Planescape: Torment

The Good
My friends warned me that Torment was "different" and that I might not like the "dark theme". But, on the other hand, other Moby reviewers tout that it is one of the best PC Role-Playing games ever made. So, instead of diving into other games sitting on my shelf, I decided to back up a few years and try Torment and form my own opinions.

And, I'm SO glad I did. I'm writing this review within minutes of finishing it ... and ... I not only liked this game, I Loved It !.

So, what's so different about Torment, you ask? Here's a run-down:

1. Your Character. He's not a handsome bloke. In fact, he's ugly as sin, with scars, cuts and bruises all over his body. It's obvious he's been around the block a few times. You cannot change the race or sex for the "Nameless One" or those of your party members.
2. Your Profession is chosen early in the game, but not on the Character Generation screen like in other RPGs. Meet the right people, perform a few tasks for them, and they will teach you the skills to become a Fighter, Thief or Mage etc. And you can change your profession within the game if you wish.
3. Your Party evolves as you meet and talk to people. Members can join you when asked and will leave when told to. Each one has a distinct personality, attitude, fighting style, and movement. In certain situations, they will interrupt you to make a comment of warning or offer information - even talk among themselves, all of which makes them "feel" more real. You can talk to them to get their opinions, and those opinions are "true to character".
4. The Story. You're not trying to save a damsel in distress, nor are you attempting to save the world from some evil maniac. As you learn more about your past, you find out that your primary goal is to die!! The whole story is based upon immortality and reincarnation (or in this case the proper word may be "regeneration"). No matter how many times you "die", you come back again.
5. Conversations have choices. If you lie or bluff, that choice will effect what happens now or in future parts of the game. You can also ask questions repeatedly in case you didn't quite get the answer the first go-round. Experience is gained not only by fighting, but by conversing and questing. In many situations you can even choose not to fight, but to talk your way out of it instead.
6. Items include strange tattoos with magic properties, weird charms made out of rodents and insects, unusually named spells and weapons, some made out of body parts. Heal yourself with blood droplets of varied strengths, spells, bandages or embalming fluid!

The graphics are beautifully rendered in realistic colors and are smooth and clean. I never got stuck in the scenery with no way out, and did not notice any pixelation whatsoever. I would have enjoyed seeing a "head shot" portrait of people while talking to them, but at least I could look at pictures of them in the Journal area.

Dungeon/Location Maps are similar to other RPGs, but here you are able to add in your own notes. I don't remember that feature being available in Icewind Dale which came out a year later.

When you enter a crowded area (room or marketplace), you hear people talking and laughing amongst themselves. This provides the illusion of the hustle and bustle of everyday life and adds atmosphere. There are 33 original songs in the game, mostly played in the background, so if you have that option turned down you may not even hear them. I got bored with the "battle" music fairly quickly, however.

Finally, it has a wonderful ending! (There are 3 and I was lucky enough to have high enough stats to get the "best" one.) All your questions are answered.

As a side note, my version of Torment was already patched (v.1.1) and came on only 2 CDs (1 install disc and 1 play disc) instead of the 4 mentioned by other reviewers.

The Bad
Even though I thought the game was great, there are still a few things that should be mentioned in this section.

If you play for hours on end, like I did, you may find that the game slows to a crawl. A restart of the game (or my computer) seemed to help the sluggish inventory screens, loss of character highlighting and dumps back to my desktop that I experienced. Of course, this could very well have been a quirk of my video card. (Getting an "unofficial" patch to turn off the battle music helped.)

Combat segments were painfully slow later in the game, and magical spells (although visually stunning) seemed to tax the engine.

Action selection seemed intuitive enough, but it look me some time to master it. I tended to keep the AI "on" all the time, so the characters jumped right in and started attacking before I was ready sometimes (usually when I wasn't expecting a fight). Basically I learned to select everyone and then unselect any people I didn't want to fight in hand-to-hand combat (to move them out of the way for casting spells and such).

When you want to talk to an NPC, only the Nameless One can do it, and he moves to a spot right next to them. Because you are "up close and personal", the Nameless One will get the first blow should any fight ensue. If a group of enemies moves in, they do it very quickly and it is difficult then to get him out of the way (to cast a spell for instance).

I agree that there were too few voices. You sometimes hear the first phrase, but nothing more during a talk session. You cannot skip through long conversations or cut scenes (most irritating if you are replaying a segment and have already done it before).

The Bottom Line
Unlike other games in the genre that offer seemingly unending, immense worlds that take months to travel through, the game map in Torment is smaller and, in my opinion, much more playable and manageable. But never fear - there are still miles of terrain to cover and people aplenty. This game can be as long as you wish, depending upon how many sub-quests you choose to complete.

What this game lacks in size of the world, it makes up for in story. Be prepared to read and read, and read some more. But, like a great novel that you can't put down, the story will engross you and haunt your dreams.

Don't let the "dark theme" dissuade you. Planescape: Torment is a "must play" for every RPG lover, and a game that others have tried to emulate thereafter.

The Good
The Pros:
* A non-linear storyline where every decision you make affects someone's life, whether it is a friend's, a foe's, your own, or even others.
* Moral, but not preachy. Evil, yet understandably so. PS:T showcases every branch of the AD&D alignment scale somewhere, and excellently so. You may freely choose from Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil, and any way you choose, is the right way, demonstrating both the benefits and drawbacks of any viewpoint. Like both Arcanum and Fallout, your decisions truly become your own, and you have to live with the decisions you have made.
* Unique teammates. Where else are you going to get from a wisecracking floating skull to a chaste succubus as your party?
* Beautifully written plot. If you love to read, this game is definitely for you, as it is one of the most verbose games I have ever played (and that includes text adventures and IF games as well). In addition, it is truly a unique plot, with more well placed twists and turns than "a maze of twisty little passages".
* Excellent voice acting. Including Jennifer Hale (of KotOR fame), Charlie Adler (Buster Bunny from Tiny Toons, Red Guy from Cow and Chicken, Fallout), John De Lancie (Q from Star Trek: The Next Generation), Sheena Easton (musician), Dan Castelleneta (The Simpsons), and Tony Jay (Fallout, inXile's The Bard's Tale, Shere Khan from Tail Spin), among others, there is a good number of excellent voice actors who deliver their lines superbly.
*Unique environment. It is a step away from both Sci-Fi and Fantasy. It is a location all unto its own, taking place on the Outer Planes in the AD&D universe.
* Ingenious puzzles. Some of them are simply mindboggling, yet entirely logical. Others are very simple, but brought to a whole new light.
* Old-School quality. In this day and age of everything being First-Person perspective, Real-Time, (Massively) Multiplayer, and all-action/no-thought, it is an excellent game that embraces everything good about RPGs from 10-20 years ago.

All in all, it is an emotional rollercoaster ride, worthy of a top spot in any gamer's collection.

