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.

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.

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?

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

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.

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

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.

Stands the test of time - my garbled gamer brain almost dropped this after being lost in the Mortuary for an hour, but I'm glad I stuck it out. This title is often lauded as one of the best written games ever, and it's really no wonder why: it's wickedly sharp, hilarious, and confronts the genre in surprising and thoughtful ways. Admittedly, the game is quite outdated visually (obviously, it came out in 1999) and the combat is horrible, but I still found it an incredibly compelling experience, warts and all.

playing through this after having played disco elysium was a bit of a bizarre experience and really cemented the latter's existence as a spiritual successor to the former even more in my mind

Working your way through the mystery of the nameless one and the mark he left behind on Sigil (which is a crazy cool setting, btw) was utterly enthralling. The dialogue holds up even after all these years and Morte/TNO's voice acting is incredible. I love all the philosophical and silly conversations you can get into in this game.

Definitely recommend to fans of DE