Looks and sound
There's no way to mince words with this. Planescape Torment doesn't look good at all. The backgrounds themselves are fine and even good for the time but the sprites are pretty low detail. It's hard to tell what anyone really looks like from the sprites. The cutscenes don't look good though they do the job for the most part.
The soundtrack is good. It's not amazing but there are some tracks that stand out and I like the way the motif of The Nameless One's theme was used throughout the game. Some of the dialogue is voiced and what is voiced is pretty good.
Combat
I can't stand the gameplay. It's a real-time-with-pause system but it's a fairly boring one at that. It's easy to skip most of the fights or turn on the debug console to avoid gameplay. Now one would wonder why I would talk about avoiding gameplay in a game. The answer is pretty simple. People recommend Planescape for the writing, characters and worldbuilding not for the gameplay. Even the game itself knows this. For example I got 90,000 xp from a conversation with a character while the enemies near that area gave 750xp and there were like 5-7 of them in that area. This is essentially an interactive novel with some banal gameplay attached to it that one can and should skip.
Story and Worldbuilding
"Endure, and in Enduring Grow Strong"
I am not sure how to go about this section even though or maybe because it is the meat of the game. The story shown here is something unique and bizarre. To this day there is nothing else quite like it out there despite attempts to capture it's spirit. The companions and the protagonist are very well written and have interesting interactions and relationships. I could maybe spend hours analyzing the characters themselves.
The protagonist himself, the nameless one is a very well done version of an amnesiac protagonist since the amnesia isn't a plot device to give a blank slate or for cheap drama. It's an integral and interesting part of the story. Piecing together who he was keeps the player hooked.
The quests aren't the general RPG quests people are used to nowadays and have a fair amount of depth and effort in them. There are a lot of dialogue options with actual choices and consequences. These choices have an influence over the nameless one's alignment which changes how his companions and other characters behave.
The game is set in D&D but I don't know much about it so I don't think it's required knowledge. Specifically it's in the 'planescape' setting, in the city of sigil which sits in the middle of a multiverse.
I can't say much about what makes this setting, characters or story without delving into spoilers but I'll leave it with the statement that this game has the best writing I have ever seen. Despite the looks and the boring gameplay it still stands up because of the writing. There's a reason that this game comes up on any discussion on the merits of games as works of art. It's an experience that will stay with the reader/player long after they've finished it.
There's no way to mince words with this. Planescape Torment doesn't look good at all. The backgrounds themselves are fine and even good for the time but the sprites are pretty low detail. It's hard to tell what anyone really looks like from the sprites. The cutscenes don't look good though they do the job for the most part.
The soundtrack is good. It's not amazing but there are some tracks that stand out and I like the way the motif of The Nameless One's theme was used throughout the game. Some of the dialogue is voiced and what is voiced is pretty good.
Combat
I can't stand the gameplay. It's a real-time-with-pause system but it's a fairly boring one at that. It's easy to skip most of the fights or turn on the debug console to avoid gameplay. Now one would wonder why I would talk about avoiding gameplay in a game. The answer is pretty simple. People recommend Planescape for the writing, characters and worldbuilding not for the gameplay. Even the game itself knows this. For example I got 90,000 xp from a conversation with a character while the enemies near that area gave 750xp and there were like 5-7 of them in that area. This is essentially an interactive novel with some banal gameplay attached to it that one can and should skip.
Story and Worldbuilding
"Endure, and in Enduring Grow Strong"
I am not sure how to go about this section even though or maybe because it is the meat of the game. The story shown here is something unique and bizarre. To this day there is nothing else quite like it out there despite attempts to capture it's spirit. The companions and the protagonist are very well written and have interesting interactions and relationships. I could maybe spend hours analyzing the characters themselves.
The protagonist himself, the nameless one is a very well done version of an amnesiac protagonist since the amnesia isn't a plot device to give a blank slate or for cheap drama. It's an integral and interesting part of the story. Piecing together who he was keeps the player hooked.
The quests aren't the general RPG quests people are used to nowadays and have a fair amount of depth and effort in them. There are a lot of dialogue options with actual choices and consequences. These choices have an influence over the nameless one's alignment which changes how his companions and other characters behave.
The game is set in D&D but I don't know much about it so I don't think it's required knowledge. Specifically it's in the 'planescape' setting, in the city of sigil which sits in the middle of a multiverse.
I can't say much about what makes this setting, characters or story without delving into spoilers but I'll leave it with the statement that this game has the best writing I have ever seen. Despite the looks and the boring gameplay it still stands up because of the writing. There's a reason that this game comes up on any discussion on the merits of games as works of art. It's an experience that will stay with the reader/player long after they've finished it.