The Bad
Cons:
* A little buggy. Make sure you patch your copy to fully enjoy the game.
* Not enough voice acting. While the game is perfect as-is, it would've been an extra helping of icing on the cake to have more dialogue voiced-over.

There are very few things that make this game not worth playing.

The Bottom Line
You find yourself awakening on a slab in a morgue. You have no idea who you are, where you've been, why you're so scarred and tattooed, and why you can't seem to die. Your companion, a floating skull named Morte reads you a list of instructions tattooed on your back... and from there your adventure starts.

Planescape: Torment is a thinking man's RPG, where every problem has a solution- however, whether that solution involves running an errand, figuring out how something works, literally hoping and praying, or hacking and slashing everything in sight, is entirely up to you. Every situation you come across has a good number of ways to solve it, and every decision you make affects your character, as and the world around him.

PS:T is based on the Planescape AD&D setting using 2nd Edition rules, using Real-Time-with-Pause combat, and begins in the town of Sigil. You can have a wide variety of companions, and there is a good number of places to visit.

There is one all-important question that requires an answer: "What can change the nature of a man?" Truly, the answer is Planescape: Torment. It will forever redefine what an RPG is to whomever plays it.

The Good
Has there ever been a game in which you were so immersed that you actually felt you were the character? A game you didn't want to finish because you wouldn't know what to do with yourself once it ended? One that made you feel that playing any other game would be cheating on it? Would you like to play one like that? Well, Planescape: Torment is one of those rare games.

Much like the player, the character, The Nameless One, has no inclination as to what is happening. This is something beneficial to you, the player. While playing, and learning as The Nameless One learns, you come to be absorbed in, and perhaps feel for, this man-thing. You and he experience, literally and figuratively, everything for the first time, or so it seems, together.

Along your path to knowledge of self, you will come across those who would be companions. Companions doesn't necessarily mean friends and you will find this out along the way. There will also come a time when you will have to decide between these companions -- who will continue on with you and who will be left behind. A decision that will not come easily.

Planescape is a game, no, an experience, where Charisma, Knowledge, and Wisdom come into effect more than the usual Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution. The latter three are not without there uses, of course, but the gameplay is much more rich with the former three.

Generally speaking, the graphics were very detailed. Sometimes it is hard to play such detailed games for fear of missing something. The music was suitable, if not minimal. Some tunes were heartfelt, while others were ominous. Battles, while not a great percentage of gameplay, were there to be had. Sometimes you are able to choose whether to battle or not. It is not thrust upon you. Dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. Plenty of interaction is waiting for you in Planescape. There is the feeling that one IS getting to know the surroundings, the people, the creatures.

The Bad
Nothing, really, and all of it is bearable. The graphics got to be too dark sometimes. It would have been a welcome relief to see bright colors sometimes, just sometimes. The lagginess of the game is, well, I do not wish to say constant, but it's there. As I write this, I strain to think of something more to add. Dialogues may get to be too much sometimes, especially after much playing. TAKE A BREAK!

The Bottom Line
You might love it or hate it, but do NOT miss it.

The Good

The science fiction and fantasy genres are unfortunate, because they tend to attract mostly second-, third- and lower rate artists who populate it with their mediocre work. There is, however, a great redeeming feature: these genres allow gifted creators to tell a story that simply could not be told outside of the genre realm. And such is the story of Torment.

A video game like no other, Torment (I will refer to it only as Torment, because that seems to be its real name; after all, we do not call it 'Forgotten Realms: Baldur's Gate', do we?) tells a tale of a man who can not die. Somewhere, somehow, he lost his mortality and with it, apparently, his memory and even his name. All he has is a vague feeling of emptiness and sorrow. His quest is obvious: try to find out what happened to him and, eventually, die.

All RPG heroes search their world trying to become someone. The Nameless One's journey goes exactly in the opposite direction – he desperately struggles to become no-one. This alone makes Torment unique. But there is more to the game than just an inventive storyline.

The setting of the game suits the story and its themes perfectly. Planescape is just what its name implies, a series of worlds, planes of existence, each with their own attributes, and most of the game takes place in the city of Sigil in the centre of all planes. It is a crossroads, a place of many doors and a cage, all at once. Everything eventually appears in Sigil. It is, also, a city that for the same reason serves as a net in which all the scum of the planes tends to catch. The game's world is dirty, the game's world is crude and brutal. There is no elegant sword-fighting to be seen in Torment, there are only maces, heavy axes and stilettos. Forget potions that restore health, be prepared to use a needle and thread to stitch your wounds and wrap yourself with bandages, dirtied with age and use. You start the game on a slab in a mortuary, surrounded by dead bodies in various stages of autopsy, zombies and a floating, talking skull, who will become your first party member.

Party members in Torment are one of the greatest things this game has to offer. There are relatively few of them (nowhere near Baldur's Gate standards), but they are easily the best written, most complex and most memorable characters I have ever seen in any video game. Each and every one of them has his or her own reason to follow you, a reason they may not necessarily share with you when you first meet. Each one of them is psychically broken in some way, each of them is a tormented soul. They have their own peculiarities, they react to your quest and to each other, their and your fates are intertwined. You can (and should!) talk to them and who knows, perhaps you can even help them solve their own problems while solving yours. They are a strange group of eternal losers, but the emotional attachment you build up for them during the game is unusually strong.

So many superlatives and yet I still have not mentioned the single best thing about Torment. The Final Fantasy series (especially FF VI, FF VII and my favourite FF VIII) has shown us that a video game may engage the player emotionally. Torment shows that it may engage the player intellectually as well. The game is well known for unprecedented amounts of written text, pages and pages and pages of interactive dialogues with innumerable branches. This is a game for people who like to read, and surprisingly enough, not only is there a lot to read, but the writing quality is exceptionally good. The writers have a taste for very short stories and tales, and you will come across many of such stories in Torment, told by people on the street and in bars. Some of them may be tangential to the plot, some of them crucial, some of them are crucial but at the time you read them, you won't realize it. Some of them are about your companions, some about the person you were. All of them are well written, some I would even call concise masterpieces. All the major characters also have a distinctive voice, their own peculiar use of language and methods of expression. I think that if you took a random line spoken by any of the major characters out of context, the speaker would still be clearly identifiable. And the greatness of Torment lies in the fact that under all this extraordinary writing, there is a soul and a real intellectual depth.

