My first real experience with anything Dungeons and Dragons related! I found a lot of the ideas super fascinating and I was also able to see how these concepts have influenced other fantasies which was cool. There are some silly concepts to me, like the whole alignment thing is a bit cartoony in how strictly outlined it is. Still, there is a charm in it, and the game does also manage to create some really interesting story beats and locales with it. I do think this being my first introduction to the Planscape campaign—and DnD as a whole —definitely benefitted my experience. Learning about the world with fresh eyes was the thing that kept me the most hooked in playing the game. Was I well versed in the setting already, I do not know if I would have found the experience as satisfying. The main story is intriguing and the characters are solid, but I felt like a majority of the writing I was reading mainly centred around world building. To balance out all the lore, I wish there were way more dialogue interactions with your companions. The stuff that is there is great—well written and full of personality—there just isn’t as much as I thought there would be for a game like this. I would constantly check in on my party members to see if they had any new input after story beats and a lot of the time they didn’t, even in cases where I feel like the character would most definitely have something to say. Obviously, this game has a wealth of content and writing and not everything will be covered. It’s just the classic catch-22 that when a game is really fleshed out in some regards, the parts that aren’t stand out to the player a lot more.
Moving past writing and narrative and focusing more on gameplay, I do unfortunately have to agree with the consensus that the gameplay is pretty meh. There are certain mechanics that are designed in a way where it feels like the priority was to make it feel more ‘realistic.’ For example, certain vendors won’t buy certain items, character’s can’t rest in an inn unless they’re all right next to TNO when speaking to the inn keeper, etc. I understand these flourishes are to make the world feel more grounded and authentic, but man is it just irritating and pulls me out of the experience more than anything. You could argue that these are rather minor nitpicks of UI and control, and for any other game where the gameplay was more substantive, I think that would be fair. But Planescape: Torment’s gameplay is pretty much all dialogue and menus all the way down, so these minor complaints do become pretty large sticking points for me. I also found the logging of information to be a bit confusing. The game does keep a record of events, which is great, but how it goes about choosing what is logged and what isn’t is weird to me. There are some pretty major revelations that aren’t logged at all while minor events and redundant info fill up the journal, making it harder to navigate. The quests section doesn’t always list all tasks, nor does it always include the relevant information. As a result, some quests can be really esoteric. One could argue that such little handholding is refreshing, but it makes little sense to me that the character you play, or the companions you travel with, or even the npc who gave you the mission in the first place, would not have any kind of advice or info to give.
Simply put: this game is clunky, and there is no point where it feels more clunky than during combat. It’s super messy to try and enact any kind of strategy beyond the complexity of luring a target and jumping them. Not that that matters because it kind of feels like wailing on enemies is the most optimal way to play anyways. There are some really cool spells, but finding the handful of ones that are actually useful is a drag. There aren’t many encounters in the game and rest stops are spread out just far enough where you don’t really get much opportunity to experiment with magic unless you’re straight up grinding. Even when I got a good magic setup going, it was difficult for me to find reason to use them. Most enemy encounters are fairly easy; the ones that aren’t are usually battles where the game just throws ridiculous amounts of enemies at you. Those fights end up burning through a lot of your most useful spells before you’re back to just wailing on enemies again. I do concede that perhaps my gripes with the combat could simply be because of my unfamiliarity with DnD, but the game does not do a very good job at explaining the ruleset of 2nd edition at all. Thankfully, combat is fairly light in this game though it does ramp up in the later half, and the game does kinda take a nosedive in quality because of it. Granted, you can probably still choose to avoid most of it by running away, but then you’re not left with much in the second half. The later parts of this game feel a lot smaller and more shallow than the earlier sections. Less to explore, simpler quest lines, regurgitation of information you already know, etc. The first half of the game is definitely the stronger part in my reckoning.
