Planescape: Torment (1999)

I came here after playing Disco Elysium. I'm not a huge fan of the DnD stuff but this one hits a bit different. There's a lot of text but it's often interesting to read and the characters are funny. The best part is how you don't really have to fight so much if you don't wanna.

I took a long break playing and came back to it, but I had forgotten everything about where I was and where I was going. After a frustrating hour of dying repetadely in the same spot and not finding an exit, I decided to abandon this game.

It still was a great experience though!

I've been playing this one for several hours now and I'm not really making any progress. I'm still in the starting town and I can't figure out how to progress. I know I need to find Pharrod, and I know where he's at, but I just keep wandering back and forth and finishing fetch quests without realizing it and I'm really trying to figure out how this game is so revered.

Any tips from folks who have beat this one?

Having literally never played a CRPG or D&D game before (unless we counting the arcade belt scroller), I picked this one up on Switch.

It's sort of my "second monitor" content at the moment, something I'll hammer out playing handheld while Twitch is on in the background or something. The Switch controls for this game are... Really good? The game's original mechanics are incredibly obtuse in my opinion, but the way Beamdog has simplified all the different interaction options and menus into a pair of rotary wheels a la Seiken Densetsu honestly rules. I had tried playing this on PC years ago and was overwhelmed trying to remember all the keybinds, and this new control scheme is incredibly welcome as a newcomer to the genre.

I haven't got far. Just sorta wandering around the first town area right now. But I like it so far. I miss when games had dialogue options with immediate and branching consequences. It's my understanding that the Planescape campaign goes for far more ethereal and metaphysical theming, and I'm all about that - definitely something underexplored in games... The same old Tolkien elves and dwarves and wizards stuff is woefully overplayed, but games still stick with it out of a sheer lack of creativity.

Anyway. I imagine this game is really long and that it's structured such that a lot of content likely won't be seen on a single play through. So I'm just gonna play through casually, lean hard on my charisma stat, and have a blast.

I think this game was really well done. The writing was top notch. There were some interesting questions and things to do.

Combat was horrible I made the mistake of trying to base my character around magic, but using spells in the moment in the game was truly a nightmare and ended in a lot of unnecessary deaths.

You will read a lot. Which is not always bad, I really enjoyed Disco Elysium....but something about this game just tended to make me bored faster, I couldn't quite put my finger on it. Might just be Disco's top notch, complete voice acting....where as the voicelines here were inconsistent and sporadic.

Pretty long for what it is. I understand why this was such an important game from a game history standpoint, but you probably don't need to play it unless you love the world or can't get enough of these types of games.

This game has got to be the ultimate love it or hate it game. There seems to be no middle ground with it

You play as the Nameless One and journey through the city of Sigil. The game is also a journey for the protagonist to find answers about his existence. There is no Sauron. You are not trying to save the world. You just want answers. The game is interesting because your character is not a particularly nice guy

This game is EXTREMELY dialogue heavy. It's very story driven and the dialogue trees can seem endless. Very immersive dialogue. While there is combat, that is not the priority here. Many of the conversations you will find yourself engaging in can be quite profound

This is one of the reasons that I never recommend this game to anyone despite the fact that I loved it. It's not for everyone and the fact that I love it and you might not does not make me "deep", "thoughtful" and "introspective" and you not. It just means that it has a gameplay style that is not to your liking.

There is great moral ambiguity to the game. Sometimes solving a problem needs to be accomplished by doing the "wrong" thing

It's not an entirely a somber game. There is definitely a dark sense of humor to be found and there are several allusions to, uh, "unconventional" sexual predilections. It's weird

The writing is very well done and the attention to detail is fantastic for such an old game. The voice talent is good, but the graphics are a bit subpar even for the era it came out in

A unique experience. It's just not for everyone

Planescape has been the bane of my existence for the last couple of years. Like a lingering phantom, it has haunted me by being a constant source of frustration, madness and self-doubt.

This is considered to be the (perhaps) best RPG ever made. A masterpiece. This is a title I actively despise playing. It’s the worst time I have ever had trying to appreciate a video game.

Like tumbling tides of emotion, two sides of me has been in constant struggle - the one who desperately wants to understand and the one who suffers from actually experiencing Planescape Torment. Now the storm has settled somewhat, and after having spent 20 hours of gameplay (about halfway through) and some 10 hours of watching walkthroughs + video essays to grasp the end part of the game as well as general thoughts on its themes, I’m ready to give my conclusions. To do that, I will let these two different incarnations of myself take turn:

Observing incarnation:

One of Planescape Torments biggest strengths lies in its uncompromising originality and rejection of fantasy tropes. Being based on a Dungeons and Dragons-campaign setting, Planescape acts as a no man’s land for lost souls accidentally ending up there through portals with unclear means of triggering. This premise allows for some really interesting world building, both in terms of individual quests and larger factions at play.

At the heart of this story is the main character, The Nameless One. An immortal being waking up with amnesia, his story is more about introspection than grand adventure. There are no orcs or elves. No great evil to defeat or hero in shining armour to save the day. Planescape shapes its own fantasy world.

Personal incarnation:

While I can’t deny the distinct identity of Planescape Torment, I feel that its themes, and core narrative experience delivers more in concept than in practice. I would really love to be enthralled by the journey of The Nameless One and his companions, but the means of interacting with this cruel world leaves a lot to be desired.

