My journey across The Planes has taken me to places that most men believe exist only in the realm of thought. These places I travelled to, the people I met, and the conversations I had fundamentally changed me as a person. I don’t fully know how, but regardless, I know some sort of change occurred. Perhaps writing about my experience with Planescape will help me better understand these changes and the person I am today.

When I was 14, I discovered Planescape: Torment, and while I thought the game was awesome, I could never really engage with the questions the game posed to me. I mean, how could I? What would the question “What can change the nature of a man?” mean to a 14-year-old who was only beginning to grapple with the concept of its own being? Looking back, it meant nothing to me. Now that I am an adult, however, the question means much more to me. Part of me is ashamed to admit I haven’t always been a ‘good’ person. Learning to be kind, understanding, mature, and responsible took me many years of struggling and hardship to achieve. Even today, I still struggle with this, but through that struggle, I came to learn more about myself and my nature. I can’t fully codify into words what my “nature” or “self” are because they are concepts that exist beyond language. Language can at times be limiting, so I look to art to help me look inward and better conceptualise these thoughts and feelings. I feel as though Planescape stirred the part of my soul that sought these answers, and despite it not giving me concrete answers, I feel satisfied with the new questions it posed to me. To me, good art never seeks to speak for the reader but instead provides them with the tools necessary to create subjective meaning from the experience they have with it. I believe Planescape does this quite well; I’d even go so far as to argue that it fully agrees with me here. When The Nameless One is posed the question, “What can change the nature of a man?” the game does not have him provide a concrete answer to the player. Instead, we are left with the game giving us the tools necessary to begin constructing our own answer to that question as the credits roll. Currently, I don't have an answer to that question, and I'm not sure if I will even have one a decade from now, but I'm okay with that. Part of growing up meant that I had to learn to be content with not always having an answer for everything; perhaps not every question needed an answer.

There’s more I could write, but perhaps it’s best that some things remain unwritten. I would love to endlessly navel-gaze, but that wouldn’t do me or you, the reader, any good. I apologise to anyone here who expected a formal review and was met instead by my self-indulgent introspection. There's really not much I can say about Planescape that hasn't already been said; it's an awesome ass game, and it deserves the reputation it has made for itself, enough said.

Anyways, I’d like to end this short write-up by saying that if you haven’t already played Planescape: Torment, you owe it to yourself to take that journey across The Planes. Sigil is known as the ‘City of Doors’, after all, so why don’t you look inside and see where one of them takes you?

This is possibly the most ambitious game I have ever played. It drips with excellent writing at every turn, contemplates the philosophy of self, of suffering, and one's effect on the world. It is a shame that the medium of this game often devolves into dreary combat, but that's even more of a sign that this game was ahead of its time. Any points it loses in gameplay it makes up with ambition, care, and introspection. The macabre setting roots and unites all the shades of what the game has to offer, and The Nameless One is one of the most interesting video game protagonists ever created. I am going to be thinking about this one for a long time.

Okay so this game is not perfect by any means, it’s often annoying with how clunky it is and how broken the enhanced edition can be. Quests can break and sometimes you’ll have to reload a previous save to redo a whole section just to see story relevant information. The whole game is outdated but it’s also one of the best written pieces of fiction I’ve ever had the pleasure of reading. Most of my time playing this game was reading, like others have said this is just a glorified visual novel.

The characters are great and there are really poignant lines of dialogue that I’ll never forget, especially at the end of the game. I played as a mage for this play through and it definitely helped with dialogue because the stats overlap for the “optimal build.” There are definitely parts in the game that I could’ve approached differently, especially some beginning sections but that’s the beauty of rpgs. This game definitely encourages multiple play throughs.

I’m a fan of Dungeons and Dragons so this was both familiar and also new territory. The world of Sigil and the other areas you go to was a delight to explore. I loved the visuals of the game, it was really well made and each area felt distinct from one another.

The rpg mechanics are a little lackluster and the combat irritated me until I learned to actually pause the game and manipulate each party member’s actions individually. It took to me too long to figure that out instead of just having everyone selected and attack one enemy. That was a recipe for disaster from halfway onwards.

However like previously stated the best part about the game is the story. It’s just so captivating, beautiful, poignant, and often times mind-bending. The deep philosophical themes and the fullest use of itself setting to tell a story that not many other fictional settings can is some of the game’s strong suits. The stuff with your companions are great and learning more about this awesome but you gotta go out your way to do that.

I played this on my Steam Deck and despite how unoptimized it was, I actually feel like this is a perfect game to play on the go. I don’t like sitting down for long periods of time so it was a blessing that I could just take this game anywhere and play. I definitely recommend this game if you can handle how old it is, I say the story is more than worth it. The game is glorious. You’ll just have to endure. Endure. In enduring, grow strong.