I know that most of my review has been criticism, but most my critiques revolve around elements the game doesn't prioritize. The focus really is the story/characters and creating an atmosphere that immerses the player, all of which this game does superbly. I now have a lot more motivation in trying other cRPGs, a genre which I had always found intimidating beforehand. But Planescape: Torment, along with Disco Elysium and Citizen Sleeper, has definitely piqued my interest.
P.S. the reason why I got interested in this game in the first place was because of this drawing of Annah by Dungeon Meshi mangaka Ryoko Kui: https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMeshi/s/SQHT62QsLd
So once again I must thank Ryoko Kui for an amazing experience o7
Also read and or watch Dungeon Meshi
Moving past writing and narrative and focusing more on gameplay, I do unfortunately have to agree with the consensus that the gameplay is pretty meh. There are certain mechanics that are designed in a way where it feels like the priority was to make it feel more ‘realistic.’ For example, certain vendors won’t buy certain items, character’s can’t rest in an inn unless they’re all right next to TNO when speaking to the inn keeper, etc. I understand these flourishes are to make the world feel more grounded and authentic, but man is it just irritating and pulls me out of the experience more than anything. You could argue that these are rather minor nitpicks of UI and control, and for any other game where the gameplay was more substantive, I think that would be fair. But Planescape: Torment’s gameplay is pretty much all dialogue and menus all the way down, so these minor complaints do become pretty large sticking points for me. I also found the logging of information to be a bit confusing. The game does keep a record of events, which is great, but how it goes about choosing what is logged and what isn’t is weird to me. There are some pretty major revelations that aren’t logged at all while minor events and redundant info fill up the journal, making it harder to navigate. The quests section doesn’t always list all tasks, nor does it always include the relevant information. As a result, some quests can be really esoteric. One could argue that such little handholding is refreshing, but it makes little sense to me that the character you play, or the companions you travel with, or even the npc who gave you the mission in the first place, would not have any kind of advice or info to give.
Simply put: this game is clunky, and there is no point where it feels more clunky than during combat. It’s super messy to try and enact any kind of strategy beyond the complexity of luring a target and jumping them. Not that that matters because it kind of feels like wailing on enemies is the most optimal way to play anyways. There are some really cool spells, but finding the handful of ones that are actually useful is a drag. There aren’t many encounters in the game and rest stops are spread out just far enough where you don’t really get much opportunity to experiment with magic unless you’re straight up grinding. Even when I got a good magic setup going, it was difficult for me to find reason to use them. Most enemy encounters are fairly easy; the ones that aren’t are usually battles where the game just throws ridiculous amounts of enemies at you. Those fights end up burning through a lot of your most useful spells before you’re back to just wailing on enemies again. I do concede that perhaps my gripes with the combat could simply be because of my unfamiliarity with DnD, but the game does not do a very good job at explaining the ruleset of 2nd edition at all. Thankfully, combat is fairly light in this game though it does ramp up in the later half, and the game does kinda take a nosedive in quality because of it. Granted, you can probably still choose to avoid most of it by running away, but then you’re not left with much in the second half. The later parts of this game feel a lot smaller and more shallow than the earlier sections. Less to explore, simpler quest lines, regurgitation of information you already know, etc. The first half of the game is definitely the stronger part in my reckoning.
I know that most of my review has been criticism, but most my critiques revolve around elements the game doesn't prioritize. The focus really is the story/characters and creating an atmosphere that immerses the player, all of which this game does superbly. I now have a lot more motivation in trying other cRPGs, a genre which I had always found intimidating beforehand. But Planescape: Torment, along with Disco Elysium and Citizen Sleeper, has definitely piqued my interest.
P.S. the reason why I got interested in this game in the first place was because of this drawing of Annah by Dungeon Meshi mangaka Ryoko Kui: https://www.reddit.com/r/DungeonMeshi/s/SQHT62QsLd
So once again I must thank Ryoko Kui for an amazing experience o7
Also read and or watch Dungeon Meshi