Planescape: Torment is a constantly conflicting experience, being a hardcore Dn’D-dungeon crawler with complicated rulesets, builds and stats that wants to be experienced as a story driven interactive role playing visual novel. For being a game renown for the latter, there's sure a lot of fighting.

I found myself extremely frustrated even after having chosen the easiest difficulty setting, constantly dying and being overwhelmed by enemies. I’m said to be able to avoid close to every enemy encounter, but not a single enemy I met during my playtime seemed to agree. Together with an inventory system on par with 80’s RPGs in clumsiness and an incredibly poor job of teaching the combat system in game (maybe one of the worst tutorials I’ve experienced overall), battling in Planescape Torment was a constant pain.

Observing incarnation:

The combat is flawed, that much is true, but it’s disingenuous to judge a game consisting of more than 80% story interactions for the 20% of enemy fights. And what a story it is.

Planescape Torment is a monumental project, with a script amounting to more words than the Bible. All these words are carefully used to establish a rich world-building and attention to detail in characters. Almost everyone you meet are given an interesting context into the world of Planescape, and the level of writing is way beyond all its contemporaries and even most modern games.

Most importantly, these dialogue interactions allows you to genuinely explore your morality in an organic way, by emphasising who you choose to be rather than picking options based on the outcome.

Personal incarnation:

I can really see the appeal of Planescape’s story - especially considering the time of its release. In 1999, it’s hard to think of a more ambitious video game project in terms of trying to convey a narrative. More so, the focus on player expression through dialogue choices must have been game changing at the end of the millennium.

Sadly enough, despite the absurd scope and depth offered, I’m not able to enjoy the story being told here - or rather how it’s told. First of all, if I’m supposed to read something in length akin to In search of lost time, I can’t have it delivered with an awful font an ugly UI. More importantly, the absurd amount of text in this game seems to stem from over abundance of descriptions in the dialogue, rather than out of necessity for conveying the plot and/or improving the literary quality.

Seriously, reading a description of a shopkeeper’s looks takes longer than to finish a level in Super Mario Bros. Telling the story solely through text also hurts the immersion of the game, in that environmental storytelling is ditched in favour of heavy exposition. This is a no show, all tell-type of storytelling, not leaving much to the imagination of the player to consider.

Observing incarnation:

If you don’t like reading that’s your issue, a game should not need to have short attention spans in mind, sometimes following your artistic vision results in a more impressive work than to cater to the masses.

Personal incarnation:

Don’t get me wrong, I love reading, it’s probably my greatest interest combined with video games and movies. My criticism is based on how well the choice of storytelling in Planescape: Torment facilitates it as a game experience. In that sense, I feel way more compelled by classic titles such as Super Metroid - While not as expansive, it is more impactful due to how it uses the gaming medium to deliver the experience. In Planescape: Torment, I felt completely detached from the experience.

Observing incarnation:

You do know that this is considered a masterpiece by thousands of players and critics alike?

Personal incarnation:

I know.

Observing incarnation:

And you do know that you are speaking with yourself?

Personal incarnation:

I know.

Observing incarnation:

Shall we agree to disagree?

Personal incarnation:

Let’s merge instead.

2/5 it is, a compromise between my experience and knowledge about what this experience has meant for others, and for the video game medium as a whole.

"Inspired by Final Fantasy VII" UH YEAH... IT SHOWS. THIS IS LITERALLY A GAME MADE BY PEOPLE WHO UNDERSTOOD WHAT MADE FF7 SO GOOD AND POPULAR AND TREATED TO RECREATE THAT FORMULA, THE GRITTY FANTASY ATSMOPHERE, AN ALL ENCAPSULATING EPIC ABOUT THE WEIGHT OF LIFE, THEME OF IDENTITY AND FLESHING IT OUT MORE. Pun intended? Maybe.

Once you start thinking of this WRPG as more of a WRPG take on the JRPG formula, you start enjoying it more, the Enhanced Edition sure does help quite a lot, when I had first played this game, I didn't get that far until around you reach the Lower Ward. It is kinda sad the PC version of Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition doesn't have controller support which is weird because the Switch version of this game I believe has both mouse pointing and analog control of the character. I say this because I truly believe with these new re-workings, Planescape Torment stops being that scary hard to approach WRPG elitists love and starts playing more like a JRPG of this era.

I can’t tell if my memory is fuzzy but I am CERTAIN so much has been improved for me to actually get through all of this. Like yes it is not just game improvements but since the last time I have played this game I have become WAAAAY more familiar with the RPG genre across the years, think 15 year old me to now in my late 20s, I mean I went from Final Fantasy to Shin Megami Tensei, from Skyrim to Morrowind, from Fallout 3 to the obviously better in every single way Fallout: New Vegas, a lot has happened since then, but I do believe that if you go with a good mindset and know how to approach RPG games this game isn’t half bad! Some flaws but not bad!

Speaking of flaws: I mean, what other RPG from this time period doesn’t have such sections that require a lot of backtracking, moments where you have to cheese to get pass certain enemies, some even adore the charm of that “This might be annoying but you will look back and remember fondly about it, maybe like Super Mario Sunshine? Or Dark Souls? Those are all highly flawed games but remembered fondly as some of the most memorable experiences, I think of Bennett Foddy thinkpiece “Eleven Flavors Of Frustration” from January 15, 2017 and how it writes more on this topic, a perfect game has to be flawed.

