Planescape: Torment

Rating:
Summary: Torment : not your normal RPG
Review: Planescape : Torment is one of the most unique games I have ever played. It is focused more on role playing than on action, and rewards you according to your decisions. The best part of the game is the beggining. Unlike other games, it immediatly teaches you the basics of the game and your side kick acts as your encyclopedia and Helper. He is also quite strong, and most of the other NPC's are strong as well, and unique in their own ways. You have the choice of becoming a Fighter, Mage, or Thief as per the AD&D 2E rules. There is also a Thief, Mage, and Fighter in your party, so if you decide to be a mage, you will have fighters in your party to help you out. Intelligence and Wisdom are the most important abilities in this game, as like in Fallout, they determine which speech options you get during the game. Some speech options even reward you with as much as 500,000 experience points, while fighting a creature might only bring you 4000. The Alignment system in the game is based on your actions, as you start out true neutral and go toward a specific alignment with your decisions in the game. Ex. Killing a villager for no reason might make you more Evil Killing a thief might make you more Lawful Letting a thief go would make you more Good Howling and barking at the thief might make you more Chaotic The game also comes with a nifty manual which has in it the experience charts for the classes. There are many secrets which can be uncovered by mistake, and bring about interesting results. One thing to remember is to talk to everyone, and save before talking. Many dialogue options might lead to combat, and you dont want a spellcaster mad at you when you are level 1. I give this oldie, but goodie 5 stars because while it shows it's age graphics wise, it beats out the plots of almost all roleplaying games of 2001.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding game, outstanding value
Review: .... For anyone who hasn't played this game and is looking for a good role-playing or adventure game, I can highly recommend this game. There is little I can say that previous reviewers have not already covered, but Planescape is an excellent example of what a role-playing game should be. Even though the graphics are no longer on the cutting edge, the game itself easily stands the test of time.

Planescape: Torment represents a fantastic creative achievement, with a strange and twisted land that has been painstakingly fleshed-out for gamers to explore. The game world features an astonishing number of areas to explore. It is also very flexible -- there are many ways to accomplish tasks, from using force to smooth talking to magic means. You can choose to be evil, cruel, or callous. Perhaps you'd rather be benevolent, helpful, even generous. Unlike most role-playing games, you don't have a fixed class and you do not choose your own alignment. Your actions determine your alignment over time, and you can change your class at will. The result is a very rare game that gives gamers a real opportunity to role play, one where characters react to you based on what you've done in the past. And the story itself is absolutely compelling and fascinating, a story so complicated that one playing will not be enough to reveal all its subtleties.

This game is not as well-known as Black Isle's more popular Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series, but it may actually be the best of the bunch. It should easily run on all but the very slowest computers. I can go on and on about how good this game is... how good the voice acting is, making the characters seem even more life-like... how original the game world is... but you should find out for yourself. If you're a fan of role-playing games, you should not miss Planescape: Torment.

Rating:
Summary: player's torment
Review: this game is a real turkey. 1. the theme is goulish, almost disgusting; 2. the pace is extremely slow; 3. the player options are poor. Also, it " eats " memory out of your computer. I have nothing good to say about this game.

Rating:
Summary: Maybe it's just not my thing
Review: I don't know, I bought this game way back when thinking it was going to be like Baldurs Gate..... Big Mistake. While the graphics and interface where similar I just didn't comprehend it. Maybe if they would have had a thing where you could travel to other plains like Dragonlance or the Forgotten Realms it would have been better, but all in all the game seemed... moderate at best. Like I said, maybe it is just me, but where Baldurs Gate succeeded, this game failed.

Rating:
Summary: The best of the Infinity Engine games
Review: Planescape: Torment is not your typical computer game, perhaps because Planescape isn't your typical universe. Within the bounds of the planes, any and all things are possible. Ladies of Pain both control and are controlled by their surroundings, skulls can float and talk and a man can wake up from a Mortuary table with no idea of how he got there.

Of the Infinity Engine games (Baldur's Gate I & II, Icewind Dale), Torment is the most literate, playing almost like reading a book. To some this may be a bad thing, but to me it made the characters memorable and unique, the setting bizarre and fantastic and the plot... well, let's just say it is unforgettable. Unlike in other games where you are out to defeat some mythical monster or another, in Torment you are simply trying to find Yourself.

No CRPG player can go without this game.

