Planescape: Torment was way ahead of its time. It is a great game, with an excellent story. The characters, individually, are amongst the best; deep backstories, interesting personality quirks. The setting is the Planescape plane of the Dungeons and Dragons universe, the hub plane for the rest (Baldur’s Gate’s Forgotten Realms, the traditional/original DnD, etc). It is unlike any setting you have seen, in any media. The massive amount of dialog used to deliver this story, however, is presented with the Baldur’s Gate engine. Dialog trees stretch sometimes up to 15 options, each with several subcategories, with several more sub-sub categories, each with multiple pages of text. Key conversations can take a long time to absorb all of the information. These conversations are well written. Some people have taken the dialog, and strung it together into a novel. The delivery has heavy hints of Memento (several years before). You play the game as a character that can never be killed. Every time you are defeated in combat, you simply wake up on a slab in the mortuary. The challenge comes from what to do next: discovering who you were, why things are happening, and what to do next. You truly role play as this amnesic main character, trying to discover who you are in a strange environment. The overall plot is in the 3 acts, and none of them disappoint. Even the ending holds up (I’m looking at you, Bioshock). I played the original CD version, which needed some unofficial files to get the program in its proper state: Fan patches help: http://www.bootstrike.com/Torment/files.html Also, make sure to power up your Willpower, Int, and Charisma. And playing as a Mage makes sense with an emphasis on these stats (an option presented as the game progresses) I passed by this game when it was initially released. The advertising for the game was awful. I wanted to play it until I saw the first ad. The real actor portraying the Nameless One was a poor decision, but I’m glad I went back and retro-gamed this. I highly recommend this game. It is considered the greatest RPG, and is a great game. But you must *know* patience to *know* this. *Review originally posted on my blog a few years ago, here: http://www.donttellmetheending.com/2008/02/planescape-torment-is-the-greatest-game-every-made-know-that-it-was-made-too-early/
