My journey across The Planes has taken me to places that most men believe exist only in the realm of thought. These places I travelled to, the people I met, and the conversations I had fundamentally changed me as a person. I don’t fully know how, but regardless, I know some sort of change occurred. Perhaps writing about my experience with Planescape will help me better understand these changes and the person I am today.

When I was 14, I discovered Planescape: Torment, and while I thought the game was awesome, I could never really engage with the questions the game posed to me. I mean, how could I? What would the question “What can change the nature of a man?” mean to a 14-year-old who was only beginning to grapple with the concept of its own being? Looking back, it meant nothing to me. Now that I am an adult, however, the question means much more to me. Part of me is ashamed to admit I haven’t always been a ‘good’ person. Learning to be kind, understanding, mature, and responsible took me many years of struggling and hardship to achieve. Even today, I still struggle with this, but through that struggle, I came to learn more about myself and my nature. I can’t fully codify into words what my “nature” or “self” are because they are concepts that exist beyond language. Language can at times be limiting, so I look to art to help me look inward and better conceptualise these thoughts and feelings. I feel as though Planescape stirred the part of my soul that sought these answers, and despite it not giving me concrete answers, I feel satisfied with the new questions it posed to me. To me, good art never seeks to speak for the reader but instead provides them with the tools necessary to create subjective meaning from the experience they have with it. I believe Planescape does this quite well; I’d even go so far as to argue that it fully agrees with me here. When The Nameless One is posed the question, “What can change the nature of a man?” the game does not have him provide a concrete answer to the player. Instead, we are left with the game giving us the tools necessary to begin constructing our own answer to that question as the credits roll. Currently, I don't have an answer to that question, and I'm not sure if I will even have one a decade from now, but I'm okay with that. Part of growing up meant that I had to learn to be content with not always having an answer for everything; perhaps not every question needed an answer.

There’s more I could write, but perhaps it’s best that some things remain unwritten. I would love to endlessly navel-gaze, but that wouldn’t do me or you, the reader, any good. I apologise to anyone here who expected a formal review and was met instead by my self-indulgent introspection. There's really not much I can say about Planescape that hasn't already been said; it's an awesome ass game, and it deserves the reputation it has made for itself, enough said.

Anyways, I’d like to end this short write-up by saying that if you haven’t already played Planescape: Torment, you owe it to yourself to take that journey across The Planes. Sigil is known as the ‘City of Doors’, after all, so why don’t you look inside and see where one of them takes you?

Janky combat and a somewhat rushed late-game does not stop this from being a revolutionary game in the CRPG landscape (even today there is still nothing quite like it, afaik). The story and writing is excellent in this one, with goofy but likeable and fully fleshed-out side characters, and not too superficial philosophical musings (it's not that deep, but keep in mind that the other major isometric crpgs that went out before this were the first two Fallout games and Baldur's Gate -- I'll also throw in the Ultima series and Diablo so as to not only cite Infinity Engine games, but hey, you get the point). The lore-dumping can be a little bit too apparent at times, but is balanced out by how fascinating and bizarre the Planescape setting is. It really feels so new when compared to the tamer, more standard DnD setting of Baldur's Gate. Finally, the ugly low budget late-90s 3D graphics may seem off-putting for a while, but in the end it fits the strange atmosphere perfectly. An excellent game overall.

(as a necessary fair warning, the game is a tad "passively" misogynistic at times, which is, of course, a bit unavoidable in games from that era, but still. it's also written mostly by Chris Avellone, a fact which may be understandably off-putting for some, given some recent events)

I don't think I've ever played a game that offers a story as intricate as Planescape. The basic question of the game is really interesting and it makes you think about how you would answer this question yourself. The different characters, both NPC and party members, were the big highlight for me. In general, I loved the dark mood and enjoyed every minute of exploring this crazy world. Combat wasn't necessarily much fun, but it can often be avoided through clever dialog. Definitely a game for my all time favorites list and perhaps the best writing I've ever seen.

OK, let's start with the bad.

The combat in this game is, at its best points, quick and unobtrusive. Real time with pause is a fucking scam and I can't believe every D&D-related game at the turn of the century got tricked into using it. There are sections which are just a long string of fights, and these are the game's nadir.

I have no idea how anyone who doesn't already understand AD&D knows what the fuck is going on mechanically. AC is descending, but items that improve it will be written as plusses. THAC0 isn't impossible to understand, but you need to actually explain it. How do saves work? Planescape will not tell you.

I also encountered a late game bug that wouldn have hard stopped me from finishing if I didn't use console commands. It's from that era of jank I guess.

So why 5 stars? What makes this an incredible experience for me is the world, story, and the characters that inhabit both of these things. It's a tale that tries to tackle personhood and the nature of belief and while it hardly nails it every time, this ambition leads it to some fun, clever, sad and unique places you probably won't see anywhere else. It's a central ethos that is reflected in all things.

It's amazing how often Dungeons and Dragons, a game that is notionally about exploring worlds beyond imagination, is afraid to truly get fantastical, and this is maybe the only official thing that's stepped up to the plate.

I wish I'd stuck with this when I first had a go back in the mid 2000s, it probably would have taken root firmly in my brain and never left. As it stands, I'm incredibly happy I gave it a second chance.

