it given a shot based on your recommendation, and it was a pleasant surprise at how many improvements have been made to the base game (all spells are working, all feats are working, the game doesn't crash, added content was decent). The problems and bugs start to pile up when reaching the end, though. I like the new town and all, but the new quests are abysmal and not very well explained, and I find myself struggling with where to go next with no guides. I'd commend the modders on a great job and employ them to work on the temple aftermath it still needs a lot more refurbishment to at least have you engaged and this can be narrowed to simply giving the NPCs a lot more dialogue to steer the player in the right way also summoning huge elementals on your weakest companion gets pretty old by lvl 12. enemies need more AI scripts.
Ironically, if I remember correctly, I felt somewhat similarly to you. However, I felt the purpose of the mod was clearly to fix the bugs and other issues. As such, it didn't feel right to go that hard into ribbing the modders for not being exceptional quest designers or writers. Your points are very valid, however.
There were D&D games before 1988, nobody talks about them now though. I remember one written in BASIC where I had to shoot arrows at many giant ants...
Greyhawk is perfect for a dungeon crawling game. And sometimes, less is more: you can modify the setting to fit your ideas without having to keep track of hundred of lore pages as in FR. But this is true only for board game rpg, not for a videos games: that is why the bg serie is awesome!
Wow I didn't know the circle of 8 patch did that much. The last time I re-played this was in 2010. I'm gonna have to revisit this.
You’re doing great work brother! As someone in their mid twenties whose always been a big RPG fan, but, hence my age, missed out on the original DND CRPG phase- it’s an absolute treasure to hear someone as educated on the genre as you talk about older games. Will 100 percent be looking into this game and it’s modding scene- thank you for giving these artists and modders continued support and recognition
Troika had a third patch when the publisher stood on refusing to authorizing new patches past patch 2.
Original developers, under the shield of plausible deniability, have worked with modders to get that third patch and further fixes out into the world.
Love the game especially with the great Cof8 mods. No other game captures the true tabletop combat of D&D
Pool of Radiance is less boring all recent Soulsikes games.
Not sure it needed to be "saved". I LOVED the game. The one thing that I hated was the broken loot system, meaning taking loot was impossible sometimes and therefore, broke the game entirely in many cases. But once that was fixed, nothing else was needed. A savagely difficult but rewarding AD&D game. Brilliant. Everyone is so harsh on it and I never understood why. It's way better than BG1 or 2.
I bought the original copy years ago. I had to stop playing do to issues that you mentioned. 3.5ed is my favorite D&D and I am a Pathfinder fan too. I appreciate this video because I never really got to enjoy this game and now I can try again. I guess I should just buy the digital version on GoG since you mentioned booting problems. Too bad they don't have it on Steam though.
On another note, I liked the alignment system on D&D 3.5ed, but I am glad that they opened up paladins in later editions. I hated the strict rules they were forced into back in the day. Many of my table top partners hated the pallys rigid roles.
I only found this after I played through the original TToEE in my regular game. By the gods, every playthrough of the videogame brings me back, fond memories. Gotta love it, bugs and all.
I got this from electronic botique (EB) when it came out. I played it all the way through and really enjoyed it. Sure there were issues but when your a pc gamer from the dawn of pc's you deal with, work around, patch, etc. I loved the combat as well, almost thinking of a play through again. Thanks for the memories and a great video.
I have this game, and still pull it out to play it every so often, I've even got a current campaign I'm taking a break from. Even with the player-fixes, the game is still flawed. At the endgame you'll face at least two monsters that require magic holy weapons to damage at all, and all of the ones in the game are polearms or other two-handed weapons (except the longsword you can get from one of the Hommlet in-town quests.) Giving up your shield to do +1 damage on average just wasn't worth it. What if one of my PCs was a two-weapon ranger? Players had to expend too much effort having their own characters be able to craft all the magic items they needed themselves. Despite the flaws though, I really love that a character can marry Melony the druid, and get a +1 holy longsword as a wedding gift from her dad, before even going to the moat-house (first dungeon). And despite the fact that her strength is unbelievably low, she's still got stuff to contribute to a party with her healing and offensive magic. BTW: Troika folded after producing this game, the two bug fixes were created by Atari who had the license to all D&D CRPGs. At least that's the rumors I've heard from inside the fan community. One of the biggest, most egregious flaws in the base game is that NPC hirelings all have a loot system implemented, they all have a chance to swipe some of the loot you found on the field, and they don't care that they are loading up with heavy rusted weapons. Once they've looted something, it's THEIRS, with no real way to get rid of it, they will not sell loot they've taken, but everything you give them? Even the magic items, if it's not in their in-use inventory they'll sell it at the first opportunity. IMHO that was a huge bug that Temple+ fixed. Before Temple+ the looting fix was to buy each NPC an entire inventory of gloves so they didn't have room for any loot and thus wouldn't take any.