We have seen many amnesiacs and their quests for identity in video games, but in Torment, the amnesia is used in a radically different way than in, say, Sanitarium. In other such games, the goal is to find out who you are. In Torment, the question of who you are is irrelevant - who you are is defined by your actions. You are trying to find out who you were. This is not just playing with words; your past keeps catching up on you in the Planes, you always run into people, demons and spirits who had known you before, who had talked to you, who had loved you, who had wanted to kill you, who had been betrayed by you, who had died because of you. That is the Torment of the title: The Nameless One is crushed by the weight of his previous lives and by his ignorance of all their deeds, good or evil. The game repeatedly asks its famous question, 'what can change the nature of a man?', and I would like to stress that this is not just showing off, giving a fast food philosophy to the hungry masses (anyone remembers the Matrix film series?), the question, the most important question in the whole story, actually forces you to think. The game deals with highly abstract concepts on almost every step. You can even join various factions in the game, if your vision of the world harmonizes with their beliefs! Do you believe the meaning of life is experiencing the world as much as you can? Join the Sensates. Do you think you are in this existence only waiting for your True Death? Join the Dustmen. Do you believe that order and lawfulness restrict your freedom? Join the Anarchists, or, actually, don't, just kill a lot of people and annoy everyone you meet, because a faction of anarchists is something of an oxymoron, isn't it? The Nameless One has an AD&D alignment, but it is not chosen on the character generation screen - because that does not really make sense, does it? Your actions choose your alignment, not the other way around.

But wait - did I mention the game is actually a lot of fun to play? Did I mention that your party members every now and then lead hilarious conversations with each other (I admit the endless Annah-Morte bickering wears thin after a while, but Nordom's bewildered observations of the world around him are pure comedy gold)? Did I mention that this is not only a game where you can stumble upon a playful Franz Kafka reference, but also a game in which you can buy a harlot's services for your floating skull friend and spend some time wondering what exactly are you paying for? Did I mention there is a randomly generated dungeon in Torment that is actually a very gentle parody of randomly generated dungeons, for the hardcore gamers in the audience to enjoy? The game is not a dry intellectual debate, the game of course knows that its main purpose is to entertain, and it entertains. There are many levels on which you can enjoy the story of The Nameless One.

There is only a handful of games that have made me cry. Torment is one of them. The game is highly original, extraordinarily clever and utterly fantastic in many, many ways. The whole dramatic finale, with its wonderfully simple and soothing music and unbearably beautiful sadness, is one of the most memorable and powerful scenes in gaming history.

Torment is a rare gem, a piece of true art in a field overgrown with weeds.

First I would like to say that no matter how long this section is, I still consider Torment one of the greatest games ever created. What I would like to do in this section is to point out that this greatness completely overshadows a rather large mistake made by its creators - an unfortunate choice of game engine.

From one perspective, the choice makes perfect sense: the Planescape setting is a licensed AD&D setting and the game is played by AD&D rules. What the makers did, therefore, was reach out for the engine that powered the successful Baldur's Gate, another AD&D license. Just a few tweaks were needed and the engine was ready - allowing, probably, more time to spend on art and writing. The problem is that the gameplay of Baldur's Gate and of Torment is vastly different.

Let's face it: Baldur's Gate was about combat. You kill some things, level up, find a clue, move on. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy Baldur's Gate (I did), but it is clear the game focuses on fighting. Torment, on the other hand, focuses on dialogue. There are fights in Torment, and they are fun, too, but they are of secondary importance - as they have to be, obviously, when your main character can't die. What is the point in fighting an immortal? What is the point of fighting if you are an immortal? Yes, these are precisely the kinds of questions Torment likes to ask, but it still means the choice of game engine is very peculiar. Killing beasts to level up in Torment is a complete waste of time. I haven't counted, but I think that throughout the whole game, you get much more experience by talking to everyone you meet and choosing wisely in dialogues than by slaying everything you see. And, to be perfectly honest, experience and levels are actually quite unimportant in the game. You level up - so what. You're not there to kill an evil wizard and save the world. You're there to kill yourself. There are some very cool high level spells with special animations and FMV and all that, but by the time you are at a high enough level to use them, there is no one to use them against, so why bother, really?

Also, as an RPG game, it has serious balance issues. The game is pretty much designed to be played with a mage character who is good to people. Mages get the best items and the best dialogue options; Dak'kon, the mysterious and silent warrior, becomes a really interesting companion only if you are a mage. And they are much more powerful than fighters. There is the option of playing as a thief as well, but I honestly don't think anyone really does that, unless they have played the game already five times and are getting bored. With alignment, the situation is very similar - while it certainly is possible to play the game as an evil character, it won't be much fun and, in fact, largely goes against the whole storyline.

What annoys me about all this is that for us, gamers who have played Baldur's Gate and lots and lots of other RPGs, this doesn't mean anything. We can adapt quickly. But for newcomers to gaming, Torment has to be confusing at first, which is a terrible shame, because it really is a perfect showcase of what games as an art form can do. The first thing you see when you start a new game in Torment is one of those character creation screens, but what no one tells you in it is that the only important stats in Torment are wisdom, intelligence and charisma, in this order. The rest of them you can safely ignore. And then - sweet! I have found an item that raises my THAC0! But what the hell is THAC0, anyway? Is it better to have it higher or lower? This information may very well be somewhere in the manual (my used copy didn't come with one, so I don't know), but my point is that for the Torment game experience, the information is still completely irrelevant. There are stats and numbers everywhere, but, as I said, the game all boils down to three. You don't need a Swiss army knife to cut an apple in half.

And just one more thing - my favourite party member, Nordom, is extremely well hidden. You can (and I did, the first time) finish the whole game and have no idea he even exists - to reach him, you have to buy an optional, fairly expensive and seemingly useless object, activate it somehow and go through at least two optional dungeons that are so maze-like you can easily miss him even there. A tad too complicated, don't you think? In Torment, you see, there are four companions who form the core of your party, and I guess everyone plays with them, at least the first time. You have three choices for the fifth companion (you can't have more than five), two of whom are certifiably insane and not particularly pleasant characters to spend time with, let alone have in your party, and one who is lovable and funny. Guess who is the hidden one?

Unless you're uncomfortable with reading lots and lots of text, Torment is a gaming experience you definitely shouldn't miss. This is, without any doubt, one of the greatest games ever created.

As a postscript, some practical advice: there are both official and fan made patches widely available on the internet that repair lots of bugs and typos left in Torment (as many other ambitious games, it was rushed to the market by the company before it was really finished) that you shouldn't play without; there are also ways to decrease the interval between party members' banter, which is set far too high by default and unless you decrease it, you will miss lots of great conversations. There is also a very nice resolution patch, because 640x480 doesn't look very good on a modern monitor and the playing area really is too small. It also solves a problem that already plagued Baldur's Gate - what is the point in creating pretty prerendered backgrounds full of impressive architecture if you can only see them one tiny screen at a time? As a side effect, with this patch, you sometimes see things in cutscenes you were not supposed to - actors preloaded in memory safely hidden off-screen suddenly become visible. So beware if you're uncomfortable with that.

What more should I say? See you on the Planes.

The Good
After having produced the brilliant Fallout 2, Black Isle moved onto a more personal project helmed by Chris Avellone. Building upon good old AD&D rules and a smooth new engine provided by Baldur's Gate, they have created one of the most memorable role-playing games in history, evoking passionate feedback from the community.