Life improvements include: Tab Highlighting, some bug fixes, although some bugs are still prevalent, you might have at least 1 quest that through trial and error doesn’t reach it’s flagpole event and is stuck forever in your to-do list until the end of the game, and before you can save and load to where you can fix it, it’s too late, you finished that quest a thousand saves ago. Don’t you love WRPGs?

There might have been some other improvements that I didn’t even notice however what is most important to me, is that the Enhanced version actually fixed one of my major complaints of the game that the game was extremely clustered and felt claustrophobic, well the areas are now bigger and you can actually move in them. I remember barely being able to move in the original and going through these annoying hallways with hostile lim-lims that I could barely click on, I remember constantly getting stuck at places in my original play through, so I am glad they made the game more breathable.

Now even if you want! You can play the whole game as if it’s Skyrim on the easiest mode, it is completely accessible to anyone who is slightly familiar with RPG games nowadays, but yes, having a walkthrough to your side to get through most of the easy to do quests that are just talk this person, say the right things, helps immensely, being a completionist helps you be leveled well enough to go against most of the things in this game, you can’t just blow through it, you should look for where you can do quests so you can level up more… Or just play it Skyrim style with the new difficulty scale.

To SAY THE LEAST however… Like most “Hardcore RPGs”, the start is always rough, until you either choose for your protagonist to be a thief or until your third party member is introduced, then the fun really begins and the pace of the game increases exponentially as you can now pickpocket, which truly feeds into that kleptomania that WRPGs have infected you with. Around where you find Pharod, the game starts getting surprisingly addicting with it's gameplay loop.

It’s fun whenever they try to give you some freedom to do dumb shit because often it feels that Planescape Torment is obviously a point and click adventure game first and RPG second but GOD DAMN... Does it feel good to pitpocket and get look in the game, upgrade your armor, get better stuff, sell stuff, they fixed the money pacing very well in enhanced mode I feel, sooner or later you will find a merchant you can sell most things to (like in the Lower Wards). But yeah, I cannot deny that there are many people who say “Plot is good, gameplay is meh”, which is sad! But you can’t blame many for that way of thinking, after all, that way of thinking is probably what inspired Disco Elysium, which is an RPG much like this but with no combat.

You can’t ENTIRELY blame people for wishing this game was only 1 thing also because of how certain sections are paced. There are entire sections of the game that completely break the pacing and it just becomes A WORD DUMP and then it hits you: This is an interactive book and they every now and then put combat to change it up a bit… Oh man… If there is any flaw it is how they try to structure that between Clerk's Ward and Curst.

Clerk’s Ward is this section that has no combat at all and is mostly just dialog exchange, and it probably has the most written dialog of the entire game, as you play through this section you beg to yourself: Please, some combat, I forgot what I am playing has RPG elements outside of how much I put in my INT stat and my CHA stat due to mostly playing detective around who I was and becoming a sensate. And lo and behold, the monkey’s paw curls a finger, because what you get next is CURST.

Curst is the most linear part of the game, it is pretty straight forward and you really just have to do 1 main quest (which can be completely ignored but you wouldn’t wanna waste that EXP opportunity, there is also 1 optional quest as well that isn’t even considered a quest at all) and they just keep throwing enemies at you non-stop and you have to cheese the enemies so you only aggro one of them so that you don’t get overwhelmed with all of them. But yeah, this is a game that often times does not know how to pace it’s plot and it’s RPG fun.

The plot in itself is fun to PUT IT LIGHTLY and it is no exaggeration that this is one of the best written games in all time, a plot device is cleverly introduced around every arc, it's plot as many have discussed is both Planescape greatest strength but also a detriment as discussed before: it is both a point and click adventure game and a RPG, despite everything I am not one to say "They should of just removed all of the gameplay" because it is fun when it works you know? I appreciate them actually adding some features that make certain things more satisfying and alive. But yes by trying to be both, you need to hoard quest items and treat them the same way as junk items, backtracking isn't TOO Bad (especially when you unlock fast travel) but oh my god.

Sarcastically: You know it was an amazing idea to make it so that quest items are treated the same as regular junk items! Like when you need something you literally need to travel all the way back to where you store items to progress because NOW you need that one quest item you got like 10 hours ago. Sorry for saying this but Bethesda games actually fixed this by making quest items weight zero and non-removable from your inventory.

Expect the first 6 items in your limited inventory space to be quest items, which at a certain point, you can't leave those items somewhere, you gotta mule them throughout the whole game, you never know when you'll need it or when it starts being useful. This is a game that is much more fun once you played it once because now you know what you are supposed to do and when to do it, however, the first rodeo is extremely clumsy.

“Avellone remarked that many of the ideas in the game "could only have been communicated through text, simply because no one would have the budget or resources to fully realise many of these fantasy works through TV or movies".[37] Ultimately, Avellone has expressed some regret about the game's heavy focus on dialogue, as he feels this interfered with the overall game mechanics, particularly the combat system.[28][38] The game's script contains around 800,000 words,[39] after early previews had indicated that the game would be only about 20 hours long.[22]” is on the Wikipedia page so this has been a much said of discussion. Also 20 hours long? It does not feel that short when you actually try to do most of the things like I’ve said, I’ve beaten the game yes but I still feel as if there are some aspects to uncover.