Agree! with Co8 this was the pathfinder WOTR of that time -I could not stop rolling up characters and playing different parties
Too bad there are only so few locations to explore.
Kills replayability for me. There always need to pass at least some years before I can touch the game again.
If you haven’t, try adding the NC (new content) Co8 mod to the game. It adds quite a bit more places to explore.
One of the problems with converting a table top game to a computer game is the amount of mechanics you have to create.
Why?
Forgotten by whom? I still play it every few years.
I remember that i rushed through the gay pirate's dialogue and when i came back to that town later he responded to me as engaged or something...
I own the game, and although I haven't played it in forever, I enjoyed its presentation and atmosphere.
Also, I never knew about the mods. If I had known about them, I would've definitely installed them. And not because I found it a buggy mess; I only saw the creature spawn bug, so hearing about the rest definitely surprises me.
If I can get it to work again and apply the mods, I would love to return to one of my favorite dungeon-delving games (behind Neverwinter Nights).
You mentioned other mods -- which do you recommend? Also, can you point us to an installation guide, given the challenges with making this work on modern machines?
Circle of 8 and Temple+, the most important two, can be found in the description and feature installation guides on the website.
As for other mods, there's the Keep on the Borderlands conversion (which might become the subject of a future video) as well as a number of portrait packs and editors found over at sites like Sorcerer's Place.
I played this and IWD2 because of your reviews and had a great time with both. Have you ever tried "Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor"? Surprisingly enough it has pretty much 0 youtube reviews, though from what I've seen it isn't very much loved.
I would like to take a look at Ruins of Myth Drannor at some point, but it's a matter of getting my hands on it. It isn't available through digital retailers (and probably never will be, unfortunately).
So many times as a kid buying those old D&D PC games hoping it will play I can figure out how to make it run and never being able to make it run, disappointing
Greyhawk is a much more interesting setting. It feels like what it is..someone's own personal world created from the inside out as needed..
70 games?? that sounds hard to believe??
Edit; As I thought.... Wiki counts Baldur's Gate and Tales of the Sword Coast as 2 different games.
Same with Icewind Dale and Heart of Winter.
etc.... ;)
I am fairly certain that's an accurate number. If I remember correctly, there are something like 100 total entries on Wikipedia; the 70 number should account for expansions and rereleases.
But we're the cookies any good?
It's a fun game, you got to pay the GOG copy. It's a tough game to beat
Great video mate. I love these games that often slip through the cracks. Thank you for bringing them back to the surface,
And to think that i wanted to play this game and actually finish it... But i was afraid of the bugs and all that stuff that happens with npc companions (taking your loot, being encumbered all that stuff)... Well, with these modpacks i might give it a go though.
Id say Solasta is still the best DnD video game. At least until someone uses it to remake the Gold Box games in it.
Please review The Keep on the Borderlands mod for ToEE
Greyhawk beats the crap out of Faerun. The Forgotten Realms are the most boring, vanilla, bog-standard realms ever put to paper.
Hoping we see a Keep on the Borderlands video in the future.
I won't say there's no chance of it happening, but I believe the main modder behind it stopped updating it somewhat recently, so the chances did decrease a bit. Still, I think there was enough done that it could be worth the time. We'll see.
Stopped updating it? I was under the impression it was considered finished.
@@Zylo587 Yeah, apparently there were intentions to release a 2.0 version of the mod, but as of recently it doesn't seem like it's going to happen.
KoTB is still on the shortlist as of now, so it could still happen.
Fair enough. Here's hoping it comes up!
I can’t get the mid to work
I bought the game on DVD + printed manual in 2003 (I still have it today), but I never managed to get past the beginning in Hommlet, but I realized that there was an excellent adaptation of the D&D 3.5 rules in that game. News that it was extremely buggy took away my desire to play at the time, but today I just bought the GOG version, added Co8 plus Temple+ and I intend to go all the way and then add the Co8 expansion. Beautiful video doing justice to an old but very good game.
The first dungeons and dragons PC game I played was curse of the Azure bonds on an IBM 486, I played a lot of dungeons & dragons PC games and Temple of elemental evil is one of the best it's actually really close to playing d&d the combat everything
Thats it, I`m buying it as soon as im finished with heart of winter.
what were the 2nd and 3rd clips shown right at the beginning of the video?
and the side scroller after Pools of Radiance
also the alignment system was rad and i was pissed that they got rid of it but maybe im just an old nerd
Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone, Neverwinter Nights and Chronicles of Mystara
Hi, wich one of the two mods you recomend the most?
They both work together and are both pretty necessary. Each fixes things that the other doesn't.
@@fandraxx once you install the two, you use the co8 exe or Temple + exe?
I launched it through Temple+. Both can provide more detail in the install guides that come with them.
