Never played ToEE, best to start with it or KoTB?

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Hi,

Having been playing Divinity Original Sin recently (a lot), its got me in the mood for finally trying Temple of Elemental Evil and its turn based combat.

I intend to play with the CO8 mod in place for the fixes, but I'm curious if I might be best to start with the Keep on the Borderlands module to get a feel for the game mechanics and such, before then playing ToEE itself?

Any thoughts? (and Many thanks for them)

 

It depends. On the one hand, KotB is pretty great. On the other hand, OC might feel a bit lackluster if you play KotB before that.

Also, ToEE is pretty hardcore D&D. Neither OC nor KotB are particularly hard, but it's still fairly easy to mess up your character(s). OC kinda counters that with overpowered items and companions though. If you're not an experienced D&D player, you might want to consider looking up a class guide online or ask for pointers before you get going.

Also, I wrote a short, and somewhat humorous, recap of my experience playing ToEE a few years back. I think it's fairly spoiler-free if you feel like giving it a read over at the Co8 forum.

 

Thanks To you both. Keneth I see what you mean about KotB possibly making the original feel lacklustre. I was thinking as it should be shorter it would just be a better intro.

I used to play D&D many years ago as Pen & Paper, I've finished Baldur's Gate years ago but never got far into BG2 as I was burned out from playing BG1 rather thoroughly. I've touched/bought a few other Crpgs over the years but not yet played/finished any (IWD, IWD2, PST, Wizardry 6-8, Divine Divinity, Arcanum, Fallout 1&2 and a couple of others) but playing D:OS has really fired me up to get back to playing those games / starting them finally. I was about half way through IWD when I stopped playing a year back.

Anyway I will check your recap out, just need to finish packing for a holiday first

 

I think ToEE is probably a bit more accessible than KotB at this point. KotB has added a lot of additional skills and features, which aren't necessarily well documented or obvious at first.

So if you're concerned at all about the learning curve, starting with the ToEE probably makes sense. And you can tack on the additional stuff once you get to KotB.

Quite a bit of non-Atari content between the 2, which equals a ton of additional game play.

 

Cheers for the answer, apologies for the delay I'm actually on holiday at the moment. From what you say I'll leave KotB for now. Thank you.

 

Hate to admit it, but I've never really gotten that far into ToEE due to the small fonts. I found a semi work-around by adjusting the display DPI, but I have to set it to absurd levels for my decaying eyesight.

That said, I played P&P AD&D 2.0 from 1990-1997, and had previously played Icewind Dale II and Pool of Radiance2: Ruins of Myth Drannor along with the Gold Box games, and the 2E Infinity Engine games.
Yet I still got massacred due to some bad build choices the first time I played as it is far less forgiving.
You're pretty much obligated to power game.

None of my DMs were ever that hardcore and put the parties in that much danger that you had to go all out every fight.

Maybe it gets easier once you level up a bit, but it really showed how fragile 1st and 2nd level characters are. If you hated the beginning of Baldur's Gate I when you've just escaped Candlekeep and are heading to the Friendly Arms Inn while running from wolves, you'll find ToEE even worse.

Normally I'd have persevered, but I was getting eyestrain. It can be compensated for by changing the display DPI, but that is a system wide change and also messes up the icons on my desktop due to there being too many of them. Changing it back is a pain.
I'd have done it anyways if I could have played on anything except my newest and best computer that I needed for other things, but I've only got two functioning Windows desktop, and one is nearly fourteen years old as of 2014.