This is an entirely FASCINATING world that really does push the limits of the fantasy genre, it is a fantasy world that actually cares about what it comments on and what it has to set up, it flows amazingly well and it holds surreal depictions of a completely alien world that feels extremely hostile, new and unwelcoming to anything conventional, it is a gritty world that feels better than your usual D&D world that doesn’t do anything special, with that said, the characters are to adore for! Dak'kon is kinda… Just there, I get that his whole thing is to be cool but he doesn’t add that much other than that.

You can talk with your own party members and gain more information from them, even confront them on certain new topics you have discovered, again, it could be seen as a flaw, but every now and then the plot opens and that door that was closed that you passed through, you aren’t sure if it’s open anymore. What isn’t a flaw is the wonderful worldbuilding though! Fantasy worlds should not be afraid of post-modern topics, especially with how they can play with borderline 4th dimensional religious shit.

Makes for wonderful symbolism too, the whole higher planes arming the lower planes and keeping them occoupied with a never ending war is probably some "rich people fund wars" symbolism. The situations of which Planescape built are intricate and in the end work wonderfully well with the main plot. The amount of material to go through can be pretty hefty, and I would not consider it to be beginner level literature, even if yes... It is Dungeons & Dragons, honestly kinda easy to forget it is D&D, it is so unique in it's look that I don't associate it with that one pass time in which nerdy kids make stories for themselves.

When you compare this story to most generic fantasy that has almost nothing new or anything important to say, you realize that most fantasy writers lack life experiences with what they apply to their story, this is something that doesn't shy away from actually going deeper into it's complicated topics, there is good oversight, direction. Sure being a Dungeons and Dragons story might be cheating because it is open-source fantasy writing tools, anyone can write a d&d story, that is the idea, the world sets some concepts that kids can use to their liking, some kid in the 80s probably made a very good fantasy story about mortality and traumatized his friends who just thought it’d be a normal D&D session.

I am just glad to finally see a fantasy story that doesn't make me think "This paints an uneducated look on the writer who cares nothing about what they write about and is to shy to write around hard to concept fantasy paradoxes" you know, media criticism isn't just about feeling better for being at a point of privilege towards creation but being well-experienced and knowing when something is well reflecting the HUMAN IMAGE. Some people just don't put their heart or stakes into things and their work just ends up having NOTHING, it has this big "Zombie" energy to it, the fantasy genre is filled with it, HELL, a lot of D&D players are like that, this should be standard D&D reading because it raises your storytelling standards to new heights.

In fact this is the type of fantasy story that puts you in the spirit to want to write a D&D scenario yourself, so as a D&D product it works WONDERFULLY if that is what it was designed for, I feel extremely inspired after absorbing all of this world building magic, it is a good introduction as to the heights of which the fantasy genre is capable of, it gives you a good standard of how creative you can be yourself.

Theme discussion (may have spoilers):

Now, this is usually the aspect that is stuck the most with people, after all, this is a juicy text heavy interactive novel for most, and for many what is the value of text is not just it’s "surface level themes" but deeper ideas like the "remorse of conscience" that make this a post-modernist classic, depends on how literate you are to see the finer details.

Possibly a game that was built around the concept of catholic guilt, the idea that no matter what you do, you will always be doomed to a life of sin due to the circumstances you were born in. It deals heavily with suicide, valuing your time on the planet, what it means to live a full life, what it means to live a life if all of it is predetermined by forces that in this case were literally just set out for yourself, self-love, self-doubt, lots of things in relation towards the self, and of course: “What can change the nature of a man?” which might seem like an ok question at first but only runs deeper as the story develops.

Now of course, we are always trying our best to do what we find is best, and more importantly what we can do to survive, in doing so we inevitably create circumstances where we have no option but to be nasty or do things out of our own selfish needs. A lot of this story deals with trying to “Change your nature” but what is the point in changing your nature if in one way all actions could be considered bad in one way, there is a common theme of good intentions going extremely awry and doing more harm than good. It puts the idea of “practicality” into more inspective lenses, and goes to question: Can you really blame some for doing the things they did?

In creating a fantasy world where an idea of an after-life is easily traversable and can be tampered with, ie: it is of material relevance and existence, it doesn’t only give symbolic weight but also questions such ideas of moralism, an experience like this might raise such questions on whenever or not it is right or even possible to judge a man to condemn them to eternal damnation. I mean, listen, everyone has thought it: Why should my incarnation be judged for what my past re-incarnations done? And guess what, YOU ARE SUPPOSED to think that way, the entire structure of how moralism is built is deeply flawed, it is a paradoxical question of which you need to question the merit of.

As Trias gets themselves into a situation, they argue that the world has been way too corrupt for the sake of keeping the blood war going and opts to clean the whole world, ironically, this only makes Trias themselves a bad person, many scenarios paint a defacto idea that there isn't a straight-forward villain in this story and puts really into question the idea "of good" when there is no way to be good in such a world, in fact no one is a villain, it is just people who born under bad circumstances in a corrupt world are destined to the blood war.

Going back to that one quote, “What can change the nature of a man?” what is important however is what you are capable of, if you are capable of good then that is all that matters, you should take for granted the life you live and try to make the most out of it. If you are capable of change than that is great! That is the underlying message of this whole story. Despite what approach you get towards the ending, some more satisfying than others, it shows that The Nameless One did in fact learn and change and is at peace with what he has to suffer through.