Planescape: Torment has been high on my playlist ever since I first heard about it. Recently, it's been placed next to Disco Elysium as one of the few most important narrative RPGs ever made, and previously it just was the most important narrative RPG ever made. It was not, however, highly anticipated enough for me to understand that I'd be immersed enough to play for over 6 hours on my first session.

The artifice of digitized tabletop campaigns comes in the idea of adapting an infinite playground without the restrictions of scheduling or prepping a campaign. It's about the splendor of seeing and exploring a place, doing anything and talking to anybody and being shown a reaction for every action within the bounds of the world. Torment delivers little such agency to the player, or to its protagonist. Even in death there is no autonomy, as the Nameless One finds himself stuck in an endless loop of dying and reawakening only to wander the land and attempt to find himself over and over again. He has already accomplished the feats you expect from a power fantasy campaign, only in ages past, long before the game ever took place.

The game takes place in the most boundless setting in the D&D universe and beyond, as Sigil, the city of doors, lays firmly in the center of the multiverse itself. The narrative, however, makes Sigil a claustrophobic and restrictive place. The first you hear about these doors, it is from an NPC's paranoid ramblings about being trapped, unable to return to her true home after decades of wandering the city, fearful that any door or archway will open up and devour her as it sends her someplace worse. The city rearranges itself around its occupants, constant construction making the streets feel almost sentient as they shift themselves, even the most experienced explorers of the planes unsure of what form it will take next.

Torment is not for everyone, and much like most of my other favorite games it doesn't care for being traditionally "fun" or action-packed like its contemporaries in the Baldur's Gate series, rather reveling in its subversions of the medium as an art form rather than a plaything. Its real game starts in understanding its philosophy. Listed among the most profound games of all time by academics and essayists, its mechanical choices inform its main themes on human nature and what immortality really means as we're forced to face our past choices and repeat an endless cycle. Is it better to leave behind a life full of memories, content with the limits of mortality, or live forever but inevitably forget yourself in the cycle of searching for some deeper meaning to it all?

I don't think I've ever played a game that offers a story as intricate as Planescape. The basic question of the game is really interesting and it makes you think about how you would answer this question yourself. The different characters, both NPC and party members, were the big highlight for me. In general, I loved the dark mood and enjoyed every minute of exploring this crazy world. Combat wasn't necessarily much fun, but it can often be avoided through clever dialog. Definitely a game for my all time favorites list and perhaps the best writing I've ever seen.

I picked this game up sometime in 2017-2018 and
even though I loved the atmosphere and was able to get used to the immense amounts of paragraphs and text, I still really disliked the way it played and the way it looked on my screen.
So for the next 5 years, I'd pick it up, play for a couple minutes to an hour and then drop it again. Either because I was frustrated about the combat or a quest bugged out for whatever reason.

So it's really weird to say that after all this time, I feel as if I just said goodbye to an old friend.

I don't have any deep or detailed observations nor any minute play by play on how or why the writing is good or bad. I don't remember every single lore thing, I really couldn't tell you. There were many times the game was buggy or the writing felt l kind of amateur-ish or went on for too long (I don't think it's a masterpiece or the best game of all time)

...I've ended this game experience feeling really good about it.

I don't know, I liked it, lol.

Janky combat and a somewhat rushed late-game does not stop this from being a revolutionary game in the CRPG landscape (even today there is still nothing quite like it, afaik). The story and writing is excellent in this one, with goofy but likeable and fully fleshed-out side characters, and not too superficial philosophical musings (it's not that deep, but keep in mind that the other major isometric crpgs that went out before this were the first two Fallout games and Baldur's Gate -- I'll also throw in the Ultima series and Diablo so as to not only cite Infinity Engine games, but hey, you get the point). The lore-dumping can be a little bit too apparent at times, but is balanced out by how fascinating and bizarre the Planescape setting is. It really feels so new when compared to the tamer, more standard DnD setting of Baldur's Gate. Finally, the ugly low budget late-90s 3D graphics may seem off-putting for a while, but in the end it fits the strange atmosphere perfectly. An excellent game overall.

(as a necessary fair warning, the game is a tad "passively" misogynistic at times, which is, of course, a bit unavoidable in games from that era, but still. it's also written mostly by Chris Avellone, a fact which may be understandably off-putting for some, given some recent events)

To review Planescape: Torment... would be condescendent. Hands down the best written novel in existence. One can spend hours and hours writing about it, reviewing it, and it would be simply not enough: you have to experience it. It's best to just say that, this game will change your life.
Simply hearing about it still sends shivers down my spine, after all these years. And i played it a ton, i know everything about it... Yet, it still makes my whole being tremble by just looking at the artwork on the cover even if i've seen it a million times.
This game is like a father to me.