This is possibly the most ambitious game I have ever played. It drips with excellent writing at every turn, contemplates the philosophy of self, of suffering, and one's effect on the world. It is a shame that the medium of this game often devolves into dreary combat, but that's even more of a sign that this game was ahead of its time. Any points it loses in gameplay it makes up with ambition, care, and introspection. The macabre setting roots and unites all the shades of what the game has to offer, and The Nameless One is one of the most interesting video game protagonists ever created. I am going to be thinking about this one for a long time.

As a game? Kinda sucks. As a story though? Pretty mediocre 😭 everything dealing with the nameless ones past incarnations is really good especially all the scenes at the end (the bronze sphere sequence ♥️) they really just hit all notes extremely well but everything else just did nothing for me sadly. Hate when something I’m hoping to love just makes me feel nothing especially when it’s a long rpg!!! Could rant on and on about my issues with the game but that’s boring and I don’t care enough to write negative reviews I do want to end the review on a positive note and say that I love Ravel Puzzlewell and she is a dear friend of mine

playing through this after having played disco elysium was a bit of a bizarre experience and really cemented the latter's existence as a spiritual successor to the former even more in my mind

Working your way through the mystery of the nameless one and the mark he left behind on Sigil (which is a crazy cool setting, btw) was utterly enthralling. The dialogue holds up even after all these years and Morte/TNO's voice acting is incredible. I love all the philosophical and silly conversations you can get into in this game.

Definitely recommend to fans of DE

Stands the test of time - my garbled gamer brain almost dropped this after being lost in the Mortuary for an hour, but I'm glad I stuck it out. This title is often lauded as one of the best written games ever, and it's really no wonder why: it's wickedly sharp, hilarious, and confronts the genre in surprising and thoughtful ways. Admittedly, the game is quite outdated visually (obviously, it came out in 1999) and the combat is horrible, but I still found it an incredibly compelling experience, warts and all.

I picked this game up sometime in 2017-2018 and
even though I loved the atmosphere and was able to get used to the immense amounts of paragraphs and text, I still really disliked the way it played and the way it looked on my screen.
So for the next 5 years, I'd pick it up, play for a couple minutes to an hour and then drop it again. Either because I was frustrated about the combat or a quest bugged out for whatever reason.

So it's really weird to say that after all this time, I feel as if I just said goodbye to an old friend.

I don't have any deep or detailed observations nor any minute play by play on how or why the writing is good or bad. I don't remember every single lore thing, I really couldn't tell you. There were many times the game was buggy or the writing felt l kind of amateur-ish or went on for too long (I don't think it's a masterpiece or the best game of all time)

...I've ended this game experience feeling really good about it.

I don't know, I liked it, lol.

It's hard not to play this game and mourn the potential of what what it could have been. Playing it 25 years after release it's easy to imagine how special it was when it came out, but to me it falls short of what I really wanted it to be.

There is clearly a ton of love and creativity that went into this game. The setting, the story, and the character concepts are wonderful. I started the game excited about the themes and questions it was asking, but by the end I was totally let down by its failure to answer them in a meaningful way. Most characters are totally underwritten and there's an undercurrent of misogyny that really hurts some of the major narrative beats and is honestly just annoying. There are a few successful moments that really shine but also make me think about the game that I wish was here.

The combat, of course, is awful, but you still have to waste your time with it. And there is plenty of additional wasted time going through the same dialogue tree with countless characters (have you seen a journal?? do you know anything about ravel puzzlewell??). This time could have been much better spent fleshing out the world and characters.

I loved the game I thought would come out of this, but in the end it just consistently let me down.

Visually ? Yeah, even for that type of game, it sucks - tho, for something from 1999 ? At the time, it was really impressive, especially the cinematics. But what I want to say is... that's kinda the first RPG game I loved with all my heart, especially because it's story-driven and that almost all situations in game can be resolved with intelligence, charisma or cunning ways, which was not really at thing back in the days. Yet, I needed to try the game at least two times before finding it interesting enough to actually do everything I could in it. That's also the trigger for my love of black humor, and I can't disregard that since it's a big part of who I am now ;P

amk nasıl oynuyonuz siz bunları ya rastgele bir npcye tıklıyom yaralara bakılırsa bacağı kopmuş götten yemiş annesini pazarda kaybetmiş kolundan kahverengi bir sıvı akıyor sorulara cevap verecek zeka seviyesi yok bakireliğini yeni kaybetmiş borsa kaplanını takip ediyor 3 ayrı suç kaydı var yazıyor gerçi böyle yazsa zevkli olurdu ama bu detay seviyesinde ilgi çekici olmayan şeyler yazıyor birde her şeyi okuman gerekiyor oyunda hani hızlıca basıp geçeyim de yapamıyorsun ama oyunun asıl olayı etkileşime geçmek ve hikaye zaten oynanış bok gibi ulan etkileşime geçince çıkan yazılar da dünyanın en sıkıcı ve ilgi çekici olmayan şeyi alttaki bardan okuması zevkli değil zaten çok kötü sunum var diyeceğim ama sunum yok direkt hep böyle gereksiz betimlenmiş boşuna uzatılmış şeyler dolu tamam oynanış bok gibi yazılar ilgi çekici değil ve gram etkilemiyor ama yazım çok iyi diye bir bahane yok maalesef oynarken 1 saniye zevk almadım birdaha crpg filan oynamam