Rating:
Summary: Best RPG since KQ2!
Review: I have played RPG (both computer and "real") for a lot of years but recently I have grown somewhat bored with them. Games like "Bladurs Gate" are exellently made but are to focused on the action for my taste (I still play them tough)and even this that can be fun at times it is nothing I can really say I enjoy as much as I used to.

When I started out playing "Torment" I was at first mildly amused, Mort's comments wre fun, and although the start was somewhat slow the game picked up momentum as it went on. About halfway throug the game I was frustrated with my caracter who might have been exelently made for hack and slash but were completly unequipt to handle the challanges I wanted to tackle. This said I made a new caracter, more focused on INT and WIS and all of a sudden I could actually verify all the suspicions I could not make sense of in my first attemt at the game. I had actually became interested in the plot of the game som much that I replayed scenes over and over to understand all as quickly as possible.

This is a game where action definetly takes the back seat to story. This is somewhat unusual but for those who appreciate well made caracters it is exellent. The story is complex (you figure it out eventually but unlike most you do not know have everything is going to end after the first chapter). To support the story the designers have also added the best supporting cast of caracters I have ever seen in a game (Nordom is a personal favourite). The fact that they have also blended the story with the style of play comuters make for (here you dont have to worry if you mlose a fight now and then) is an added bonus.

All in all this is a game I would recommend all but the most fanatical hack & slash gamer (even though there are plenty for them as well in the game). To me the highest praise you can give a RPG game is that there is enough in it for you to go back and play it again to se the consequenses if you hade made different choises, this can be said (and resaid) of this game.

Rating:
Summary: Surprisingly excellent
Review: I have to admit, I was a bit concerned at the outset; aside from Lords of Magic, I've never been too big on games where you control only one character in your party, and the lack of ability to select an original class had me a bit worried. Wrong I was. This is definitely a keeper.

The premise is a bit like that of the film Mirage; your character wakes up, with no memory, and has to figure out where he is and what he's doing there. The "where" part comes along pretty quickly; he's in Sigil, the home of plane-hopping extraterrestrials and weird beings from other planes. The "why" is the true meat of the game, and it's quite nice that while the developers were working so hard at tweaking the game's responses to be tailor-made to your character, they didn't forget to include a plot compelling enough to bring players back to the game day after day.

If you haven't picked it up yet, especially if you've played the other games using the Inifinty engine, give it a shot. It's different enough from them to hold your interest but similar enough that your learning curve should be next to zero.

Rating:
Summary: The Best RPG of all Time!
Review: There is nothing that I can say about this RPG.This game will fascinate you from the moment you insert the first CD.Ater the excellent video you 'll enter to the world of Planes.It has nothing to do with classical Baldur's Gate story.The story of Torment in my opinion it's the best that has ever been written.It's so complicated and so fascinated that not even the great Michael Moorcock could have thought of it. The graphics are excellent.You don't see the small sprites of Baldur's Gate but big sprites with excellent textures. The enviroments are outstanding.Extraordinay buildings with brilliant colours and textures.It brings you to memory scenes from some Lovecraft novel.With one word EXCELLENT. The music fits perfectly with the whole setting.It becomes soft in certain times during while in the rest of the game it's a perfect companion. Overall we are talking about an excellent RPG game and not only.BLACK ISLE have created an epic game which surpasses the rest RPG with great ease.We are really looking forward for a sequel.Also If someone is able to take the official guide he or she will enjoy the game even more.Trust me on this!

Rating:
Summary: Best RPG of all time
Review: This game is, in my opinion, the best RPG ever made. In Planescape: Torment you wake up on a mortuary slab, a talking, floating skull your only companion. Remembering nothing and with nothing to go on except the tattoo messages on your back, you discover (along with the character) that you have somehow lost your mortality, and you go on a quest to find it and get it back. On the way, you will meet many, allies as well as enemies, and die /many/ times(remember, you've lost your mortality!). Awesome dialogue, three classes to choose from (the standard: Mage, Thief, and Fighter). Not your standard kill-the-big-foozle plot. There are many possible endings, and even more ways to get to those endings. Is it just me, or does Black Isle really kick at making RPGs? First Fallout, now this.

Rating:
Summary: A breath of fresh air.
Review: I bought Torment about a year ago, played it, enjoyed it immensely, and has since moved on to other titles. There was Diablo II, full of action as its predecessor; Baldur's Gate II that dashed my high hopes; the gods have kept me safe from Icewind Dale. Recently, I contemplated buying a copy of Torment to an acquaintance of mine, and started to recall the game's richness. Before I knew it, the temptation had become too great - I ended up re-installing Torment. Here I am, ready to play it again.

