Here is a list of a few games similar to Temple of the Elemental Evil:

First of all the Circle of Eight modpack for additional quests.

Keep on the Borderlands Demo. Done with the TOEE engine, but only a demo so quite short.

Knights of the Chalice. An awesome indie game based on the Open Game Licence 3.5 (Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 rules). This games only has three classes, almost no RPG elements (only tactical fighting) and is not really eye candy (but you wouldn't care if you are on GOG). However the tactic fighting is even better than in TOEE with a much better AI. You can try the demo to get an idea of the game.

Dark Sun Shattered Lands. I guess it is abandonware. A turn based rpg Based on ADD 2 edition. The Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series should have been more like this in my opinion.

The Fire Emblem series. Quite different from TOEE, closer to an advanced chess game but great turn based strategy games.


Do you know other similar games? Maybe Jagged Alliance? I know that there exist a shitload of turn based JRPG for consoles but the strategy is always extremely shallow and disappoiting.

Well these come to mind:

Baldur's Gate 1 & 2
Icewind Dale 1 & 2

Pool of Radiance 2 is quite similar to ToEE. It's the same turn-based, isometric, 3D characters over a 2D background kind of game. The AD&D mechanics are simplified, but overall I found it an enjoyable dungeon crawler.

I meant TURN-BASED games similar to TOEE, not D&D or fantasy games. Infinity Engine games are not really turn-based. What I really loved in TOEE is that when casting a fireball for instance you can precisely choose the area of effect of your spell and who is going to be hit. Whereas in the Infinity Engine games, your enemies would already be next to you before you have finished casting your fireball... I had forgotten Pool of Radiance : Ruins of Myth Drannor, but it has terrible reviews, only 3% more than Duke Nukem Forever, so I have never tried it.

TOEE had terrible reviews too, and look who wants more like it now? But seriously, I don't remember Pools 2 at all. Where can I get my hands on a DnD game I never played!?!?!

As someone who owns both Duke Nukem Forever and Pool of Radience: Ruins of Myth Drannor, let me tell that if I could only take one of them with me to a desert island (and apparently had no access to better fare) I'd take Duke in a heartbeat.

PoR (a fitting acronym) was a mess. It started okay, but the combat turned into a tedious slog at higher levels, especially when spells became entirely useless and you had to fight hordes of mediocre enemies. The visuals were muddy and low res (though admittedly not much worse than ToEE), the rules were a travesty of D&D, and the bugs...well, wait until you hit your first save game corruption bug (deletes all your saves until you exit the current area), your first door glitch (doors relock, and the keys don't reappear), or any of the other myriad bugs that can either ruin or serious hurt your game.

Sorry, don't mean to rant. Just the mere mention of PoR brought back painful memories of playing it with my siblings many a moon ago. It was certainly an interesting experience... :)

As for good turn-based tactical games, I would recommend Jagged Alliance 2. It has a lot of depth, if you can get past the clumsy interface and don't mind a modern setting. Otherwise, I can't name very many good tactical strategy games. Normally you get the big-scope turn-based strategy games, not the little squad-based ones.

What about X-Com? Or Laser Squad Nemesis?

PoR2 wasn't that bad. Ok, it's buggy, but so was ToEE when it was launched. There's a patch which fixes some of the issues. The dungeons are huge and I can understand why this might feel tedious to some. The visuals are fine; not spectacular, but not cringe inducing either.

As a dungeon crawler lover I found it an enjoyable and rewarding experience. I finished it 3 or 4 times and I've beaten it in solo mode. I must have been lucky, since I haven't encountered any game-breaking bugs.

Well, I'd say that I love a good dungeon crawl, but found the dungeons in PoR2 were mostly featureless brown rooms filled with zombies. But I'm not going to argue over it; I'll just agree to politely disagree over the quality of PoR2.

I might not be the best to talk anyway. I did, after all, buy a used copy of Descent to Undermountain fully knowing what I was getting into, so I don't seem to know enough to keep away from the weaker D&D games. ;)

I might look for that patch, because I wouldn't mind seeing if I've got the old bugger patched to its final state. I think I do, since I bought the game repackaged a few years after it came out (I know it didn't have the infamous delete your hard drive while uninstalling glitch).

you may want to check out Fallout Tactics, turn based combat, movement and such. you can flip between turn based and action based

I have bought Fallout Tactics several years ago and played it for a few hours but was fairly disappointed. One one hand, the fighting system has been upgraded from the original Fallout. One the other hand not be able to explore the fascinating world of Fallout is extremely frustrating.

Moreover, if my memory is good the game doesn't have as much possibilities has TOEE. TOEE has a lot of features: several classes with special abilities, attacks of opportunity to manage, movement, weapon fighting, magic fighting, partial actions such as ready vs spell, etc... And that's what makes the charm of TOEE: a game based on a complex set of rules.
I doubt that Fallout Tactics has so much features.

They're not similar, but there's definitely something similar about them. I keep going back to both of them, lot more than to games with complex plots and stuff.

There's a lot of sneaking and preparing for some intense move. A particular favourite is noticing some supermutant hiding in a bunker. Two of my machinegunners, unseen, set themselves up in a guard mode, a third tosses the mutant with a molotov coctail. The angry mutant rises ready for mayhem... and is instanty splattered all over the place by the two waiting gunners.

Or trying to resolve a hostage situation, where there's a roomful of hostages and a bunch of guards. You'll need to move real sneaky and real quick if want to save the hostages, all the guards need to go down in about a second. And no hosing the area with mg fire either, or you'll hit the hostages as well.

ToEE has the better system (the BEST system), but they both have merit.

Strange I never got into Jagged Alliance, something too confusing about it, and then it starts crashing all the time. Guess I'll check out JA3 when it's ready...

From that description I can tell you that you just described exactly how I play Jagged Alliance. The third one looks ok but is not all that mechanically similar. I heartily recommend the second one if you liked Fallout Tactics that much.

Big props for the Knights of the Chalice recommendation, after playing the demo I bought the full game and I'm really enjoying it so far. It has some pretty obnoxious interface issues, but so does ToEE. But combat in KotC is great, which is what it's all about.

I also want to second the Fire Emblem recommendation. Very different style, but some of the best tactics games ever made. The GBA Fire Emblems are some of my all time favorites.

Wasteland = post nuclear war adventure; create your team and save the world! This was the first in the Fallout series. And it is available on many sites freeware!

Darklands = medievil Europe - make your team and save Europe!

I would agree that these two are probably the best ever RPGs and if you haven't played them, you haven't enjoyed the best ever. I recently played through Darklands again and still didn't enjoy the ending, but I did play it once more and once more and...! The bad ending was because Microprose was making a sequel and wanted the beginning to be lower level characters; so you get blasted at the end of the first game!

Glad that you appreciate Knights of the Chalice! I am surprised that so many GOG users have not heard of this gem yet.
I have heard many times about Wastelands and Darklands. I really need to try these games.
Still, have these games deep tactical elements as in TOEE?