The Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences nominated "The Temple of Elemental Evil" as its pick for 2003's best computer role-playing game, but ultimately gave the prize to "". It was also a finalist in RPG Vault's special award categories for audio design and art direction that year. However, the game did receive "Computer Games Magazine"s special "Raid™ Post-patch Recovery Award" and GameSpy's "Old School RPG Award" for 2003. The latter publication's editors wrote, "No game brought back memories of the old pen-and-paper "Dungeons & Dragons" days the way "Temple of Elemental Evil" did."