It is a story that relies heavily on the idea of constitution and acceptance of what you have, there are circumstances that you may not change but at least you are yourself and you can set yourself to achieve things! Constitution is literally a stat also helps out this aspect, it is about being true to yourself, having well established principles, it is only when you know yourself that you can work on yourself and relieve the torment of existence. I know I dissed Dak'kon back in this review as their whole thing is just being cool, their few lines of dialog are literally the whole theme condensed, the phrase “Endure. In Enduring grow strong.” might as well be the slogan of this game the amount of times I’ve heard it, it would also work as a slogan because you know, another theme of this game is EXISTENCE IS PAIN, SUFFERING, TORMENT.

Now I am sure that the whole torment angle of this game (It is literally the title) could make a paragraph of it’s own and maybe I’d mention philosophers like Friedrich Nietzsche etc. But you can play the game itself and see what you’d get out of it, it isn’t particularly hard because the themes are heavy-handed and hard to miss, like the themes are just TEXT, but some of the inner content that is a bit easier to miss has a lot for interpretation, or might depend on how you play the game, as in whenever or not you can get more information on it?

Some things are still kept mysteries and honestly open up for a lot of replayability as you might be curious as to who Morte is if the information you gained wasn’t satisfying enough, you might have missed an entire section (I know I have by completely ignoring bringing a Modron Cube to the Modrons in that intellectual brothel, learned more about the world or characters all that fun stuff. The themes in this game are the easiest thing to get, the finer details aren’t.

Final thoughts:

Now, of course, this game is flawed, it is a WRPG from 1999, surprisingly like I’ve mentioned before, it’s Enhanced Edition makes it more tolerable to go through, however, even being a sometimes janky and clunky game, it is a game that as soon as I finished it THE FIRST TIME (that’s right, I had to go back in so that I could get different paths and different endings, or anything else I might of missed, (which I'd recommend new players to get a Modron Cube and to show it to Modrons for extra stuff), it is a story that literally made me wanna get a tattoo to remember it immediately, which you know, kinda of a given with the whole tattoo theme in this story…

But I want to make it clear I wish to have other video game tattoos like the trashy and weirdly very common FF7 meteor, or the Star Fox Star Wing, or a giant “LEGA” across my leg. It’s not just because the story involves tattoos, it’s just that I immediately knew that as soon as I finished this I was way in too deep and I knew I was gonna obsess over it for a long time. I should of known as I am obsessed with Fallout New Vegas, and this is considered Avellone’s magmum opus.

But, much like other Avellone projects, they are always cut a bit short to what could of been greater? Like I said you can get a lot from this game but is hard to deny that a lot of ideas felt cut, for example, the nameless one only has 1 piece of clothing and it becomes useless after the first section, and they literally cut out Lady of Pain from this game, and I feel as if that is something that'd be extremely important considering she is on the title screen, there could've been a whole different path where you are PRO-DESTRUCTION OF THE WORLD, and you go up against Sigil's goddess. And I guess, if anything, although it is extremely possible to miss a lot of the content of this game and your experience might be different every time because you realize way too late into the game that you're like "Oh... I could of done that thing", a game designed for trial and error.

But yes about the Modron Cube, easy to miss, this game is filled with things that are completely missable and you'd only get them if you actually talk to almost every NPC with a name tag, that is, if you actually pay attention to what they say, much like Final Fantasy VII, this game has 2 optional companions that are honestly kinda hard to know how you'd get them without a walkthrough, one requires you to buy a random item that allows you to quick travel out of luck, think of bringing it to other mordons, and another companion can be gained only if you are very lawful.

And I only knew of them after beating the game once and reading up and honestly, getting them around the end of the game is a bit useless, there isn't much post-game content to use late-game extra stuff, especially considering the last boss can just be fought with knowing what to do with your quest items. This game has AMAZING gameplay concepts and again I appreciate the effort, but a lot of them are cut short around the end and there's not much to explore after most of the main places are discovered. Filling your world map up out of curiosity feels anti-climatic, but definitely goes to show that curiosity can change the nature of a man, it isn't the biggest RPG out there.

This game is also something that helped introduce me to the D&D universe more, even if it is a 90s edgy take on it that hasn't gotten too much traction, it was a original unique take on it that made me think: maybe the other games have just as interesting concepts in an otherwise generic setting. There are apparently many games like this one, and as FF7 introduced me to the Final Fantasy series, this game too might have opened the door for Bulder's Gate which I have yet to have played (I know that's going backwards but maybe I will be more tolerant of such).

It is one of those games that I played when I was younger but could not force myself to get through the now aged clunky mechanics (I might be exaggerating, it’s playable), it is very similar to how I went and played Morrowind which took me around 4 attempts until when on the 4th attempt I found enough good mods to make the experience enjoyable, although Planescape was a lot easier to get back to with it’s Enhanced Edition, and I am glad I gave this game a second chance as of now because it really is something I feel as if “the life I have lived was worth it”.

Planescape: Torment is one of those games that comes up a lot when you search into lists of "best" RPGs. A CRPG from Black Isle in 1999, it takes place in the "Planescape" Dungeons & Dragons campaign setting released in 1994. It's a unique setting, with less dragons and more strangeness. Here we see one of the very few good uses of the amnesiac protagonist. You run around trying to recover your memories and right what has been wronged while exploring this fantastic setting and engaging with the AD&D ruleset. Planescape:Torment isn't a perfect game, but I understand why it's heralded by many as the best CRPG, and on a shortlist for best RPGs of all time.

