I am playing Torment for the first time, complete version (all fixpacks, mods, widescreen+gui mod,tweaks..basically this version http://thunderpeel2001.blogspot.com/2009/01/planescape-torment-fully-modded.html ) and it is fucking awesome! :)
This applies only in the beginning when you have super shitty gun / shotgun.Once you get better weapons, the difference in power is brutal.Also, headshots always help. But as Navagon said, even if you do not like the difficulty in the beginning, you can at least mod it.

Yeah, when you need only a couple of bullets per kill then you'll definitely be finding more than you lose. But keep in mind that they only need a couple of well placed shots to kill you too.
The mod in question is James Blake's Weapon Revamp Mod.
But I'd recommend you install the STALKER Complete 2009 first.

Well, if I were operating on what I would expect to find in reality, I wouldn't be in the zone in the first place. I'm not playing the game, though, so I guess that's what I'm doing. :p
People tell me that the objective is to conserve supplies and survive, but the best way to do that seems to be to experience as little of the game world as possible, and I just can't see the fun in that.
It's not that combat was too difficult, it was that it was tedious. It's not a run-and-gun game, obviously - I wasn't trying to play it that way, but hiding behind a wall plugging the same guy two dozen times (especially if you're fighting at a moderate distance with that inaccurate pistol) is just dumb.

I wish I had those on my first playtrough. I'm playing it with these exact modifications (well... On netbook, so I'm not using widescreen mod) for about bizilionth time (I've finished the game only 2 times, but started playing it (and got at least to the half of the game) many, many more times). Also, this is the first time I'm playing it without Czech translation, which may be good, but it just can't compare to the original. English in that game IS pretty hard.
Oh... Yeah... Kinda hijacking thread, sorry. Every time I'm playing PST I can't talk about anything else. Since I'm playing STALKER as well right now, I am capable of talking about that one as well... A bit :D

Thanks. The complete mod looks like it's mostly minor tweaks and aesthetics (plus some unspecified bug fixes). Does it make a big difference?

I haven't actually tried it, personally. I completed STALKER a couple of times before that mod came out and I haven't been tempted to pick the game back up due to the number of barely played games I have at the moment.
But it does seem to offer many improvements across every aspect of the game, without changing the nature of the game in the way Oblivion Lost does.
This seems to provide a better description of what the mod does.

Oh... is there by chance a mod that makes the enemies actually react to being shot? Maybe my brain is just making things up, but I seem to remember that enemy AI didn't even flinch when struck by gunfire until they died. That really punched a hole in the experience for me.

Wow that Call of Pripyat video looks amazing. STALKER was one of the freshest FPSes in years for me, I still occassionally play it. I loved the exploration and, let's face it, effing hard difficulty. No hand-holding in the zone, boys. No megasupersuits MK2. No portable nuclear weapons.

As per the link I added in at the bottom of that post, it does add many AI enhancements. But I can't honestly say I've ever had a problem where the enemy doesn't react to you. Maybe you were playing a completely unpatched, or otherwise broken version of the game? The game needs to be fully patched just to be playable.

Possibly. It could have just been a side effect of the three-foot-thick body armor they were all apparently wearing. :p

I found this video of the starting mission where you have to clear some thugs out of a couple of buildings. It seems a bit flaky - sometimes the enemy AI will flinch when shot, and sometimes it seems they just don't care (even though they've clearly been hit, judging from the shouts and blood splats). It might be that those rounds struck armored or non-vital body parts, especially with the starting pistol being as erratic as it is. It's not as bad as I remember, though, I'm sure I could get used to it, especially with more damaging weapons.
Weirdly, though, the last guy is completely oblivious to the player. I think it's just that specific guy that's bugged, though, because now that I've watched this video, I can clearly remember that the same thing happened to me in the exact same spot.

Yeah, that's clearly a bug. I've seen them focus on other threats, but not when they're out of sight like that.

What you say is true, but any game which requires mods just to play is going to turn off a LOT of people...particularly console crowds who have certain expectations.

Which is why PC players are so special. We nuture those quiet, small developer releases, seeing the diamond in the rough.
STALKER SoC is an amazing game, although I'd definitely recommend anyone playing it to install the Complete 2009 (now v1.4.1 with some nice improvements).
Re: comments abouts text and exploration - I don't quite get Weclock's comments. The Fallouts (1, 2, and, importantly, 3) have far more text, for example. STALKER provides a pretty limited amount of dialogue that is almost completely ignorable. As to stashes not having anything but ammo and old boots, that's kinda the point. You don't know what's gonna be there, it's exciting. I've found a Jellyfish artifact after fighting tooth and nail to get to a stash (which is highly disappointing), but I've also found amazing armour and weaponry.
The game's engine is kinda cranky, but it's really atmospheric, something lot of other games don't quite achieve. It's certainly not ugly in my book though. And with Complete 2009, the textures and lighting (oh boy, the lighting) are amazing.
STALKER was praised for it's awesome bullet physics. Sometimes, especially at long range, you're not even hitting your target. But you sink an AP bullet into someone's head, and they'll probably go down in one.