Stumbled upon this and wasn't expecting such a high quality video. Thanks for your work.
13:29
Fallout 2 and Vampire The Masquerade are unplayable without the "unnoficial patch" mods.
FO2 is perfect from release.
Hrm. I never modded fallout 2 and got through it just fine.
Bloodlines is what I presume you are talking about, rather than Redemption, and it is playable as well. Super buggy, but easily manageable to get through. Just keep two saves just in case. However, no reason not to patch it.
I really enjoyed the combat system etc of this game.... sadly randomly in extremely low level stumbled into the place where I was able to also finish the game in mere hours or so.... Which sadly then kind of... well, left me to leave the game there, cause its weird to continue playing when you in such a short time managed to finish it. I wish I had not, and probably could have had a nice time with it.
Unlike Forgotten realms...Greyhawk was not written for readers, it was written for GAMERS. Tool.
Tool is a great band and all, but are you implying gamers have lower standards, and that is a good thing?
This youtuber is a big tool with shallow taste.
D&D has become so comical and cartoonish that they have magical wheelchairs that shoot missiles and is even more cartoonish than world of warcraft with its goblin mech suits.
Greyhawk is more similar to Conan, Witcher, or Tolkien. In other words: more realistic, darker, and overall superior to the cartoonish levels of magic in modern D&D settings like he described. As if Forgotten Realms or Critical Role are good examples of interesting worlds...lmfao....wtf?
@@Foreverredlips Traditional tabletop gamers have higher standards of immersion than cartoon loving woke 5th edition critical role "players" who want futuristic sci-fi magic wheelchairs shooting missiles and The Last Airbender Nickelodeon cloned Monk characters.
@@nowayjosedaniel Greyhawk isn't good. If you want to make this needlessly political and mention woke shit, there is plenty of stuff out there like Dark Sun, which is anything but, it is immersive, and also has many aspects to the tabletop play of Greyhawk as well.
Greyhawk novels never sold particularly well, unlike Forgotten Realms, or even Dragon Lance. Dragon Lance is also a very grounded setting. More so, even, and on average was a lower level setting.
There were plenty more settings I've yet to even mention that were plenty good. Greyhawk has never been good. If you want a super basic, bare bones setting so you can just fill in with your own lore, you're better off making your own setting from the start.
The game look so pretty and combat system is cool, but damn, lots of fetch quests with just nonsense fuckery. They are also pretty bugged ( if you don't complete em in certain order, you can't finnish a lot of em). It is sad cause game is pretty interesting.
time to get this game and the mods
tbh i will never understand for the hype of the ToEE Adventure Module. If you read it you have: one village to interact with and a dungeon (the hideout), another village with bad people (nulb) and a weird dungeon with no real explanation
I think it's more to do with when it was released. Back in the day, ToEE was groundbreaking. By today's standards, it's shallow.
Iirc, the actual Temple module came out years after the village + moat House original module hinting at it, so there was plenty of time to build hype
I know this is an ancient comment, but it's two things:
1) T1 [The village and moathouse] was the first official adventure for TSR made for AD&D [rather than Basic] that was suitable for low level players. [The full T1-4 that includes the temple came out much later.] All their previous adventures were high level convention competition modules, were for a variant system [Into the Unknown & Keep on the Borderlands were earlier but for the Basic system], or were unofficial releases from companies like Judges Guild. This means that a lot of people have a lot of nostalgia for T1 because for several years, *almost every AD&D table played in it*. Even if they didn't use the moathouse, a lot of people used Hommlet. I didn't play at the time, but I still steal stuff from Hommlet. It's a pretty well-constructed town for a certain type of adventuring.
2) Modules at the time were just written differently. Modern adventures tend to impose a lot of story on the adventure. Very early modules generally did not. They *implied* story, or were designed such that story could happen, but were generally designed more as play areas for players to interact with things and see what the consequences were. They often didn't have significant hooks because the assumption was that all you needed to get the players in the dungeon was to tell them there was a dungeon. There are clearly drawbacks to both styles -- players in the more open setting can feel aimless if the DM doesn't do work to hook their specific players and let them direct play, and players in modern adventures can feel they're on rails, simply going from point A to point B on a script. There are certainly adventures that do a great job of finding good balance between aimless sandbox and storygame, but generally there was not a lot of story in adventures at the time T1 came out, and Gygax never really put much explicit story in his adventures. There are a lot of interesting *hooks* that can turn into story, but they're hiding deep in the paragraphs of room description text a lot of times.
ToEE is beloved for the idea of it mostly, and because it's huge and has a lot of interesting stuff to steal from for better games. Run completely straight, it's actually a bit of a mess, and the dungeon falls apart near the end anyway. It's certainly not my favorite old school module, or even my favorite "here's a dungeon, go mess around in it" adventure, but a lot of the reasons people like it have a lot to do with the time it was released.