Planescape: Torment goes to great lengths caring for the artistic, creative side of video game design (style, setting, writing, etc.). At the same time, it never forgets it is a game. It's certainly "artsy", it screams originality, but - as opposed to too many other games with similar premises - it is a fantastic role-playing game, regardless of its other aspirations. If it were just a generic "kill the bad guy" story set in a generic fantasy world, it would still be an enjoyable, high-quality RPG.

The role-playing system of the game is rich and detailed. You shape your character the way you like. The choices go much deeper than simply selecting a dialogue option; they are integrated into the gameplay and the storyline in such a way that every encounter will make you think about your behavior. It's not just a matter of being nice or rude, killing people or helping them; there is ambiguity in almost every action you take, in the way you are slowly discovering your true identity.

As you play the game, you are constantly facing the questions: what kind of a person have you been? What kind of a person are you now? And more concretely, how should you play the game so that your actions will finally reveal to you the protagonist's true nature?.. This is pure magic - very few games have managed to create this kind of emotional attachment to the protagonist without compromising the flexibility of character development or diminishing the player's control over it.

On a technical level, all those choices appear in a form of quests and refined character customization. There is a large amount of optional quests in the game; many of them can be solved in various ways. Almost every character has something to share with you; almost everywhere you can find interesting tasks. The game world may not be huge, but it surely takes time to explore, and instead of empty places with uninteresting people that appear in so many games, you'll find more and more fascinating layers of the game's world.

Character customization affects the gameplay and the plot much more than in traditional AD&D games. We are all used that extra points invested in strength will make you hit the enemies harder, that constitution gives you more hit points, that a mage should have high intelligence, etc. But here, the attributes are important not only for defining classes or aiding you in combat; they have a direct influence on dialogue lines, quest solutions, and ultimately the entire storyline. Upgrading your character when leveling up will not only make him stronger or quicker; it will change him as a whole, the way he interacts with people, the way he thinks and feels. There are several different endings in the game, and they don't only depend on some choices you make at the last moment, but on the way you've been shaping your character all along.

Battles in the game are handled the same way as in Baldur's Gate. The game is much less combat-oriented, and the sporadic skirmishes you participate in are almost exclusively confined to narrow areas. Still, even with these restrictions, the battles are pleasant and can get reasonably challenging on higher difficulty levels. While your companions are rather predictable gameplay-wise, the main protagonist can be shaped in several interesting ways, his magical route being particularly fulfilling.

The game has an absolutely unique style that is impossible to imitate. The world of Planescape: Torment is its world only, period. You won't find anything like this in any other game. Somehow, it fits into a medieval fantasy setting - but you won't find any kings, castles, brave knights, or beautiful princesses. Instead, you'll encounter a zombie-infested morgue, slums in a depressingly dark city, streets full of suspicious thieves, girls with wings or tails, people eternally tormented in fire, strange ancient creatures, magical realm hidden in a cube, and much more. Weapons, inventory items, characters, locations, monsters - everything bears the stamp of the game's incredible personality, as if it were created especially for it.

You'll encounter fascinating characters on your way, and assemble a party that surpasses the best examples of Japanese RPGs in style and characterization. Your companions have layers upon layers of personality, long and complex dialogue trees for you to explore, secrets to discover. And probably the most bizarre and fascinating character is the protagonist himself, The Nameless One, a scarred dead body that gets to live over and over again, no matter how many times he dies; a being without a memory, but with something that torments his mind.

The game has a huge amount of conversations, yet all of them are brilliantly written; it's a joy to climb deeper and deeper into the intricate web of dialogues, exploring more and more of them, seeing how they differ depending on what you have made your character into, uncovering more and more information and secrets. Unlike so many other games, the main storyline here doesn't involve saving the world and defeating the big bad guy. No, what you have to do in this game is find out who you are. And although there will be plenty of hostile creatures on your way, you won't be just killing them on your way to the final boss; you won't be collecting some magical items needed to defeat the great evil; but you'll discover, step by step, your true identity, your true purpose in this world.

The Bad
Even though I love Planescape: Torment, I cannot overlook its limitations as a role-playing game. First of all, it's not very big. Granted, almost every screen you visit is bursting with quality; but the game does not convey the sensation of exploration and traveling as well as some of the more conventionally-minded representatives of its genre. I understand that not every RPG must have an open world; but I was left craving for more locations when I finished the game. It is particularly noticeable during the final part, where you are whisked from one small area to another in an utterly linear fashion, struggling to find a sense of control as you begin to feel it's being taken away from you.

It seems that the creators of Planescape: Torment had a particular fondness for the adventure genre. Much of the game is dedicated to laid-back trips through busy, yet non-threatening locations, and communication with NPCs is noticeably more prominent than combat. I wouldn't mind that at all if the few mandatory hostile areas were more rewarding from the point of view of character development. However, performing side quests yields significantly more experience than fighting, thus diminishing our motivation for seeking out enemies and dealing with them.

The Bottom Line
Planescape: Torment embodies all the fine qualities of an intellectually stimulating, artistic RPG, beautifully entwining is creative content with refined, rich gameplay. Not everyone will enjoy its text-heavy nature and its relatively modest size; but, like the best works of chamber music, it substitutes quantity for quality with resounding success.

The Good
The second of the Black Isle D&D games. Planescape: Torment, took the high road and instead of setting the game in the wildly popular Forgotten Realms, choose to set it in The Planes. This is easily the best of the five Black Isle games. And unfortunately sold the least copies. Even the abysmal Diablo sold more copies, about ten times more. This is a shame.

In Planescape: Torment, you are cast as The Nameless One. A warrior whom has lived countless lives and can not die. You awaken in The Mortuary, where you meet Morte, whom is a talking skull. (The Mortuary clearly inspired the first area in Baldur’s Gate.) Once you escape you end up in The Hive. From here you try to put the pieces of your fractured life back together. At this point you will have many unanswered questions. Who are you? Can Morte be trusted? And who is that strange woman at The Mortuary?

The plot is very well written, and will keep you guessing. As well as keeping you glued to you monitor. The setting is so unique, it has to be seen to be believed. There are tons of plot twists to keep things interesting.

There are up to five others that can join in your quest. From a pool of eight. The range from a half-demon, half-human thief. To a human mage that is on fire! Your party members may not get along either. As they will threaten each other, and not work well together.

The game controls very similarly to Baldur’s Gate. One thing that you will probably notice right away is how much more of the screen is devoted to the game, unlike Baldur’s Gate pathetic 1/3 crap. The characters are also much larger on screen. And therefore much more detailed. The quest is a long one about 40 hours, with plenty of side quests for all those completers out there.

The battle system, is simple. Like other AD&D games it is turn based in real time. You can pause the game while you make your decisions. Then you either attack, defend, use skills, use magic, or try to flee. Oddly though you can kill your allies in battle why?

