Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition

Planescape: Torment, the undisputed heavy-weight champion of narrative-oriented CRPGs. You may have heard about it; you may even have played it. In Sigil, the "City of Doors", you won't find your sassy gang of adventurers on a casual stroll down the street. It's a world packed to the brim with grit and ugliness. It's impenetrable and rusty and decaying and it will eat you alive if you don't have the guts for it. As it happens, it is also in this exact setting that you will find a story like no other, companions like no other, and maybe even a few clues to the question of: what can change the nature of a man? On the technical side, the original Torment has not aged so well, the main reason being its fixed full-screen resolution of 640x480. To get the classic version approximately into high-def land, and to fix some of its other quirks left over from 1999, takes the application of a handful of mods and hacks. It makes sense how this approach appeals to some players, as it is not unlike how Sigil itself is maintained: a bunch of robed gremlins ("dabus") pounding on old structures with blunt tools. The good news is that Beamdog had a better idea: let's give this classic a modern overhaul. It's the same game with no in-game additions. They got (namedrop) Chris Avellone on board, had him tweak some text and approve bug-fixes and the new GUI, which pulls off the exact style of the original, only adapted for modern screens. The game has never looked better. My only real criticism is aimed at the default comical sprite outlines for in-game characters. This would have been a deal-breaker, had it not been toggleable in the new options menu. Since it can be switched off, it's a non-issue. Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition is worth your hard-earned jink. And if money is the issue, then update your journal by skipping your next planned trip to the grocery store. You will soon find that going hungry beats waking up on a slab in the mortuary and not knowing who you are.

In my opinion Planescape: Torment is the best narrative CRPG ever made. I've ranked that game here at 10/10 and i stand by my evaluation. This release is a mod. A very basic mod, and there are better available for free (check https://www.gog.com/news/mod_spotlight_planescape_torment_mods_guide). The main disadvantage of this mod is the price, and the fact, that the original game was removed from the market. Before this release one could have bought the game, use of the High resolution mods and few fixes and enjoy the game as it was made. Now, you still get pretty much the same game with few changes: You get the zoom (the only good feature), tab to highlight interactable objects (questionable), autoloot (very bad idea for the game like Torment), and how to play pop-ups (useless for a game like Torment). Nothing else was changed, nothing else is Enhanced. You'd expect a better UI (but there were better fan made UIs for this game), you'd expect better models (all you needed, is to rerender them in higher definition). But alas, you don't get it. There's nothing that defends the new price tag, and it is very clear, why the original game was removed from the stores - nothing justifies buying a new game, when you can get the old one, and follow few instructions to install mods online. So Original Planescape Torment - 10/10 Beamdog's mod - 0/10

First, the good: Beamdog made the game work in widescreen without any tinkering, updated interface looks really nice and visually stays true to the original. The game itself is incredible, I played through the original edition again last year and after getting used to low resolution and making a couple of adjustments (e.g changing monitor scaling so it played in 4:3) I had great time. The bad: Beamdog made the game run in your native screen resolution, no options to change that. The problem is that if you run the game zoomed out (pixel ratio 1:1) then everything is stupidly tiny, and Torment had a very personal feel due to the camera being a bit closer than in other classic cRPGs. If you set the game to be zoomed in, the interface remains full res and it just looks odd when the viewport is not as crisp. I'd like to set it to just run fullscreen at 720p, to have a nice balance between the two. The right-click radial menu is gone. It was the most convinient way of selecting weapons, attack action (e.g to bash open containers) or dialogue (you want to talk a lot with your companions, so you want it handy). Now to do anything you have to go to the bar at the bottom of the screen, much less ergonimic compared to the original. And last, it is disappointing they did not put some work into character portraits and inventory screens, when everything is nicely redone those blurry images are discracting. For now I'd play the original. If those issues are resolved I'd say play enhanced and my personal score goes back up to 5/5.

A few reviewers have been critical of the fact that this is just a "packaged up" version of the original game with mods installed. For me personally, this is exactly why I purchased! No stuffing around with modding and compatibility issues. Just download and drift off into the world of Torment. Brilliant game - brilliant story, in a nice easy package. Well worth the price (for me anyway!)