If you’ve been following my quest to find a new RPG, you might be interested in knowing that I’m settling on Planescape. As soon as I beat Ulitma IX, I think I’m giong to play through this.
Anyone here play it and have a strong opinion about it?
What’s good? What’s not so good? Is it hard?
Oh, no. No one ever has a strong opinion on it.
Other than the fact that it’s one of the best damn crpgs ever made, that is. 
The good behind that is the plot and characters, which have more strength and clarity of writing than…well, just about any other computer game out there. Some of the revelations about the main characters who will join you and/or oppose you in the course of the game brought horror, and some remarkably non-melodramatic sadness. The endings (they converge on the same thing, but in different ways) were some of the best closure I’ve ever seen in a game. The whole experience compared favorably to reading an engaging book, which is preciously rare for computer games.
Now, the bad: there’s a lot of FedEx quests–i.e., take package A to spot B. The engine design makes ranged combat pointless. And…nothing else really sticks out as being memorably bad.
There were probably a few difficult spots, but many of them were optional side-paths to get entertaining secondary people added to your party. I don’t remember it ever being really at a hair-pulling level, though.
I’ve been trying to play it lately, but the engine drives me batty. It seems like the most ridiculous way to do combat imaginable. Am I missing something here? I’d love to do the story, but the combat sequences just seem annoying and boring.
I have to agree to not being too fond of the engine, though I didn’t hate it as much as mrvisible seems to, and the lack of armour (well, for all but two of the potential characters) and ranged weapons bugged me. But my only serious complaint was this:
You could play through the game with a fairly decent character, not insanely powerful. Then you reach the end game, are trapped where it’s hard to level, and thus you are screwed badly. You need a very high-powered character right at the end.
Other than that I concur. It’s an excellent game.
So what is so confusing or difficult with the combat? I’ve played both Fallouts. It looks similar to them, but I guess not…
Torment is the best CRPG I have ever played. The combat is the games weak point, but in terms of role playing, there are so many options,its a very non-combat oriented CRPG. The story line is AWESOME, and the characters are interesting. I highly recomend it to anyone.
It is indeed a very well thought out and implemented story. It is, however, easy to miss most of it. For your first time through the game I’d recommend a mage with high INT and WIS, that way you can get more dialogue options and will be able to talk your way out of more situations, avoiding combat. There’s only a couple really battle intensive areas in the game though, they can be kind of tough but the rest of the game is well worth any frustration they may offer up. I found all but two characters to be very well developed and interesting. Definitely one of the best CRPGs around.
Bah. Most of the combat in the game can be handled by backstabbing. If the first backstab doesn’t do them in, run around the corner out of sight, hide again, and backstab then when they come back into sight. I had Nameless and Annah slitting throats in tandem. Meanwhile, I developed Nameless’s INT and CHA so’s to maximize dialogue options.
I definitely second the recommendation for playing a mage character. Those spells are way too cool to miss out on.
One of the best games I’ve ever played, period. Hope you enjoy it!