Menus are also handled like other such games. Yet in Planescape, it seems to be done better. And when you look at the biography of someone you get this nice art of them. And it is not just PCS that you can view but NPCS and monsters as well.

The Graphics are much better than those fond in Baldur’s Gate. Or even BG II! The strange looking environments look cool. And the alien design makes you feel as if you are in a strange land. PCS and NPCS have huge very detailed sprites. You can even see facial features unlike many of these games. As well as make out the Nameless One’s tattoos. Spell effects are huge and impressive. Particularly more powerful ones like, Call The Lightning, and Power Word: Kill. Different weapons and armor show on you allies.

The Music and Sound department is solid. The voice acting is superb. And feature many well known actors, including Dan Castellaneta, the voice of Homer and many others in “The Simpsons”. The sound effects are loud and sound great. Music is scarce but excels as well. The battle music is one of my favorites.

The Bad
This game is challenging. The hardest of these games. This would not be so bad if it were not for the way it spikes in difficulty. It is not so bad at first but towards the end it gets hectic.

You can screw up your game if you are not careful. And may not be able to finish it. I hate it more than anything when, games pull this shit.

This game was outsold by the crap ass Diablo. Why?

The Bottom Line
Overall fans of Black Isle’s AD&D games and fans of RPGS owe it to themselves to play this game, even if they have to get the version that comes with the horrible Soul Bringer.

The Good
Simple combat, easy spells, options, and you can use your brain not just pointlessly slaughter everybody. I like how you can have different quest buddies and bring them back to life, too!

The Bad
I had to use a walkthrough a couple times, but I haven't noticed anything else bad.

The Bottom Line
A perfect ten, okay for anyone! You can use your brain in this game, and the combat is simple! It's addictive! Not to mention the whole Planescape world!!

The Good
Sometimes games can transcend the medium and rise above the level of a pastime relegated to spotty teenagers. This is one of those times.

I am not one to award the title "great" to anything, and only on a few occasions before now have I declared anything the "best" of its type.

But this is the best game I have ever played to date. If this game's contemporary, Ultima 9: Ascension, tells future designers how to make an engrossing 3D world simulation, this game tells designs how to craft a story that is best suited to the medium.

For one, unlike many games of the genre the characters that can adventure with you are crafted -with- the story, not written in to function as pack-mules or combat satellites. When something happens in the game, chances are one of your companions has something to say about it ranging from helpful advice to wry commentary on the unfolding situation. Your companions will continue to play a role in the story even after they have joined the party, quite rare for a game of this type. It works so well it makes me wonder why it isn't done more often.

This is the only game I have seen to this day that differentiates between a honest-to-god threat and bluff, and vow between a lie. Not only to words have meaning, so do the meaning behind those words. On a similar note this game possesses some of the best written dialogue I have seen anywhere, not since Ultima 7 has even the most inconsequential character been so well written.

Some AD&D purists might not like the fact that the game plays pretty fast and loose with the rules. Maybe they would be happier with Baldur's Gate, in my opinion the most overrated game in the last few years. In P:T the rules serve as a backdrop, not a backbone. In that way this game, though single-player only, feels more like a good pen&paper session with an experienced DM than any CRPG I have ever played.

The Bad
The manual is justifiably skimpy on details about the game setting and historical information. Considering your character plays an amnesiac it would be inappropriate to include a Planescape Campaign handbook with the game. However, the manual is absent of any information regarding the way the rules work, considering that the game is based on the AD&D ruleset this seems almost unforgivable. While the game is still playable without understanding what your THACO actually means, it does detract in minor ways from the playability.

The interface is a little clunky, though I did get used to it soon enough and it never really hindered gameplay.

In the unpatched version of the game there are a few minor dialogue bugs involving the improper resetting of conversation trees, but no plot stoppers to speak of. One technical issue that does deserve mention is that when the game has been running for more than a few errors most players experience a game-killing slowdown. Although there are a number of temporary fixes for the issue the only real way to get around it is by saving and restarting the computer. Annoying, but infrequent enough that it is only that, an annoyance. At the time of this writing there is no patch to correct this issue, but Black Isle Studios has promised that one is forthcoming.

The Bottom Line
An excellent adaptation of the TSR Planescape Multiverse and a wonderful example of how to tell a story with an interactive medium.

To speak too much of the story itself would be a crime, suffice to say that your character awakes on a slab in a Mortuary in a strange city with no memory to speak of. From there he embarks on a quest to discover himself and learns about the nature of man.

The Good
Amnesia in today's role-playing games has become little more than an over-used cliché to create blank characters on which players can project whichever personality they wish, but which nonetheless have a past that's relevant to quests and NPCs. Off of the top of my head I can name only two RPGs in which the cliché works as a plot element, one being Knights of the Old Republic, the other Planescape: Torment. Planescape's major feat is combining the time-honoured AD&D rules with a setting and characters that are amazingly original and deep. Players are presented with a world that appears to the main character as alien as it must have appeared to lovers of classic high fantasy when they first opened the Dungeons & Dragons Planescape campaign box.

Waking up on a slab in a gigantic mortuary, players are hit with some rather surprising facts about their existence: one, they were dead; two, they can't be too sure whether or not they still are; three, their memories of what brought them there are gone and four, apparently somewhere along the way they befriended a floating skull who pleasurably gives the hero what little information he is to be provided with to start his quest. The macabre miracles don't stop there because not only must the walking corpse flee the mortuary run by a slightly disconcerting group of people nourishing a philosophical death wish, upon stepping out into the streets the nameless hero, appropriately named Nameless One for the entire game, discovers that he is in Sigil, the City of Doors and easily the most unusual place in the entire AD&D multiverse. Being the hub of a cosmological wheel on which all possible worlds in the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons universe are located in the form of dimensional planes, Sigil appears to possess the inherent trait of randomly opening magical doors to said worlds and attracting its inhabitants. The potential for literally outlandish characters which bring a plethora of personalities, backgrounds and quests to Torment's rich story is nigh unlimited and used to almost full effect by the creators.

Everyday little wonders can be found at every corner and its a credit to the game's sheer narrative power that the vast majority of odd episodes play out almost entirely as text box descriptions. Dialogue in Torment is elaborate and incredibly well-written; at the time of its release it easily beat the until then wordiest RPG, Baldur's Gate. The game's strong focus on personalities and intellectual problems very elegantly steps in the way of this becoming a chore. Battles play an inferior role in Torment and can often be evaded altogether using the game's equally developed and elaborate dialogue options. In short: Planescape is one of the wordiest games ever, waking memories of old Infocom text adventures which captivated gamers' imaginations like good fantasy novels do. Torment achieves exactly that.

