Play the game, it is an worthwhile experience. Just don't go in expecting Baldur's Gate, as while they share the same engine, Torment is hardly about combat.

^This pretty much says what you need to know. The game play can be slightly obnoxious, but the story is worth playing through for sure.

I would have to go with the side that says don't get it. Now, I only played it for half an hour, because that's how long it took me to get utterly sick of it. Clunky dialogue options for anyone who tries to free-form, especially the lack of ability to ask questions that you actually want answered, as well as being near impossible to find where to go to advance plotlines OR find new ones.

I agree with the asking question thing things, one of my favorite things in RPG's, from Ultima to RoA to Fallout, was the keyword text-parser system, Fallout kinda combined the two, having some dialogue options available as a closeable text-line, but also the ability to ask questions by typing words.

I agree with the majority.
This game is fantastic and should be played by all fans of mature CRPGS.
The story and characters alone are worth it.
If the gameplay sucked this game would still be a cult hit because of those reasons.
Still much more fresh of a setting than all the Diablo and party based clones as well.

I have a totally serious question to ask of the Planescape critics and I have become genuinly fascinated by the turn of the thread. I'd like to know from the critics what they consider to be great RPGS. Specifically from HiPhish; you make a brilliant argument but I'd like to have a model of something you like to compare it too. I myself don't care what people call it or where it falls categorically. So long as it's fun, let them call it anything they want, I'll still play.

I won't argue about games as art, because it's a pointless argument and comes down to your personal view of what is or is not art. Truth is, however, that I read quite a lot, I watch movies and TV series, I listen to music and play videogames. And of all that, Planescape was a work that's had a very substantial inpact on how I percieve life and people around me. That's not something I made up just for the heck of it, when I started playing Planescape, I went into it without expectations. By the time I have finished, the game made me reconsider a lot of my viewpoints about life. And to the 'it's well written for a videogame' - no, it is well-written, period. It's not level of writing of greatest novels in our time, true, nevertheless it's level of writing competitive with most books I have red. Now that I've got that out of the way, another important point to remember is: PS:T is a game just as any other. Just because most (and the most important part) of the gameplay consists of reading text and making your choices don't magically turn it into ... eh ... No gameplay whatsoever.

Planescape: Torment is a different approach to RPG than most RPGs take, it is an RPG nevertheless. From this and the rest of your post, it seems that in your definition, RPG = stats. And.... Well, if that is your definition then yes, Planescape is a very poor RPG, because it's not about stats at all, it is, however, most and above all about roleplaying. I'll grab this bit for example:

That's a minmaxer speaking, and ... Well that's just not what PST is about. I do partly agree that I'd recommend anyone who's playing the game for the first time to play a character with maxed out wisdom and intelligence and as many points into charisma as possible, simple because I feel that this allows you to get to the most quality content. However, Planescape is not about winning, it's not about getting the most powerful character possible, it's about experience. And as a fighter with high strength, dexterity and constitution, you will get a substatially different experience than character with the 'mind' stats maxed out - there are many physically oriented choices troughout the game, and going for physical stats often removes 'easy way out' of some conversations, which makes quite a bit of difference in many situations. You were also talking about grinding experience: I've never done that, yet I've finished the game multiple times, so it's clearly not needed at all.

True, combat is not good at all. But it can mostly be avoided or just rushed trough.

Well... I'd say you were playing it wrong. Many bits of RPG mechanics were implemented badly, but there were many others which were implemented well, like great use of some items or stats. And I have finished the game multiple times and never have I felt like the RPG mechanics get in the way in any way, shape or form - sometimes they felt 'out of place,' but they never felt like an obstruction.

And yet again you've started to talk about roleplaying and ended up talking about mechanics. For one, you don't really know the reward either will give you (unless you're save spamming, which just doesn't have anything to do with roleplaying at all, that's just pretty cheating.) Furthermore, this is not an issue of Planescape, most RPGs give better rewards for the 'good' characters than for the evil ones. And now let's look at the good aspects of roleplaying, shall we? Choices and consequences. On many occasions, what you do can have unexpected results, and there are quite a few choices that just return to bite you in the ass later on. You have a substantial influence on your companions and often on the world around you, and everything you do eventually leads to some end. As far as I'm concerned, this is a pinnacle of roleplaying.

All in all, it comes down to this: From what I have understood from your post, as far as you are concerned, RPG = stats. That's just not my opinion at all, and I do believe it's an utterly wrong way to approach Planescape, because Planescape... Well, Planescape is quite simply an experience. Utterly amazing if flawed one, and to date one of the best videogame stories I have ever played trough - and for me, story is one of the most important things about a videogame.
Decisionmaking and storytelling IS gameplay in Planescape. Dear god people, you should finally get over the notion that gameplay equals killing things.

I played it for the first time a few months back, I really enjoyed it.

Just keep in mind that there will be a lot of reading. Also; I advise you to only put skill points into Charisma/Wisdom/Intelligence, and try to ignore combat as much as you possibly can.