What is, then, so attractive about it? Everyone talks about the great storyline and NPC - indeed, you can't help praising these things, but it remains pretty generic. Devil is in details, they say. In Torment, you get to find your way out of the Mortuary, a cluttered dome full of shambling zombie workers and dissected corpses on slabs. You must walk the streets of Sigil, arguably the center of the multiverse, where *any* opening - doorway, window, picture frame, eye of a needle - might turn out to be a portal to places unknown. You look around trying to avoid the aggressive thugs of the Hive, the city slums, and you travel under mountains of garbage and forgotten mazes. And this is not all - Torment really takes you places: to see the red skies of Avernus, to examine the pale treachery of the gate town of Curst, to witness the forbidding citadel "where the shadows themselves have gone mad" - it is the wildest ride ever.

And the creatures you get meet, situations you find yourself in! In what other game, pray tell, can you socialize with corpse collectors, or run errands for a talentless coffin maker, or stall/help anarchists' sabotage of a secret weapon, or consort with a collective mind of mutant vermin, or help a city alley give birth (that's right)? Where else can you meet a guffaw with fat purse and a desire to see what it's like to kill someone, and use your own immortality for profit? What other impossible, bright world is there that allows you to read the stored experiences of long-gone travelers to other planes?

Also, you say NPC, I say NPC. By now, you've read about Morte. Well, allow me to tell you this: that guy is the horniest, most loud-mouthed, unbearable, insulting, wisecracking floating skull you'll ever meet. (Granted, disembodied skulls are rare.) Of all people, only Morte can drool at the sight of female zombies, or ask you for money when you meet a prostitute (you can actually let him and boy, does he get more than he bargained for), or, in response to a comely woman's "What can I do for you?" shout out "Anything! Do anything to me!!!"

But, devilishly funny as Torment jokes are, they are but a part of the atmosphere. The remainder is quite serious, and, along with the almost combatless gameplay, it seems to be the cause of PST's limited success among "lay gamers". Critics loved it, but the sad reality is, a great deal of players simply aren't clever enough - advanced, educated, subtle, trained to think critically, whatever you want to call it. Just as philosophy books are read by the "intellectuals" and the other 90% of the population think malls the perfect resort, so are Torment's witty, often touching and always exceptionally well-written dialogues lost on the average consumer.

So are its psychological challenges. Example: somewhere in Sigil, you may encounter Nodd, the Collector - gathering corpses and selling them for profit, grey as a mouse, in dirty rags, stricken with some nasty disease and slightly out of his mind. He is in no way important to the main plot, as most other NPC, but if you pause to talk to him, he'll tell you his one precious secret. When he was young, he had a sister, Amarysse - bright, beautiful girl, showing much more promise than he did. Life pulled them away from each other since then, but to this day Nodd keeps this last bright memory of what future might have been, despite the trash, poverty and stale despair.

Elsewhere in Sigil, you might come across Amarysse. You look at her and see what happened to Nodd's bright girl. Amarysse has become a prostitute, selling her body to thugs and patrons from the nearby bar. Then it is up to you what to decide - what, if anything, to tell Nodd. And though compassion is not something I feel very often, episodes like that tend to leave me with a heavy heart, and the "human condition" bears down on me. You see, Torment is indeed a "mature" game, for whatever the label is worth. The game is wise and sober. It knows that life isn't about merry heroes bringing evil wizards to justice, and that there are slums, and people who haven't taken a bath for years, and wars, and plans gone awry, and failed romances, and rude awakenings, and that there is no guarantee of happy ending.

But there is also hope amidst all the Torment. So far, I didn't mention the main quest. Perhaps, it is best left for you to uncover, if you decide to buy the game. As a nameless immortal, you travel the planes, and now and again, a flash of memories explodes in your brain. It seems you have lived a great many times, in different places and different epochs. You seem to have influenced a great many people, but in unclear and contradictory ways. You are a hero as much as villain. And because you can't remember clearly who you are, this, in a way, makes you everyone at once, and turns your struggle for identity and control over your destiny into the more universal quest of humankind to make a difference.

Reminding us of this goal, Torment never once moralizes, and though the designers have their own answer to the game's central Question: "What can change the nature of a man?", it is remarkable that in the end the conclusion is left hanging. Maybe it waits to be drawn - by us. We are living, breathing, thinking creatures, we are active agents, and whether in real life or worlds of imagination, the direction of our fates is ultimately up to us. This, I believe, is the great game's most important message.