Torment's main cast is one of the strongest and most colourful in any RPG created to date. Whoever thought Final Fantasy holds the monopoly on quirky and unusual party members needs to play this game. Where else does an undead hero team up with the already mention floating, Billingsgate-talking skull who equips dentures like weapons, a half-demon street thief, an honour-bound mystical warrior, a succubus and ex-proprietor of a platonic brothel, a robot looking like a walking TV set, an eternally burning arsonist wizard or an animated suit of armour?

Based on the Infinity Engine already used in the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series, Torment's graphics are presented in Black Isle's standard isometric view. Running at a resolution of 640x480, the game's detail level benefits from larger onscreen sprites and a closer look at the morbid scenarios. Thanks to a freely placeable actions menu that can be displayed and hidden with a right-click, the screen layout feels a little less cramped than in Baldur's Gate and allows for a literally broader view of the world. Torment's music is appropriately odd, mixing minimalist and experimental tunes with mysterious melodies just unusual enough to never let players forget that while they're still playing a fantasy game, a classic AD&D campaign this ain't!

The Bad
For players with the right mindset Torment is an almost perfect RPG experience and its shortcomings are mostly matters of personal taste. Unfortunately, its greatest asset, the captivating text descriptions and dialogue, make the game inaccessible for casual gamers or those who don't feel like wrapping their minds around an exceedingly fantastic and macabre world. The game decidedly (and rightly!) closes the door in the face of people who are unwilling to read the equivalent of a fully-fledged fantasy novel onscreen.

The graphics, while bigger and clearer than in other Baldur's Gate-related titles, restrict a larger view of the scenarios by limiting the game to a single resolution, 640x480 - pretty low by today's standards, considering that unlike Baldur's Gate even the action panel to control characters can be freely moved and hidden when desired. In addition, character models, although detailed and well animated, are static in terms of design. Almost no equippable item changes anything about the models onscreen appearance.

AD&D fans will also miss the possibility of building a custom party of adventurers. As versatile as Torment is in terms of scenario, it is far more linear than most other AD&D game when it comes to character development and customisation. Only the main hero can equip different weapon classes based on his chosen profession and it isn't possible to choose from all professions the AD&D rules have to offer. The Nameless One can be either a fighter, wizard or thief, but always looks like a buff warrior type even if his stats and chosen profession say otherwise.

Exploring Sigil and its inhabitants is one of the greatest joys I've ever had in an RPG. It is almost a pity that after three fourths of the game players are ripped out of the by then familiar surroundings. While the game builds to a climax they are forced to travel to other, significantly smaller and more linear planar worlds.

The Bottom Line
Planescape: Torment is one of the most unusual, original and rewarding RPG experiences to date. It requires and tries players' patience and imagination but repays them many times over if they are up to the task. The game exists and entertains through its deep and lyrical understructure, making its lack of character customisation excusable. All seasoned gamers looking for a fantasy tale far, far away from the genre's stereotypical elves, dwarfs and humans vs. orcs stories must play this game.

The Good
1 of the best story lines ever. It's a truly original experience. The dialogue touches on subjects you almost never hear in games. The graphics help to bring the surreal world of Sigil alive. The characters you interact with feel alive, you find yourself actually caring about them. The most important thing is this game is fun. It makes you want to play for just a little bit longer until you look up and realize it's 3 in the morning.

The Bad
Combat can be a bit akward for beginners.

The Bottom Line
The best RPG i've ever played.

The Good
Extremely dark macabre theme and atmosphere (which may be offending to others ;) and great plot. The most innovative gameplay provided ever in a CRPG game, great graphics, special effects, sounds, music and everything! Lots of dialogs instead of combat, a true RPG (Role-Playing!) experience rather than mindless level ups. A lot of depth, variety in gameplay and thus replayability. Good cutscene and decent ending, some beautiful high level spell animations.

The Bad
A lot of dialogs instead of combat, the variety in monster and combat style is a bit lacking, some high level spell animation is NOT really well-done, and copies a lot from asian RPGs. Some slow down (even after patch, caused by memory leak?) and bugs which will stop/crash the game. Cause loss of sleep (which great game do not? ;)

The Bottom Line
The best CRPG in recent times, great fun to play if you can accept the deeply dark and macabre settings and some dark humors. The experience is unlike any other games of its kind, and the end result is a true piece of art, an instant classic in the CRPG genre. Everyone, CRPG fans or not, who do not feel offended by the frequent reference to death and darkness, or do not feel the only fun in computer games is endless hack-n-slah and bashing monsters, should immedately go out and grab one (if has not already done so) and you will be hooked in front of your computer for hours to come!

The Good
The storyline in this game is absolutely wonderful. For such a long game, it keeps a nicely flowing story that is dark and interesting for the entire game.

The characters were fun and had great personalities. The best were Morty and Annah, in my opinion. Those two just make the game even more interesting. It is great to listen to their comments throughout the game.

The graphics are good, though nothing special. However, they fit the game perfectly.

The large number of NPCs in the game and the large number of playable characters were also really nice to see. It helps to break up a game of just combat after combat.

The Bad
Some of the quests were a pain because you have to keep running all over the place to complete them. I'm not a big fan of having to run from one end of the map to another, when the maps are very large, just to complete a quest.

Because the characters you get are so spread out in the game, by the time you get some of them, you don't always want to take them into your party because your current party is so built up.

The game seemed lacking in what it set out to do... The basic premise of the place you find yourself is that you are in a place that has gateways to infinite other dimensions and worlds. That's really a cool idea. However, the places you are allowed to go are almost all human locations and aren't very spectacular. For a game with that type of format, I would expect to have many possible gateways to go through that take me to worlds of wonder and worlds of danger. For a game like this where you can't really die (you're already dead), I would even enjoy seeing worlds where you can't survive no matter how powerful you are. There really was a lot more they could have done with the game in that regard.

The Bottom Line
If you like RPGs, this game is a MUST. If you like interesting stories in games, or you like dark and mysterious games, this is a MUST.

Although the game could be much more than it is, it still is a great game that does everything in it perfectly. For what is in the game, there really isn't much that could be improved upon. I have yet to see another game like this one... and probably never will.

It's just too bad they will never make a sequel. They would make tons of money on one, but since the AD&D universe of Planescape is not an active universe any longer, they won't make a sequel. :(

The Good
The story. If you want to play an RPG with some intelligence and plot, with just the right amount of fighting, this is the one. A very deep and involving plot (with a LOT of reading), very nicely rendered spell effects, and an excellent interface, all make this one of the best CRPG's around.

The Bad
I don't know if it was just me, but I did not get to a high enough level to even make use of some of my most powerful spells. I finished the game just fine without them, but it would have been fun to try them.

The Bottom Line
This is a top-down (3/4 view) CRPG that takes place in a dark fantasy world derived from the AD&D setting of Sigil, a sort of hub of the universe which has portals that can transport you to various "planes". You play "The Nameless One", who is trying to find out who he is and why he cannot die. His possible companions include Morte, the floating skull, Dakkon, the expert swordsman, and Annah, the sharp tongued, tail wagging, half human/half demon. This is very much an interactive novel with the emphasis on plot development with some fighting/spell casting to spice it up. This is not a bright, cheery game, but there is enough humor interspersed throughout to make this a very enjoyable experience. This is highly recommended.