Mechanically, Planescape: Torment plays the same as its Infinity Engine counterparts Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale (and Neverwinter Nights, though that game uses the 3rd edition D&D ruleset). When you do something, either in combat or out of combat, dice roll (in this case behind the scenes) and modifiers add or subtract from your stats to generate an outcome. That sounds really boring on paper, but it's how tabletop RPGs have worked since they were invented. An issue with translating this system from tabletop to video game is that there is no "Dungeon Master" to offset how swingy that can get. Back when playing Baldur's Gate I developed a habit of quick saving before every fight, because even the easiest enemies can land a series of critical hits and murder you while you score a series of misses and can't take down their total of 4 HP. In a real tabletop game there is a layer of creativity (and, depending on your DM and whether they roll behind a screen, forgiveness) that allows for one to find ways out of getting slaughtered by a small group of low level enemies. Now, some might not see this as an issue. I know there are players who like this aspect. And some people even play tabletop RPGs so by-the-book that it's functionally identical to playing digitally. However for both me as a video game player and a tabletop player this doesn't work super well. That said, this is a very simple problem to overcome and it involves saving often. Very often. Compulsively often. Which really isn't as big of a deal as you might think. Quick save compulsively, keep a rolling series of normal save slots in case you fat-finger a load and accidentally save in a deadly scenario (which I absolutely have done).

My least favorite aspect of the game is the inventory management. It's the same as other Infinity Engine games, with a set number of slots and a weight limit based on your Strength attribute. But in Planescape: Torment there are so many important items, and you have no idea how many times you'll need them. You begin to hoard keys and notes just in case you need them. My inventory was 30% quest items by the end. The reason I kept them is because early on I threw out some junk (literally called "junk") that I didn't think I'd need again. Turns out you need it to exit a particular zone if you fast travel there (you also needed it to enter). So I had to run around for 45 minutes trying to find junk and thankfully was able to find one. Another segment forced me to use 4 or 5 keys to get through a tomb (my own tomb, it turns out). It felt like an important area, so I kept all the keys just in case. That's 4 more lost slots. You can see where this is going. I had one character that was just my "quest item" holder, and her inventory was almost entirely taken up by my hoarding. There's also an item you get at the beginning of the game that has a use at the very end, and is useless everywhere else. That's another slot taken up (and thank god I kept it, because it's a big deal even though it's optional). It doesn't make the game unplayable, but you can see the unpolished edges of late 90's game design all over. I haven't heard Planescape: Torment praised for its gameplay, though. You click through its mechanics because the story and world are so good. That's not to say it's mechanically bad, it's just unremarkable to me, especially because there are several games that play the same.

In Planescape: Torment you control "the Nameless One", a man who woke up in a mortuary with no memories. You are immediately befriended by a trash-talking floating skull and explore Sigil, "the city of doors" as it's called. You explore who you were, who you need to become, and are asked the question "what can change the nature of a man?" The narrative stands on the shoulders of the setting and the characters in it. Your journey often boils down to "Go see CHARACTER A, they know about your past." And then CHARACTER A says "I only know a little bit, go talk to CHARACTER B." This continues for a bit, but it's never that big of a deal. The people you interact with are always interesting, from the weird corpse collecting Pharod, to the mad Gray Witch Ravel. The companions you collect along the way are unique and great to interact with. Each has a backstory that makes them not your typical archetypes, and I really appreciate the time taken to make them another living piece of this world. Of course, some of them joining you feels a little flimsy, as happens in these games sometimes. But others are vestiges of your past lives who remember you before you awoke as the Nameless One. That right, lives. You've lived a hundred hundred lives, and each time you forget who you are. Except this time, which makes your quest that much more interesting. You being functionally immortal also plays into the gameplay, as dying does not trigger a game over. You are simply brought back to the mortuary, or even the beginning of a dungeon you're in. I don't know what happens if a companion dies, because every time it happened I loaded a save. In Baldur's Gate, companions dying is very annoying. Between finding a temple to resurrect at, and picking up all their gear, it tempered me to just reload if anyone dies in an Infinity Engine game. But this is a great way to make a game less punishing while using an in-universe justification.

The only time where I felt frustrated with the game's pacing is when, after a major story beat, you are transported to a new city called Curst out in the middle of nowhere. It takes the wind out of the narrative sails because you had just learned a lot and were finally getting somewhere. And then you're sent to a city with no connection to you or your story. I remember getting there and thinking "fuck this city and its side quests, I need to get back to Sigil and learn more!" Curst isn't without merit. It's a cool little town with its own political strife and issues. But it felt like the main story itself was wrested away from me and I just wanted to get back to it. If it had been introduced at a different point, perhaps I would have been more willing to talk to each NPC and help solve their problems like back in Sigil. But as written, I just wanted to get out of there and learn more about the Nameless One.

My favorite quality of Planescape: Torment is also one of its detriments. The setting is so unique, so interesting, and so divergent from fantasy norms that I fell in love instantly. But this setting wasn't made for the video game - it's the other way around. The game came out in 1999 and the setting came out in 1994. There are some aspects of the setting that seem like they'd be a big deal given conventional video game story logic. There are things you want to see explored that aren't. Or at least, if they are I never saw that side quest/conversation/whatever. One example is the Lady of Pain, the ruler of Sigil. You hear a lot about her and I just assumed you'd meet her at some point. But you don't. She never really speaks to you, you never see her, and she doesn't play a direct role in the story. Of course, some of her past actions have major consequences to the story, but that happened "off-camera" a very long time ago. If this setting were made for the game, you bet she would be a major part of it. You wouldn't write her in and then not use her. And here we see a consequence of the setting coming before the game. The game is only a narrow slice of the world that the Nameless One is destined to interact with. The writers can't rightfully write in every aspect of Planescape, or even Sigil. So while I expected to confront the Lady of Pain at some point, that's just not a journey for the Nameless One's existence within the confines of this game.