Thank you for this great video.
Excellent video. Can't wait to try
It's certainly worth your time!
so the modded version of the game requires directx 11 instead of 9 or even 7? forget that, then
What? Why the hell would it support DirectX7? The original release was built on DirectX9.
lol wut? do you run win1985?
Great video. Co8 patch is able to get it to work even on Windows 10. But it still locks up and totally fails sometimes.. you lose the whole game and need to start over. Especially the quest line that gets you to the temple..
Temple+ helps to fix a lot of that stuff. Unfortunately, there's only so much that can be done to try and correct a faulty engine.
For me ToEE was succesor of Baldurs Gate and not Neverwinter or how it should look. Not ideology but how D&D aftere Baldurs Gate should like but milions bug make it unplayble. Well who rulling world dont like changes 😆 and izometric D&D with diffrent begin and endings probabyly is not there ways. 😆
I played the shit out of this game.
I'd love for them to release an Enhanced Edition (Like Baldur's Gate) with the bug fix mod included.
I'm in the same camp as the reviewer feel. I somehow ONLY play CRPGs that are based on my favorite DND world settings (FR, DL, RL, etc.), if a setting is boring then I'll feel empty, like "What's the point?".
TOEE (once updated and modded) is simply a mile better than Icewind Dale and 10x more fun to play.
You like ID, which is fine, but for me that is an unimaginative and really tedious hack and slash (so much worse than BG1), while this I enjoy and have played several times. To each their own, I'll just disagree with you and leave it at that.
Ice Wind Dale eats BG1 for breakfast. BG1 is a meme that shouldn't be called CRPG.
@@michasmarzewski3670 TOEE is pretty good and worth numerous replays (especially with the modding done to it). BG1 is also very good, given its age, I have sunk more hours into it than I care to count. Icewind Dale developers thought that if they just threw more monsters at the party, players wouldn't realise how thin it was as a game. For all the times I've played TOEE and BG1, I've never actually finished Icewind Dale because I found it , well, just boring. BG2 is better still, but that's another story, it does boost BG1 more as a game because you can continue with the same character in BG2 you made in BG1 (and complete it with TOB). ID is a stand-alone. If you don't appreciate the endless charm of BG1, I think you are beyond help and beyond convincing of your egregious error.
@@Swizz12 I was amazed BG1 was released after Fallout. It was such a downside on every level I couldn't imagine. I also didn't play BG2 then, because Fallouts washed floor with all other games. However, after all those years I'm finally able to play BG2, IWD, PST. So after great BG2 I tried BG1, but except title and setting those games have nothing in common. BG1 has terrible quests, timed quests (also in BG2, but they're not as bad), terrible companions, terrible level design. There's endless frustration and disappointing, there's no charm. When comes to IWD it's boring, but its design is much better.
Or game rot has compromised the CD...?
Why is your gay thing is so important for you American of your generation ?
Is it the only virtue with recycling that important to you ?
I'm genuinely wondering.
What about all the other virtues your parent or the designers of these games had?
It's not "recycling" a virtue. I spent the overwhelming majority of this video extoling the virtues of this game and the people that made it (and I'm not even going to dignify your mentioning of my parents), so if you take such an offense to small tidbit about how the game included a gay character, then that's your problem.
It's not my "gay thing", either. I'm not gay, myself, but I'm not so foolish to believe that there isn't a place in these games for gay characters. TOEE took a step that was pretty bold, evidenced by the fact that it generated a good bit of controversy shortly after release, so the idea that it doesn't deserve inclusion in this video is preposterous.
@@fandraxx I"m a foreigner. I'm just amaze how fast the gay agenda is so deeply important for your generation. The generation before you was having very different familly virtues that yours. You did made a very good job for your video.
Thank you for your reply
@@fandraxx One more thing, I am confuse, in your media they say you are born gay and also that woman and men are cultural invention .I don't understand wich one is it ? Can I be gay and not knowing it?
Those are some questions that are way above my pay grade, my friend. I am fairly certain that there are a lot of articles/studies pertaining to your questions, though. A quick google search should find a lot of those answers for you.
@@fandraxx Thank you are a good man.
dude you have not read any thing greyhawk if you dont think there are heros and villans and story. its designed to be a world that is grounded, and not over the top silly like all the other dnd worlds you talked about. Grey hawk leaves room for the players to become heros with the inspiration of the lore to follow. but in fairness grey hawk is my favorite setting
I played vanilla, beat it against all odds and the mods were just meh.
I agree that Greyhawk is boring. It was clearly made up for 5 year olds (Gygax’s kids). I mean some of the names. Zuggytmoy? Wee Jas? They sound like some nonsense kids book.
I’ve not played much of this game. Because I got lost and bored in Hommet.
Love your channel!
Thank you!
good video man, effort went into it, good job
Thank you!