While I love this universe and the story lines this is another INXLE sequel that couldn't live up to its cult classic. Much like Wasteland 2 they spent way too much trying to be original and not enough time focus on the formula that made the orginal a cult classic to begin with. The leveling system is so complex it takes a 16 levels to develop a few abilites and by then the game is over. The cypher system seemed cool but I think I used like 6 the entire game. Was it just me or was this game less than the half the length of its predocessor? The other strength of the orignial was that it allowed several oppurtunies to grind on random monster or thugs in the street. This game actaually had a finite amount of experience. I would mind the complex leveling system if you could grind away. I don't think you even got experience from fights anyway. Overall, a good game but it will never be the cult classic the original was.

Yeah, I've been super disappointed with all of Fargos kickstarters so far. He just keeps trying to be super innovated and re-invent the wheel and it falls on its face. Even though the original was just a reskinned Baldur's gate. It will forever be a cult classic.

This one had a great setting and story but It just didn't reach the enjoying gameplay of the original. Once you left the intial hub. The game got way too linear and you were just kinda tugged along through some weirdly scripted combats where you could never tell if you were suppose to fight or run or get everyone to some extraction point. It was a mess of too many good ideas that didn't fit together much like Wasteland 2.

Ironically Shadowrun Hong Kong is on my queue is it not worth playing?

Agree with you on Fargo's "innovations" missing the mark. WL2 was a game I really wanted to like, but the crazy fast levelling, the vast amounts of crap combat encounters, the random placement of containers which were from before the war yet somehow unopened even though they're in a populated area - it just smells of lazy design. It's like they went "Hmmm, needs more combat encounters here, here and .... here. Oh and we need some lockpick crates, and we don't have a safecrack crate here yet, so let's just stick one here". That and the maps were so huge it took forever to walk through them - traversing maps in Fallout 1/2 was faster while walking than WL2's maps while running.

IMO SR:HK is probably a better game overall, all things considered. The combat is really easy if you're a veteran of TB tactical combat, but it doesn't completely suck, and it's got a lot more variety to it than WL2's, and there's none of the guesswork like in Torment (which by the time you figure out the "cool tactic" you're supposed to use, you've just defeated the enemies with brute force anyway - except where that isn't possible, such as the sorrow encounters). It's also possible to mod it (I think there's a thread I replied to in the HK forum here) which makes it much more challenging. Plus there are a few UGC mods that are worth getting (OK by a few I mean two, but they're quite long and IMO better than the original campaigns).

The main thing that bugged me about HK was the writing. It wasn't necessarily bad, it's just that the pacing is way off. The writing's decent in the missions in general (you get banter which changes slightly depending on who you bring), but in the hub every single person wants to tell you their life story - and they tell it in pieces, so after every mission there are walls of text. This is from every single vendor in the game.

I get what they tried to do - make the vendors more like "characters" or something - but personally, I don't want a life story from someone I want to buy a gun or a sword from. I just want them to say, "Hi, back again? Got some new stuff in for you", then then show me the stuff. That's what vendors are there for.

So you'd have a mission - generally pretty short and snappy - then spend AGES in the hub talking to everyone about boring crap. It's the first game I ever thought had "too much" text. It wouldn't be anywhere near as bad if the hub stuff had been more interesting, but only some of it is (generally that actually related to the plot).

Technically you don't have to read all of it - that's what some will tell you - but I'm one of those people who has to experience everything in a game, no matter how crap. But for most vendors for example, there are always options to effectively skip their babble and just buy their stuff.

TL;DR: SR:HK is probably still worth getting. If you don't have Dragonfall, grab that first, it's much better in every way. If you've already played Dragonfall, you'll have to lower your expectations somewhat.

On the plus side, they took the graphics up a notch with HK - the atmosphere is top-notch.

Yes, indeed, this game is not a sequel to the original Planescape: Torment. Too bad, really, as the original game had so much content that could have been expanded upon in a sequel, along with two of the most engaging characters to ever star in an RPG...;) Bringing them back (somehow) in the distant future for brand-new adventures would have made an excellent PT sequel, I thought. So why didn't inXile do exactly that? My guess would be that they just didn't have the talent lined up to equal the original game, much less surpass it, and so they did what they did. This game isn't a bad game on its own, but using the Planescape name was a poor decision, imo--but would it have been funded under some other name? Maybe not. Of course, the door is left open for inXile to do a proper sequel to PT--so maybe that is yet to come in the future. We'll see, although I don't have much in the way of expectations to that end.

T:ToN wasn't meant to be a PS:T sequel. Simply because WoTC stopped supporting Planescape setting and didn't give rights to InXile to use their license. So, no Planescape setting and no characters from PS:T and they didn't use 'Planescape' anywhere, they used 'Torment'.

PS:T is a complete story, any sequel is pointless. Yes, T:ToN is not at the same level as that game. Its strength is the world building and not the main story (even though I liked it as well). Using 'Torment' in the title and trying to make a spiritual successor to PS:T didn't work out for them in the end unfortunately. It should be just a cRPG trying to introduce players to this intriguing setting.

In the end, T:ToN followed its predecessor, since both didn't succeed in terms of sales and are very niche games. PS:T got popular much later on, but still there are people using silly arguments like "If I want to read, I would read a novel" for both games.

Anyway, I like them both for what they are, and not what they should be.

That's pretty much irrelevant, since they certainly wanted to create the impression of some sort of continuation of the original game--else they'd not have used the word "Torment" in the title at all. Actually, I think that would have been for the best. No "sequel" would have been pointless, imo...;) Rather, I would think it would have been a best seller. Had it been attempted--any decent writer with an imagination could have overcome the "complete story" problem...;) It's too bad, really, that no one even attempted a sequel of some kind... I agree with you about people these days not wanting to read, and I also like both games, but certainly think T:ToN could have done without the "Torment" titling--which was somewhat deceptive and misleading, imo, from the original Kickstarter on. Torment: Planescape had a huge following--which is why the Kickstarter was as successful as it was.