If you are purely into Min/Maxing your characters then in every single game with combat ever made your choices will never matter. All you ever need is health and improved damage to ever get through games that have combat in them. However, that does not mean it's the most fun to play. What about role-players that like to play stupid characters, or overly strong, etc? What about if they want to role-play a character that would fit the world and thus (in this instance) not have the best stats in all areas/certain areas since you were just dead?


Sorry to break it to you but what you just described as role-playing is not role-playing. If you are truly RPing an evil character then you would do the evil thing no matter the reward. Doing as you described is a typical min/max scenario. You minimize the damage and maximize the reward. You know what will get you the best so you do that instead of roleplaying what your character would do and receive whatever reward you would normally get.

When you are truly RPing it doesn't matter what rewards you get for your actions, it matters what your actions are and accepting the consequences of those actions.

Well, bought it last night and got all the essential mods ready so gonna wade into it sometime later today. Really interested now to try such a dividing game!

It's not really dividing, Planescape is one of the few games that's widely accepted for how fantastic it is. It's just a vocal minority of people who:
a) claim it's not an RPG (which is not really a criticism as far as I'm concerned, I mean really... let's say it's not an RPG. ... so fucking what?)
b) don't really care about story in a game or story plays a little part in their enjoyment of a videogame
c) Just don't really like blocks of text

That's a tricky question. I'd say that a game, any game, that offers the player options must make sure all those options are equally valid, none may be better than the other. That's not to say you should be able to beat the game with any random build, but if you let the player be a warior, rogue, mage and diplomat all of those have to be equally rewarding. What good is being able to play as a stealth character when you're going to lock me into a close-quarter boss fight? This is exactly what happened in Arx Fatalis, I thought it would be cool to role-play as a sneaky bastard and it worked until I had to fight a demon. Now, if there was some way to avoid that fight, sneak aroud it or anything but a heads on confrontation, then it would have been fine. But it just made me angry that the game designers gave me a choice and then punished me for taking it.

I think the most important part is that the game is "honest". Diablo doesn't give you the option of stealth or diplomacy and that's fine, the game is honest. Arcanum did the role-playing part pretty well by making sure that each choice you take locks down certain path but opens up new ones. If you want to be diplomatic you can assemble a large party which will compensate for your offensive shortcomings when needed. Again, the pary size and your diplomtic skills depend on your stats, so it makes sense that they are there. Unfortunatly, Arcanum is an unfinished mess, or else it woud have been role-playing heaven.

See, I'm not saying that an RPG must focus on stats, but if it has stats then it must use them. My entire criticism is that the game gives you mechanics and then punishes you for using them in any way other than the ideal. I tried paying the game without the min-max approach on my fist run but it was just painfully bad. If I don't pump my diplomatic skills I cannot avoid the combat and then the entire game is just bad. If you give the player a choice then all those choices must be equally valid.

BTW, just out of curiosity, how old were you when you played PS:T first? The story seems to have more of an impact on teenagers.
No, "evil" in the D&D sense, at least the way it's explaind in the manuals for my PC games, means you are going to do whtever it takes to achieve our selfish goals and if it means backstabbing another evil character you will do it. You won't kill the devil beause it's the good thing to do, but because it's better for you. Now if the devil offered you something better you would takes his side while a good character would still kill the devil because the devil is evil. An evil character won't help the devil just because he's a fellow evil, evil is not like some club where its members help each other out.

Problem is that you're still looking at the game from the mechanics standpoint. And as far as RPG mechanics go, it's... Well it's not that bad actually, you can use a lot of physical stats during conversations as well, but yeah, you've got to suffer trough more combat. Not really an issue on my part, the combat bits always seemed short enough to me.

But as for storytelling mechanics, they're just great. And not because you don't get equal rewards for completing quests, but because, for the large part, you get satisfying results for completing quests. They're quite simply well-written, and ... well you can just ignore the mechanics if you don't like them, the game doesn't punish you for doing that at all. I do agree that the game doesn't make full use of RPG mechanics, but it uses them well enough.

So basically, feel free to ignore those bits you dilike. Except for combat, Planescape allows you to do that. And it's just weird to focus on bad parts of the game as opposed to enjoying the good ones.

16 or 17-ish, so yeah. But just about everything has more impact on teenagers, I mean, when you're an adult, your opinions and worldview are formed are pretty damn hard to change. Add to that that videogame stories, especially those which give you choices, have a much bigger impact on me than any other form of storytelling: I feel like I'm responsible for what is going on and it makes me care much more.
Trouble is, you can't possibly know what the devil is going to give you unless you're cheating, and evil chracter will be more inclined to help another evil character when given the choice. Well, usually.

I don't know if age has anything to do with how much one loves or hates a storey. I don't doubt you can find a demographic study to prove me wrong but as an avid reader and writer I'm just interested in a story period. So long as its in anyway enthralling for me, realism progression and character become side points for me; do they affect it? Absolutly. Do they make or break it? Not so fast. Side note: I'm on cold meds as I'm writing this so if is a nonsensiecle mess I probably wont realize it until tomorrow.