I played and completed Planescape Torment earlier this year, and someone said that Baldur's Gate is even better. So far the game is not that good. The graphics are much worse than in Planescape Torment, and the pacing is very bad (no running, for example). Is the problem with me, or is this game really not as good as they say it is?

Maybe you won't listen to this someone next time.

For faster movement you could cheat in boots of speed if you don't mind cheating or If you have BG2 there's a mod which lets you play BG with the BG2 engine which faster movement speed.

I guess it would depend on what you are looking for. For dialogue, setting and story purposes most would probably rate Torment the better one. BG is more about adventuring and killing stuff. :)

It's a matter of personal preference.

As far as moving around the map - if you enable cheat keys then CTRL-J will jump you to any area on the current map. Not really recommended for the first run through the game, but it's a great time-saver for later runs.

Well, I didn't explore everything so I think I'll replay Planescape Torment again and play Fallout and Baldur's Gate some other time, with that BG2 mod kmonster mentioned.

Well, Baldur's Gate I isn't better than Planescape Torment.

Gameplay-wise, Torment improved almost all aspects of Baldur's Gate (and it's narrative causes it to be a very different game). It's unfortunate that Baldur's Gate II didn't include some of these changes. I cannot play BG1 in vanilla anymore because I know how much better some small changes made BG2. That's why I use BGT (Baldur's Gate Trilogy), which puts both games + expansion in one huge game using the BG2-engine.

While BG1 is a good game, some of the gameplay quirks that it has can cause great grief if you're used to better versions.

Character walking speed is a bit on the slow side in vanilla BG1. BG2 hit a better balance there, and it's possible to take advantage of that by playing BG1 in the BG2 engine with BG1Tutu. I wouldn't recommend Tutu for a first playthrough though. Just try to get used to it. I strongly advise against cheating in boots of speed or using any cheats, it'll ruin the experience.

Pacing in BG1 is just different. There's less talking and reading, more fighting. Battles are difficult and tactical, so the slow character walking speed will actually help you control better there.

About graphics, I'm not sure what you mean. The outdoor environments in BG1 are lush and still a pleasure to look at today. Indoors are detailed and quite believable. All the monsters look impressive and have convincing animations. Personally I was somewhat put off by the much more drab color palette in PS:T. Both games run in 640x480, both have a widescreen mod for arbitrary resolutions. Also if you install BG1Tutu you get the graphical improvements of BG2 (openGL acceleration, higher res support).

I would say Baldur's Gate is a better RPG than PS:T, but PS:T is a better adventure game.

I'd agree with that. PS:T is probably the best IE RPG that I've played. It's less combat driven, but everything else is so much better. BG1 was a pretty hack interpretation of 2e D&D rules. BG2 improves on things, but then they muck it up with overblown epic levels/HLAs/magic. I wouldn't say BG battles are terribly difficult, though. The hardest fight I've ever faced in the BG series (i.e. have had the most reloads) was Tarnesh outside of the Friendly Arm Inn. He wasn't terribly uber, but having such a low level group meant it only took a single horror spell and a couple magic missiles for a game over.

If you're looking for more combat and better pacing, try Icewind Dale 1 or 2. It's the opposite end of the spectrum as PS:T (less deep story, lots more fighting), but they're both better paced and better system implementations (2e and 3e respectively) than BG.

I must confess I found the game rather boring myself. I mean, Planescape's story was just so gripping, while Baldur's Gate had a story that felt like a big bowl of cliches. Oh, sorry buddy, I guess that nearby beast tribe is killing your town. I wish I could muster up even one care to give, but is that really all there is to this moment? What about time/space dragons reshaping reality and missing their mother? I want THOSE!

I kid though. I can see why some would like these sorts of games. Heck, the basic design of interaction with things is extremely well done. It's just that, well, for me exactly none of my choices actually resonated with me, because the characters didn't resonate, because the world itself, even the setting, was exceedingly dull to me. Yes, I know that it's just the sort of thing that sword and sorcery stories do, but frankly I actually don't enjoy most sword and sorcery stories. I find them just as dull. I think I got spoiled by SNES Squaresoft games, which promised me settings ranging from "WW2 steampunk with magical animals" to "time travelling to fight an alien with the power of the living planet" to "your sword is literally EVERY legendary weapon through history, now first befriend the living embodiment of every school of magic and then go kill death and a luck dragon from atop a flying technomagic fortress". It's kinda hard for sword and sorcery alone to compete with that in my head space. If the same is true for you, then yes, Planescape Torment is going to be your jam, as it was mine.

That all sounded rather harsh, but let me be clear. Different genres interest different people, and I can see myself liking this if my genre tastes were different, because it is on every technical level an excellent game.

Yes, Baldur's Gate is boring. The one recommend has some logic like this:

Baldur's Gate is better than nothing,
Nothing is better than PS:T,
Therefore, Baldur's Gate is better than PS:T

Honestly, BG is a good game back when it just released. It is no longer worth playing now.

I feel like you're trying to compare a hamburger to a filet mignon. It doesn't mean the hamburger isn't delicious.

Always beware of someone who describes every one else's fun as 'boring'.

This is usually an indicator that the person is a boring person.

To some people, Baldur's Gate can be boring, yes. It's much more run-off-the-mill fantasy than Planescape is. (And indeed, it's paced slower, and the graphics are more zoomed out, making everything smaller but showing more of the surroundings.)

Baldur's Gate is high fantasy.
Planescape: Torment is... weird stuff.

They are both good games, but if you were hoping to play another PS:T, Baldur's Gate is not the right game. No game probably is. PS:T is unique, and it's often considered the best RPG (story-wise) ever created. It's like playing a novel.

Personally, I disagree.

When installing the Widescreen mod, setting the game to 800x600 so it perfectly scales 2x in 1600x1200 on a 1920x1200 monitor, combined with TWM_GUI to fix (most of) the GUI problems, BG1 is still very playable. IMHO, one should play BG1 before starting BG2, or the latter game will probably be very difficult.

If just upping the resolution one notch is not enough, you can try EasyTuTu to run the game in the bG2 engine, but to my mind, it changes gameplay way too much, gives weird weapon proficiencies, and creates the possibility to greatly overpower characters. Maybe BG:Trilogy is better in this regard, but I have never tried it.

OK, BG1 can't hold up to its spiritual successors, Dragon Age and Pillars of Eternity (the latter maybe even more so), but to say it's not worth playing anymore isn't true. That's like saying the classics (books and movies) are not worth reading or watching nowadays. A classic will stay a classic... although in the case of computer games, it may be harder to keep them running and playable in the future.

Even if they run, the graphics can and will become problematic. After 4K monitors and perfect OS upscaling take over in a few years, Vanilla BG1 in 640x480 will probably become unplayable. Maybe a 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 version, upscaled 2x on a 24 inch 3840x2400 monitor will be sharp enough, but the characters will be tiny....

Agreed.

Although, the technical hurdles in getting older PC games to run on new Windows may change dramatically in the future. Recently, I've read in the news that Internet Explorer will no longer be a part of future Windows OS.

Is it true that Internet Explorer is the reason why a majority of the older Windows games cannot run properly on Windows 7 & 8.x?