IWD2 vs ToEE

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Hi all I was thinking about starting IWD2 and was wondering how it compares to Temple of Elemental Evil. I liked everything about ToEE except that your characters could not progress past level 10. What I really liked was the turn based combat system. I understand IWD2 is not turn based. So my main question is: Does this make IWD2 a test of speed clicking? I liked how in ToEE you had to plan movement as well as combat action. Any feedback would be appreciated.

 

IWD2 is not a test of speed clicking because you can easily pause the game at any time and assign actions to your characters which they will then carry out when you un-pause.

 

There's no speed-clicking in IWD2; you can pause at any time, and unless you're in a Warcrafty-kind of mood, you'll quickly get used to pausing early and often, until it becomes second nature.

The combat is much less sophisticated than ToEE...which, for its ocean of faults, is still the best tactical combat simulator I've ever played. That includes X:Com. If the only thing you're interested in is raw combat, you're not going to find anything better than ToEE. IWD2 has far more setpiece battles than ToEE, and some of them are pret' creative; but, ToEE's tactics are much, much stronger.

One HUGE example: in IWD2, you don't face attacks of opportunity. This is massively important in ToEE; I once created a party that was constructed around generating AoO, and we tore through everything. Not so in IWD2. So in IWD2 you can, for instance, run a gauntlet of fighters to strike the lonely mage in the backrow; in ToEE, that runner would be ripped to shreds by AoO.

However...if you want an actual plot, story depth, NPC personality, classy portraits, good dialogue, interesting magic items, and a bug list shorter than the phone directory, then IWD2 far exceeds ToEE.

 

Yes that is so true about the AoO which is why I mentioned the planning of movement in ToEE. Thanks for the feedback. Any more feedback would be great. The comments about being able to pause the game then plan strategy was very helpful. So once you tell a fighter to attack a certain enemy, that character would run up to the enemy and continue hacking at it until you told it to do something else? So then does attack rate come into play?

 

There are some scripts available for your characters in ID2 as well to give them "standard orders" and while they did look like they had been improved over the BG and BG2 scripts I never even tried them as I like to micromange for the most part.

You have lots of choices for managing- you can manage the entire party at once with a couple of clicks - you can choose them individually or even use hotkeys to do groups of 2 or more I believe.

Lots of stuff thats in ToEE is not implemented in ID2- including the ever popular 5 foot step...

The characters will all have a default script I believe which will vary somewhat on class but essentially warrior types will attack enemies on sight and other less aggressive types may wait until they are actually attacked or they see their comrades attacked if left to their own devices - its not a Dungeon Siege where you can point the party at the enemy and go fix lunch while they fight...

Fewer skill and feat choices as well I think but the game is much more cohesive since the one thing they seemed to forget in ToEE was its not enough to just have some quests in a D&D setting the computer has to become the DM and channel the action/story which I though ToEE did poorly- once you entered the temple it became a simple dungeon crawl that no one outside party had any interest in.

In any event enjoy the game and ask away here - thses forums need all the fresh blood they can get...

 

Iwd2 has only 4+1 attacks and no AoO
Imagine lvl30 monk with 4 attacks/round...

Iwd2 however is still better. TOEE lacks story and especially lacks character levels, which effectively kills the better rules implementation.

I understand IWD2 is not turn based
IWD2 is turn based. The difference is that all chars can move simultaneously.

wanderon
popular 5 foot step
W/o AoO i think this would be not useful at all anyway. since there is no difference compared to just running away from the enemy.

 

No it's not. It's as real-time as it can be. Pausing can give it the impression of being TB, but it's still real-time. There is no such thing as "initiative" in IWD2 (it gets replaced by weapon speed), and spells have far more variation in their casting time than in "true" turn-based D&D. It is a nicely balanced real-time engine though. There's never any speed-clicking, even if you don't pause - once you order a character to attack something, he/she will keep doing that until the target is dead (or until you give a new order).

 

Iirc in IWD2 you can set the game to pause at various things and acutually get close to turn-based. I only use things like 'enemy seen' or 'character injured'.

I happen to dislike the way fighting was handled in ToEE and never played it except for the Demo and not even that very long. Yyou have a lot of choices in IWD2.

 

IWD2 is sort of turnbased, in that it has 'rounds'. IIRC, each round lasts 6 seconds but all of them are resolved simultaneously.

You can even set a 'pause at end of round' option I think and then it becomes very similar to turnbased.

 

well personaly I think IWD2>>>>>>> TOEE and Im not that big on IWD2.

Have you played BG2? Much better then both.

 

- ToEE has an amazing atmosphere. Its very powerful and i havent seen other games that bring such a strong feeling in an RPG.

- Even though we all may be hardcore RPGers who hate eyecandyism, some times a change is welcome. ToEE has very good looking graphics.

- The Combat is the best you can find. Ever. Its very tactical and the animation are great.

- As mentioned before, the animations are good looking. I awed so much when i first made a hit on an enemy and shot a magic missile. Beautiful.

However,

- The game is small. It will take you complete 30-50 hours but its just small.

- Basically a dungeon crawler.

- Lame story.

- No interesting characters, no depth etc.