Planescape: Torment deserves its title as "one of the best RPGs of all time", though you'll have to put up with some older game design to get to the meat of it. However, that design isn't so awful to put up with, and the tactical battles can be pretty fun at times. The game really allows you to choose non-combat solutions for many problems, so just make your starting Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma high. While you explore the awesome and bizarre world of Planescape ask yourself, "what can change the nature of a man?"

This is a special game and easily in my pantheon of greatest games ever created. It's a work of art with some of the best writing and characterization in storytelling. It won't be for everyone, particularly since it is primarily story (about 800,000 words in total) over game play ; you can make a valid argument that it makes a bad game as a result since it doesn't maximize the potential of the medium. Though it does present a unique way to "Choose your own adventure."

It's a CRPG made by the same team who delivered plenty of classics ranging from Baldur's gate (using the same game engine), Fallout and Knights of the Old Republic and is my personal favorite of all their games. It suffers from the same combat as Baldur's gate and Fallout, but it makes up for it in spades with the atmosphere and world building. The game takes place in Planescape which is a multiverse of different planes of existence. You start the game in Sigil which acts as a nexus to the multiverse. Thousands of rifts, some hidden while others apparent, connect a plethora of realms to the city. Sometimes you can access these rifts by accident or through hidden keys that you discover. Each door has a key, but they can range from a hand gesture, word or object to unlock. This is explored through both the main quest and side content. For example, you encounter a beggar who accidentally walked through one of these doors and is now trapped out of space and time in Sigil.

The last thing I will mention about world building is related to death as more than a game play mechanic. I always love games that go the extra mile to incorporate a common game play motif as part of narrative. In fact, dying is the main impetus behind the plot. It's really awesome to see designers be self-reflective about video games in clever ways. The soulsbourne series does this well also.

The game allows you to live any kind of fantasy you may choose. It includes both iconic axes of DND including Law vs Chaos and Good vs Evil. While it may not provide the most dynamic change to game play and won't effect the ending of the game, it does effect your party's interpersonal relations to some degree (you can be attacked by a party member) and through good writing gives you a medium to role play to your hearts content. It's a more player driven rather than game play driven experience but well executed and fun to interact with. The only game play mechanic around it is related to some end game weapons that require a specific alignment. My criticism of the system is that it remains mostly hidden. There is a subset of dialogue options that will push you towards good vs evil or law vs chaos. It isn't communicated well to the player, all you see is the end result on your character sheet. This can be frustrating if you want a specific alignment, fortunately it's not important for beating the game. If you answer even just one Law vs Chaos question the wrong way, it may be impossible to achieve a lawful alignment...

Alignment is better explored through the story rather than game play. Each antagonist to the game is presented with moral ambiguity. Ravel ends up being a believable and nuanced character, yet was built up to be the embodiment of evil. This reflects reality, where through political propaganda nuance around opposition can be eradicated and they are instead unambiguously demonized. When developing Ravel Avellone had the following philosophy:

"Avellone thought a cryptic puzzle maker who was in love with the player character and who genuinely tried to help people only to have it backfire on her would make an interesting antagonist."

He was right. She has her own motivation and flaws with an air of tragedy to her. She slowly loses her mind while in limbo and was clearly manipulated by the player character. Later in the game you encounter an Angel who has gone mad and throws the world into tumultuous chaos. While presented as an antagonist, it's clear he had good intentions albeit delusional in execution. There is more to say, but I don't want to spoil the plot. This game just rocks when it comes to writing; hopefully I have convinced you.

The designers trusted your intelligence as a player and never hold your hand. I personally appreciated this and the solution for quests and puzzles mostly requires an attentive memory of characters or objects you had previously encountered. The solutions were mostly intuitive if you use your brain. I believe there are a few puzzles that require you to interact with a small object in the environment which I would consider a tad unfair. Overall I liked it. A beggar is cursed? Well there's a playboy mage hanging outside the mage guild bragging about how good he is at curses. Maybe talk to him?

Finally, it's time to discuss the elephant in the room: un-engaging combat. Like all early CRPGs, it's the weakest part of the game due to a commitment to the source material. While I like playing DND, I find the combat to be a slog. I enjoy role playing and puzzle solving more than rolling a dice and waiting my turn to roll a dice again. The combat moves fast, but follows the rules of ADnD like Baldur's gate. You can pause the game, give commands to each party member, then they run to the enemies and start auto-attacking. It's not ground breaking (though it was for the time) and it makes sense why successors to this style of RPG reinvented the wheel in favor of more engaging game play, or in the case of Disco Elysium eliminated it entirely (which was the right call).

There is a game ruining bug when you encounter Ravel. If you instigate her to attack you early, it will become impossible to escape her maze. This resulted in me having to completely restart my game after being over 20 hours into my play through... I pushed through because of how good the writing was. SAVE BEFORE YOU TALK TO HER!!!!

OK I've officially gotten farther into Planescape: Torment than I ever have. I feel honorbound to play it because the editor for my book (wexsdrift.com) literally wrote the Planescape: Torment novel when this game was released.