The Good
The story had incredible depth, everything you do had an effect on what happens at the end of the game, and each character will actually react according to personalities. The options in conversation is the best in the business, you can lie, bluff, vow, tell the truth, and it all affects who you are. It embodies the good old RPG of rolepalying and storytelling.

The Bad
The AI pathfinding can be extremely annoying at times, where they will take the long way around the map and attract every enemy's attention, and sometimes the game locks up at specific places

The Bottom Line
If you have not gotten this game, by all means do get, the story is to die for, and the each character was developed so that s/he has a realy personality...and yes...I'll admit it...I actually shed some tears (only some) at part where you absorb your former selves. The folks over at Black Isle deserve an academy award just for the story along.

The Good
The story was great. I've never had a pulp novel and video game ever seem to be so seamlessly integrated. The characters that you had in your party interacted with you in ways that promoted the story. Perhaps time has dulled my memories but really I can't remember it getting better than this.

The Bad
There were some glitches in the game that kept it from running smoothly on my computer. Other than that though I don't remember it being very dull. I would say that the ending made me feel good but I really thought they should have done a sequel to this.

The Bottom Line
The ultimate story based RPG. Something for people that aren't into hack and slash as much as story.

The Good
First of all, the game has an incredible storyline. The only others that rival it are Baldur's Gate, The Longest Journey, and Deus Ex. It has deep, insightful dialogue, and the choices you make actually affect the outcome of the game.

The game is a tad more focused than Baldur's Gate, which means there's not miles and miles of terrain to explore. Much of the game takes place in Sigil, the City of Doors, center of the known multiverse. Your character is the Nameless One, a battered, bruised and scarred shadow-of-a-man who wakes up in a mortuary with no idea who he is or where he came from. Along with your trusty sidekick Morte, a talking skull, must find out your identity and unlock the secrets to your immortality.

The game's graphics are also pretty schweet, sporting some of the coolest spell effects in any Infinity-engine game thus far. The environments are beautifully crafted, creating an eerie and creepy atmosphere. The art and architecture of Sigil really make the city come alive.

I could just go on and on all day about this game, but the bottom line is that if you get it, you certainly won't regret it.

A+ -- A must-buy.

The Bad
There's no sequel!!! Other than that, not a thing.

The Bottom Line
The game is dirt cheap, so you have no excuse not to get it!!

The Good
Forget Neverwinter Nights... Forget Final Fantasy... THIS is what an RPG should be! In this game YOU can choose what you will be, if you'll act as a good-hearted angel or a hellish demon, if you'll be a skull-crusher fighter or a more stylish wizard (with the BTW most original spells you'll ever see in a D&D computer game). And your choiches WILL eventually change the story, so you'll be playing the game again and again, only to see what will be the outcome if... And, unlike the 99.99% of computer RPGs, this time you can really perform your character like in your favourite pencil&paper RPG. Think about this: you can beat the game fighting only two, perhaps three times, but you'll still be the strongest man in the multiverse, and you'll had the most deep experience ever in a computer RPG.

The Bad
The fact that a Torment 2 doesn't exist... And perhaps, the confusion of some battles... But nothing serious.

The Bottom Line
This game is not so popular as the Baldur's Gate saga, but it beates his cousin in many ways. The characters are well described, the story is so fascinating, it's almost as intriguing as a novel... Definitely the best computer RPG experience I had since Wasteland! (and it was a long time ago... ;-) And I love succubus!

The Good
Never before have I stumbled upon any similar game to this one. This one is strong enough to define a new dimension of adventure and role-playing genre by itself, as it borders with so many similarities to as-we-know-them isometric hack & slash RPGs (by simply being played throughout such a viewport), and with royal 3rd-person point and click adventure genre (as it has more dialogues than in any pure adventure genre I know, more text that in some pure text-only adventure, too). So what's so special about this game in general and why is it worthy spending couple of months playing it (and that's bare minimum you'll need of your time), let's see...

You're playing a big, muscled character, who simply cannot remember his name. Awaking in the mortuary, on a slab pushed here by some mindless zombie drone, you find your only help to be a babbling skull, Morte's the name. For some strange reason you yet need to discover, you are immortal (at least in general), and your wounds heal very quickly. However, your body does look like you've pased through some serious series of battles and got skewered and hacked quite a lot. Yet another thing is making you a drawback in this game, your memory. You've seen to lost it. As a matter of fact, you seem to lost a part of it every time you die. So, that's all you find out from the story epilogue, but it gets more and more complicated as you progress, with a series of sub-stories aside as well.

A typical mark of an RPG is a character skill level upgrading system. Well, here you have all the needed, charisma, which improves your look and help you when talking to strangers, or at least they're more pleasant. Wisdom, which helps you regain your memory faster, and makes you smarter, or should I say, wiser, so you get more options in dialogues with everyone. Intelligence whih can be good if you decide to orient your character into a mage. Dexterity which comes in handy for thief's hands, raw strength for a warrior class, and so on. Or, you can try making a ballance of them all, and have good part of all, but none to be the best.

Dialogues are really enlarged and I bet the script for this game was at least twice the size of some encyclopedia, but the fact is that the text isn't just babbling in the wind, it actually makes sense, all of it (well, most of it), and is funny, sad, annoying, ordinarily, and basically resembles the situation of the game to fit it in its own style. Battle system is also nicely done, especially when you have to control all six of your characters, it work efficient, more or less. Dunno if it could be done any better (except for the speed). Music is very nice to listen in the background, but isn't the stronger side of the game, especially since it's rare and you won't remember hearing more than just a couple of different songs throughout the whole game, even though your music directory on your hard will tell you otherwise.

I dunno what's happening nowadays, either we're getting too much or horror games out there, or is the graphic just getting better? Anyway, I don't think some "Ghost 'n' Goblins" or "Castlevania" or even "Alone in the Dark" could scare anyone, but today's games, hehe, man, that works even too good. Must've been the graphic and the bigger power our machines can achieve. Well, the thing I mention these is not because this game's a horror, it's most certainly not! But comes to think of it, if all those things you'll encounter by playing this game, and all things that'll be described or heard in the dialogues would be done a bit better visually, or at all, "Phantasmagoria" would seem like a child's toy comparing to the level of yuckness this game could achieve. Why am I saying this under the 'good' section? Well, because you won't get a feeling you're in some gruesome place at all, hehe, it's all so well made to show such nonesense not a bit. It really sticks to story instead of the atmosphere, and they achieved that quite wonderful, I must say.

The Bad
So, is there anything bad about this game? Well of course there is, and no, don't just tell me "every game has bad things", because that doesn't have to be true in every case, and every player can count at least two games that have no flaws in his/her eyes.