Edit: editing this review, backloggd did the most hylarious thing it could. A pop-up, saying "You've updated your journal".
This game is everything.

amk nasıl oynuyonuz siz bunları ya rastgele bir npcye tıklıyom yaralara bakılırsa bacağı kopmuş götten yemiş annesini pazarda kaybetmiş kolundan kahverengi bir sıvı akıyor sorulara cevap verecek zeka seviyesi yok bakireliğini yeni kaybetmiş borsa kaplanını takip ediyor 3 ayrı suç kaydı var yazıyor gerçi böyle yazsa zevkli olurdu ama bu detay seviyesinde ilgi çekici olmayan şeyler yazıyor birde her şeyi okuman gerekiyor oyunda hani hızlıca basıp geçeyim de yapamıyorsun ama oyunun asıl olayı etkileşime geçmek ve hikaye zaten oynanış bok gibi ulan etkileşime geçince çıkan yazılar da dünyanın en sıkıcı ve ilgi çekici olmayan şeyi alttaki bardan okuması zevkli değil zaten çok kötü sunum var diyeceğim ama sunum yok direkt hep böyle gereksiz betimlenmiş boşuna uzatılmış şeyler dolu tamam oynanış bok gibi yazılar ilgi çekici değil ve gram etkilemiyor ama yazım çok iyi diye bir bahane yok maalesef oynarken 1 saniye zevk almadım birdaha crpg filan oynamam

one of the most beautiful, resonant, and stirring passages i've ever read occurs in this, but i had to use console commands to access it because the inventory system meant i had lost an item 12 hours prior without knowing. i wish i could force a copy of tokimeki memorial into the hands of everybody at black isle in 1998 and tell them that it's okay to make stats only matter for dialogue and short, scripted sequences. very cool to see what CRPGs could look like if they weren't, spiritually, set in the forgotten realms for the rest of time.

OK, let's start with the bad.

The combat in this game is, at its best points, quick and unobtrusive. Real time with pause is a fucking scam and I can't believe every D&D-related game at the turn of the century got tricked into using it. There are sections which are just a long string of fights, and these are the game's nadir.

I have no idea how anyone who doesn't already understand AD&D knows what the fuck is going on mechanically. AC is descending, but items that improve it will be written as plusses. THAC0 isn't impossible to understand, but you need to actually explain it. How do saves work? Planescape will not tell you.

I also encountered a late game bug that wouldn have hard stopped me from finishing if I didn't use console commands. It's from that era of jank I guess.

So why 5 stars? What makes this an incredible experience for me is the world, story, and the characters that inhabit both of these things. It's a tale that tries to tackle personhood and the nature of belief and while it hardly nails it every time, this ambition leads it to some fun, clever, sad and unique places you probably won't see anywhere else. It's a central ethos that is reflected in all things.

It's amazing how often Dungeons and Dragons, a game that is notionally about exploring worlds beyond imagination, is afraid to truly get fantastical, and this is maybe the only official thing that's stepped up to the plate.

I wish I'd stuck with this when I first had a go back in the mid 2000s, it probably would have taken root firmly in my brain and never left. As it stands, I'm incredibly happy I gave it a second chance.

It's hard not to play this game and mourn the potential of what what it could have been. Playing it 25 years after release it's easy to imagine how special it was when it came out, but to me it falls short of what I really wanted it to be.

There is clearly a ton of love and creativity that went into this game. The setting, the story, and the character concepts are wonderful. I started the game excited about the themes and questions it was asking, but by the end I was totally let down by its failure to answer them in a meaningful way. Most characters are totally underwritten and there's an undercurrent of misogyny that really hurts some of the major narrative beats and is honestly just annoying. There are a few successful moments that really shine but also make me think about the game that I wish was here.

The combat, of course, is awful, but you still have to waste your time with it. And there is plenty of additional wasted time going through the same dialogue tree with countless characters (have you seen a journal?? do you know anything about ravel puzzlewell??). This time could have been much better spent fleshing out the world and characters.

I loved the game I thought would come out of this, but in the end it just consistently let me down.

As a game? Kinda sucks. As a story though? Pretty mediocre 😭 everything dealing with the nameless ones past incarnations is really good especially all the scenes at the end (the bronze sphere sequence ♥️) they really just hit all notes extremely well but everything else just did nothing for me sadly. Hate when something I’m hoping to love just makes me feel nothing especially when it’s a long rpg!!! Could rant on and on about my issues with the game but that’s boring and I don’t care enough to write negative reviews I do want to end the review on a positive note and say that I love Ravel Puzzlewell and she is a dear friend of mine

the game barely works half the time and the amount of fiddling and fuckery i found required in my run which at one point saw all my companions getting duplicated and fucking up a quest didn't detract from one of the best meditations on mortality and how funny skulls are ever.

fuck the rat

Edit: Nordom is my son