Others say...

"so much unmet potential"
You know that saying "the whole is greater than the some of its parts"? Well, I feel the oposite is true with this game. It certainly looks very good. It has a very good turn-based fighting system that is easy to use. Stat building and leveling up is handled well. The problem is that these individual elements do not add up to an enjoyable game. It feels rather empty, and due to many bugs (several of which crash the game), I found myself eager to "get it over with" so I could play something else.

It lacks any meaningful plot and is basically a series of somewhat redundant battles. I got the feeling it was a great starting point for a really good game, but it never really went anywhere. On to KotOR!

"Not bad if you're desperate"
If you love single player, multi-character RPGs like I do, then you'll dig TEE. It's no where near BGII, but it will keep you entertained for a few weeks. The only thing that slightly annoys me is that it's turn based, which goes a little slower than the space-bar pause games like BGII.

"Pretty Good Overall"
I purchased and installed the game on my Compaq V4000 laptop a few weeks ago. So far, I have encountered no glitches, but have noticed a few things that don't seem quite right, like the rate at which you miss and how magic items are few and far between.

Combat is excellent. I played Neverwinter Nights and hated it, because enemies were too weak to oppose you and the interface was annoying. TOEE has a streamlined and easy to use combat system and is challenging nomatter what you are fighting.

My biggest gripe is the items. They, frankly, suck. magic items are, as stated, rare, and the inventroy is tiny. The lack of decent armor also annoys me. I didn't have anyone with armor better than master work until the party hit level seven. on the plus side, magic potions are in abundance, which is kinda fun.

Overall, worth trying, but it won't go down in history.

"An Awesome Way to Discover the World of Greyhawk"
First I'd like to say I never had any problems running this game. I popped it in, downloaded it, and played it with no weirdness. Smooth as could be. Also I strangely did not have a level cap, but just kept getting new spells and feats, etc. (I honestly think something went wrong here--but my characters just kept leveling up beyond where I think the game was programmed to prevent me. Hey give me more bugs like that anytime!)

The gameplay feels a lot like Baldur's Gate (which is the computer game that made me fall in love with both the Forgotten Realms and computer RPG's--the best computer RPG of all time) with much of the same freedom to explore and do things in any order you want, and to approach problems from a variety of angles. Most of all, it is a great way to fall in love with D&D's Greyhawk setting if you're like me and pretty much have only gotten to know it in snippets from the 3rd edition core rulebooks. It is wonderful to immerse yourself in, an engaging story that will suck you in for hours and hours.

A couple of warnings. First the game is HARD. You will be challenged to think tactically about every fight you get into, even the random encounters along the roads, and even then you will die horribly a lot. They throw some mean badguys at you without flinching. I loved the challenge of it, but I can see how all the merciless slaughter could turn away someone who's used to games that pamper them a bit more.

Also as mentioned in another review, you'll find that any adventuring companions you run into will get first cut of the loot when looting enemies. I can see why they did it, to reflect the fact that characters who join your party don't automatically become your slaves, but still it can be a bit frustrating, especially when an ally pilfers the best stuff off a body literally on the other side of the map from him and you cannot get him to return it. Also if the comment made is true, and the NPC's will overload themselves, then that's another big headache. What I found as a solution was this: Give the NPCs all the worthless big items you're carrying around (quarterstaves, rocks, arrows, etc) until you fill all their inventory spaces. They won't be able to pick up anything but coins and won't get encumbered. The other easy fix is to kill your NPC companions as soon as they've outlived their usefullness and get your stuff back (gee, any guess what the alignment of my party was?)

On the whole I was impressed by the game. I found the graphics very pretty (a refined version of what you get in Baldur's Gate--a bit of a dated presentation compared to Neverwinter Nights, but very nicely drawn and animated). The dialogue options were great--with four or five responses available at each branch of conversation I was usually able to say some flavor of whatever I would have wanted my character to say. The NPCs were colorful and fun, always worth talking to, and the main plot when you enter the Temple is really absorbing. My one regret is that apparently there is some demon queen ultimately responsible for the ills in the game, but for the life of me I could never find her--though I did run into two gods and fought gobs of uberpowerful devils and demons across the elemental planes before finally submitting to the will of my dark lord. Heh-heh, how often does a game let you do THAT?

"Descent, though with problems"
I had no problems running this game and some of the patches help. When it runs, it's fun. The problem I have is it pauses and minimizes the window too many times and I have to pull it back up, or it crashes when I try to close out of the game, causing me to restart my computer. And I've tried it on my Dell PC, Toshiba Sattelite, and Compaq Presario with the same results.