The world is just so cool and unique. And I died in a dungeon and it just brought me back to the entrance with full health? Weird, I did not expect that. I wonder, does that count for all dungeons? Or is the one I'm in just special? (I'm in the catacombs after talking to Pharod)

I'm now 14 hours into the game (at the Lower wards), and have gone through a sort of analytical crisis.

The thing is that, even when I am accounting for the fact that this is an old game (I compare it with other games from 1999 and earlier only), this has by far been the worst game experience I've had for years. And I feel bad about it.

Usually when it comes to celebrated games that I dislike, I can still understand why someone else would love it. Even if Minecraft is a pointless experience for me, it is comprehensible to me how someone else would consider it the greatest game of all time. This is not the case with Planescape Torment.

To be clear, I am of course not judging anyone appreciating this game. It is not my inability to enjoy this game, but my inability to grasp the critical consensus that frustrates me. I have probably spent 3 hours by now checking videos/forums/articles that describes the greatness of this game, just to try to get out of my own head and view the design decisions of this game from another person's perspective. I failed.

There are some aspects of this RPG that I do GET why people like:

•The music - I think it's just okay, but I get why someone else would love this

•The unique setting - I actually agree with this. It is nice with a fantasy setting that is not just a ripoff of Tolkien

•The detailed wordbuilding - For people who gets more immersed by detailed information on the world, this is obviously a plus

The thing that has ruined my gaming experience thus far, is none of the above. It lies in the gameplay and story. In my point of view, the gameplay is a textbook example of overall bad game design.

The combat is sluggish, and the depth that I know is there (from reading hours about the game online) feels far too complex for me to even experiment with. This comes from someone who has played many relatively complex RPGs and strategy games (Xcom, Fire Emblem, competitive Pokemon etc.). The game gives no sufficient explanation to how combat/spells/abilities/tactics work. I am not encouraged to explore (due to a high barrier of entry), but not given a recommended path either. After a while, the combat got so difficult that I turned the difficulty down to the lowest possible, just to manage to survive. Hell, I even had to actively check what initial stat distributions a youtuber gave the nameless one at the beginning of the game, just to get the by fans most recommended experience (a certain amount of wisdom, charisma and intelligence enables dialogue not available otherwise). This is just BAD design, and this situation of me having to check up things on the internet reappears...

The questlines are extremely obtuse. Short example: A girl had lost her ring, which I was to get back from some thugs. I tried to deduce their position by her instructions, but seemed to find the wrong baddies. After checking a walkthrough, I went to the described location, only to find that I did not get any ring (trying stealing / attacking / talking). I finally gave up on this quest. Most quests have been like this for me - initially trying to act by myself, but resorting to a guide just to not waste time talking with every character in the Hive just to find the one who gave me a quest 5 hours ago I've just completed. In short, I have no fun whatsoever in battling enemies or completing quests (the main bulk of the gameplay).

The story is supposed to be the strong suit of the game, but so far I have struggled just to maintain my interest to a bare minimum. This is probably not due to the underlying themes, but the way the story is told. My personal preference of video game storytelling, is when it intersects with game design (e.g. Super Metroid, Celeste), but I can understand others appreciation of more cinematic experiences such as Naughty Dog. What I do not understand, however, is how this mess of never-ending (and extremely ugly-looking) textboxes is considered to be competent storytelling. I like both reading and philosophy, so I thought this game would not be hard to get into, but the story has thrown me into a state of complete and utter indifference. It is like a visal novel but without the dramaturgical finess.

I don't want to give up on this highly ranked game (place 64 at Grouvee top 250), but playing this not only gets me frustrated, but sad. I don't like the feeling of despising every moment with something that is supposed to be a masterpiece. In the end, it leaves me with a sense of being an incomplete human being, unable to understand the critical consensus. I want to complete it, but right now I'm just feeling like I drift into the mouth of cultural madness.

Having some trouble in the Bronze Sphere quest. This is the main quest line that has you fetching things for Pharod.

My characters are level 4-5 and I have 2 fighters which I am seeing as probably being a mistake. Generally I'm getting my ass handed to me, and my magic spells are crap!

Should I go back and ... grind somewhere? Where does one even grind up a level in this game?

Still really enjoying it but man do I feel stupid getting ripped in half over and over again...

One of my plans for 2017 was to finally do another playthrough of Planescape Torment; I originally played it as a young teen and I think most of it went over my head, plus I got the worst alternate ending imaginable. It's a bit late in the year, but I've been slowly chipping away at it when I have time. Great game, worthy of the praise it receives, such a unique, imaginative setting with really intricate characters, world-building and storytelling. I doubt I'll finish it before the year's out though since it's colossal and I barely have time to play it.

It is with a sad sad fucking heart that I have to put Planescape: Torment to the side again. This is a wonderful game, literally. It is full of such creativity and dazzling imagination that it is WRETCHED that this game is nigh unplayable on modern-day machines. Beamdog, NighTdive, - SOMEBODY - needs to fly in and deal the universe a solid by making an Enhanced Edition. This is the last time that I will invest hours into Planescape: Torment until such a product is created. I have had enough of disappearing items, disappearing party members and skulls that normally talk but will not come back from the dead. I am done, and it is not right.

PLAY PLANESCAPE: TORMENT. PLAY IT AND HOPE IT DOESN'T FALL TO PIECES. PRAY TO BEAMDOG. PRAY TO NIGHTDIVE. Pray for Torment ;_;