Planescape: Torment

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
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.