As a "successor", he dev's clearly stated goal was to bring the best elements of Planescape:Torment into this game. Hmm.. they must have somehow played a different version of PS:T than I did. Because what I remember from PS:T was an adventure in a half-mad city where you never knew what was coming next. Vicious, desperate gangs stalked you in the streets, madmen raved on the corners and in the taverns, charlatans lured you with grand promises, women dazzled you with their sexuality, while there was a knife behind every smile and a fight behind every corner. It was a satisfying yet unsettling feast of madness, in CRPG terms. The world of T:TON? Well... it doesn't really have any of that stuff. I guess none of those things were the "good parts of PS:T". Indeed. if PS:T was the gaming equivalent to a wild night out in the big city nightlife, T:TON is like a quiet night sipping tea with your mild-mannered suburban neighbors. I'm not sure I could come up with a better analogy to sum it up than that. Aside from not meeting its own stated goals re: PS:T, the game doesn't stand on its own either. NPC conversations seem to be one of the main game activities, but are totally unsatisfying. You have really no visual clues whatsoever about the people you're talking to, as the character models, though detailed, are all very generic and similar (its even hard to tell male/female apart often), really only differentiated by the color scheme of their flowing robes or baggy pantaloons. And unlike any other conversation-heavy RPG from the last 30 years, there is no "close up portrait" of the NPCs that comes up along with the conversation window, unless its one of your party members. That makes the conversations feel like some horrible, detached "chat room" type thing with an invisible person on the other end. Yikes. I'm not sure what anyone would get out of playing this, but one thing I know they won't get is anything that feels even the slightest bit like PS:T.
Unfortunately... but I had to see for myself since I love this genre. Well-polished experience in terms of UI, stability, apparently well-thought out RPG systems... but who cares about any of that when you haven't built a compelling game-world, plot, or characters to get involved with. This game has bland-ness in spades - really its hard to put it into words. "Extremes of blandness"? "Strikingly bland"? Something like that. I was barely able to force myself to complete the first town/hub area and the surrounding maps before my fingers found the uninstall button. At that point in, I had yet to encounter a single memorable character, experience, fight, location - there's just nothing here. Some half-interesting plot device about a local Lord gone mad and hanging people left and right had potential.. but went nowhere, as I never met any subjects of said Lord who I gave a crap about enough to really care to get involved. And I don't know what to say about an RPG where you can't tell which NPCs are male/female until you click on them - but that sure doesn't help with the blandness factor. The combat system doesn't save it either, as encounters go straight from brain-dead simple to staggeringly difficult with no medium ground or build-up in between. And once you do get into more involved fights you realize they decided to implement the MMO-ish "tank healer" concept heavily. Those fights become irritating, whack-a-mole type experiences. And if all that isn't enough, the game brashly destroys any immersion you may have somehow developed with its constant nods to its kickstarters, with lame out-of-place characters hanging around the taverns that are basically statues that exist to "tell you their story" of their amazing past exploits. But they don't actually move or engage you in conversation or anything. Don't they care that the local Lord is hanging people and such? Well no, they're not actually there.. Avoid this game if you like excitement in your RPGs.
...have i desperately fled from enemies with such honest terror. Or so dreaded hearing the sounds of "oh no, ANOTHER one!" coming from around the corner. And i don't scare easy... ...have I played a game where I felt less like I was playing a game, and more like i was living inside one of my most vivid and disturbing nightmares. ...have I been so constantly on-edge about what might be lurking behind that next door, in that dark corner, or creeping up behind me. ...have I played a game where when I sit down for each session I get this unique feeling which combines excitement and dread in a way that's hard to describe. ...have i been immersed in such a realistic gameworld that I am COMPLETELY convinced of its real-ness as I am playing. And even though the graphics in this game are absolutely top-notch IMO, both from a technical and artistic standpoint, clearly my SS2 reference shows i'm not convinced by flash alone. Just like SS2, its MUCH more the "feel" of the gameworld and its physics that has me so convinced. Just like every inch of SS2's Von Braun made sense as being a true interstellar colonization/research vessel, every inch of DL's Harran feels like a metropolis overrun by a zombie apocalypse, with no artificial boundaries or obvious "they put that there to make it a better game" type stuff. Everything feels real. The awesome graphics only serve to make it all the more convincing, and the zombies and creatures themselves are perhaps even the most convincing elements of it all. And its not easy to make me feel or think any of those things! That's why nobody has done it in the 15+ years since SS2, even though I've sought out similar experiences ever since, but never was drawn into titles such as Dead Space in a similar way. And btw i usually HATE parkour. But i sure was thankful for it here, the first time it allowed me to scale up to a safe rooftop with a crowd of biters nipping at my heels. I'm all about it if it will help me survive Harran ;)
As captivated as I was by the concept, story, and gameworld, the weak combat design in this game made me quit before ever getting to the mainland. Not only is the combat simplistic, but it also feels strangely detached from the events on the main map, and breaks the awesome immersion that I felt while playing on the main map. The basic problem is that you can only use 6 of your characters in any battle. Even though your entire team of 10-15 or so is right there with you, only 6 fight, while the others apparently stand around 20 feet away and watch. Combat maps are also tiny, as they are built for a battle where you always have 6 or less characters vs 6-12 opponents (yes you are often outnumbered too, but STILL your other characters and leader never get involved in the fight). In the game, you are venturing through a semi-unexplored wilderness with a tiny squad-sized company, badly outnumbered and surrounded by potential enemies. Obviously, in any realistic, life and death, small-scale situation like this, the ENTIRE TEAM would be fighting, INCLUDING the leader. And the turn-based system, which is overall solid yet very simple, badly needs more combatants involved to give it some more tactical options. It would be incredibly easy to control 10-15-20 characters in this simple system with no time pressure, and involving the entire expedition in most fights would have made the game more fun AND the scenarios more believable. As it is, I feel like I'm directing an expedition of conquistadors to the new world when I'm playing on the main map. When combat starts I feel like I am playing a poorly designed video game. This game badly needs an auto-resolve option, but doesn't have one. Everything about the game outside combat is awesome, the devs did an incredible job with the gameworld and story, and I absolutely love the historical scenario. But the combat is the meat of the game, and this makes it very hard to enjoy the atmosphere and storytelling.