I) All dialogues (99,99999% of them) is not done by voice-acting at all, which begs to ask, why employing such a known people for voice-acting when there's barely something you may hear. Only speech you hear is when you try to take someone's armour or a weapon off, or the first sentence in their dialogue with you. And yet, game is on 4CDs, but this really looks terrible. I mean, once you hear them talking, and next 100 paragraphs you must read yourself, and not to mention there are as many descriptive talks as actual parts of conversation. I mean, Sierra did make their "Phantasmagoria" in 16 colors only just because the FMV took 7CDs, but if they removed speech, they'd at least spare one more CD on that game, too.

II) Game that comes on 4CDs and barely has any animations and speech is doing something wrong. Even though game has so many paths you can finish it, play it, and do certain things in it, should fit on one or two CDs. And as much as it may seem big, it is not. That small map you see at the start is the entire territory of the game, and all those planes that are mentioned in the game are just a few you will be, and can be at. The game is smaller in places than "Revenant" or maybe even "Nox", which both come on a single CD only, and yet both of them have more animations than this one. Not to mention fully speech. And they're all made pretty at close distance to each other, so comparing can be allowed and fair.

III) This game is dragging its butt like a wild boar who was shot with a sleeping injection. It's so slow that it's intolerable. As soon as some magic is used, or more enemies comes to the screen, it almost looks as it'll crash. The fact that this game is released three years ago, and that I was playing it on 1GHz processor with 384MB of RAM is very bad to accept. I mean, back in 1999 even best computers weren't this strong, so for who did they make that game? Or maybe they made it be equally slow on 30GHz CPU or some old 486 just as well.

IV) The entire sound and music quantity in this game is terrible. Of course, this is all shadowed by the story, but it's terrible if you focus on that thing, only. Also, if you battle, and the music is fast and furious, and then you go talking to someone, you may end up talking for half an hour, while having same annoying fast attacking song in the background. Sometimes, my only choice is to switch to some radio station until I'm through reading some dialogue. Man, how would it only be if this game WOULD have speech ;)

V) The game is too filled with bugs, as if they rushed its release before some serious must-testing. Since game constantly fills its 'temp' directory with infos about all the rooms and places you were onto, it may slow down every now and then, and that happens rather too often to neglect. Or sometimes you may just end up wihtout seeing your mouse cursor or selection lines and windowses.

I could say a few more annoyances, but I could also say a few more good things about this game, and I'm bordered with the size of this post, so this should suffice as general pointer.

The Bottom Line
This is one of those games that manages to fascinate you with its creativity level to being unbelievably good. However, no matter how much you may like it, it also gives you an open view to all of its downfalls, so you can either choose to neglect them, and keep being angry inside yourself, or you can shift your opinion about this game all the time, going from "whow, what a treasure" to "ah crap, is there anything good about this game". The thing is, that no matter how deep this story may seem at first, second or ever at fourthyfifth attempt, it is a cover for a simple story in which your main nemesis is your own life, nothing we didn't see in many other games before it, but the fact is that this game separated your life from you, so it can be shown as a physical battle, not just a battle of good and evil inside someone's mind and body.

Unless you're determined to finish this game without any subquests, and do the only things you must to finish it, you'll need couple more months for it, and being on four CDs should speak for itself about the game's length, especially since there's not much of a voice-acting in it, all text, vast army of letters. It has quite a balance of story, adventuring, strategy and action, but how well is the game balanced between thee, it's up for everyone to decide on their own. Truth is that I enjoyed immensely at some part of this game, considering it the best game ever... but then I got over it, as soon as it showed me how annoying it can be sometimes, and patience was never my virtue, unfortunately. But then again, it's hard not to like a game which gives you so many questions, is it not? ;) Find out for yourself, I can't say anything that would attract or repel you to this game. It's great, buy it. It's a crap, toss it away if you get it as a present. Nope, nothing solid like this can I offer you, nothing but to say, 'try it'.

The Good
I hate RPGs. I find them incredibly annoying. Yet I loved Planescape: Torment. The story was amazing, the atmosphere was amazing, the world was amazing, and there wasn't any of that tedious turn-based fighting that makes RPGs so painful. What a game.

The Bad
Well, I still like games that have all dialogue recorded, instead of having to read text.

The Bottom Line
Atmospheric RPG without any of the bits that make RPGs annoying.

The Good
It's a superbly well-written game -- easily the best written game I know of in the rpg genre, ranking with the best adventure games.

The central quest to "know thyself" is not unusual if you've played a lot of adventure games, but is unusual in the genre.

Certain mini-quests are extremely memorable. The game starts you out in a mortuary and some of the things you do there are fascinating -- I especially like a moment where manipulating an item in your inventory gets you experience.

Dialog trees are not tough, exactly, but are often absorbing. It's possible to gain experience by taking the proper route with various characters, very neat.

One mini-quest, which requires you to die in order to continue, neatly subverts most rpg quest-like actions. There's also a mini-surprise here that really is eye-opening, regarding your relationship to one of the main npcs.

Excellent voice acting and music, with some genuinely haunting moments.

The Bad
I'm one of the eccentric few who find this game overrated.

Much has been made of the unique setting of the Planescape world, and that's true. That said, though, it's not that unusual. There's still wizards, thieves, priests, etc. Instead of healing potions there's blood clots, but they do the same sort of thing. You'll still see skeletons and zombies -- not quite as you have before, but they're there. Point is, much of the game can be seen as a one-to-one transfer: clots = solutions, charms = scrolls, etc.

The game is very well-written, and often plays like an adventure game. Frankly, it probably would have been more successful as an adventure game. The rpg blendings work well at the start, less well as time goes on. You're in trouble when the most interesting parts of an rpg are the conversations and puzzles, and the combat seems a slog.

My biggest complaint is that the combat engine here is awful. You can pause, give orders to your party, then unpause and see how things turned out -- but your characters don't often behave as you'd have liked. Bad guys often swarm the weakest party, and it can be extremely frustrating to pull somebody out of harm's way to safety. Especially when they kind of ran off and did their own thing despite your wishes.

This wouldn't be a game killer for me, except that combat increases dramatically in the third quarter of the game, and it's exceptionally frustrating to play. This game was not suited to dungeon-crawl antics, and suffers when you have to do them.

I in fact stopped near the end and never finished this (although I read a solution to see how it all turned out -- and the ending seems worthy of praise).

The Bottom Line
This is an interesting attempt at an adventure-game/rpg hybrid. It works extremely well in it's first half, less so in the second. It's considered a classic by most gamers, and if you're an rpg fan you owe it to yourself to try it, if for no other reason than to see what the fuss is about. Like many hybrid games, though, I think the blending of genres points up the flaws of each -- it's a tribute to the makers that they can keep the plates spinning as long as they do, but eventually it does all coming crashing down. Despite it's worthy sections, I can't recommend it.