A stunning experience from beginning to end.
User Rating: 9.3 | Planescape: Torment PC
To start with I might as well mention that this review contains NO SPOILERS. From the moment you begin Torment, you'll realize you're playing a game like no other. From the fact that your character, the Nameless One, wakes up in the gruesome and disturbing Mortuary, to how you are almost immediately afterward accosted by Morte -- a wise-cracking, floating skull. The game also relies a lot more on speech than it does on combat, so if you are looking for a carnage-filled, adventuring-extravaganza like Baldur's Gate II or Icewind Dale, then Torment is not for you. The character generation at the very beginning of Torment is far shorter and simpler than that of Fallout, or Baldur's Gate, as you only have to pick your stats. No abilities, no class, no perks, nothing besides your starting statistics. The game itself is the character generation system, so to speak. During the game you have many opportunities to increase your stats through quests, conversations, and the like. As the game starts you begin with a "True Neutral" alignment, but you can change that quickly enough by your actions in the game. For example, snapping the neck of a hapless Dustman in one of the game's first areas makes you a bit more evil, whereas helping save the life of an innocent bystander will make you a bit more good. Your elements of good, neutral, and evil also fall into the sub-categories "Lawful," "Neutral," (this is changed to "True" when you are a neutral character), and "Chaotic," depending on the kind of things you do, and to the degree you do them. You may also change your class between fighter (which you begin the game as), mage, and thief by having one of your party members, or an NPC capable of this, train you in the art of your choosing. Finally, you may have one of the select few NPCs of the game capable, train you in the weapon type of your choice, but only if you have unused weapon proficiency points gained from leveling up your character. Something else this game does that the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series didn't, is have the main character speak in a voice you do not pick yourself. The Nameless One has many lines of dialogue throughout the game and definitely has a somewhat predefined personality because of it. Thankfully though, this only adds depth to his character, instead of removing your ability to make decisions that matter within the game. He's like a balance between the main character in Baldur's Gate II (i.e. lots of decisions entirely left up to you) and the main character in a big name Final Fantasy game (i.e. deep personality). The plot in Torment is thick, intriguing, and in the end, highly satisfying. As I said, I won't spoil any of it, but I will say that you won't likely find a better one in any other game. As well as having a magnificent over-arching story, the game also boasts some very engaging sub-plots among the many NPCs and party members you will meet on your travels through the multiverse. These sub-plots help flesh out the characters, making Torment's cast not one you will likely forget any time soon. The supporting cast of characters in Torment is one of the best and most bizarre things about it, but thankfully the weirdness of it all never seems forced. The party members range from the afore mentioned floating skull, to a perpetually burning man, to an empty suit of armor with a justice fetish. What makes the cast even better is the fact that you can start up conversations with them at will. Throughout the game you'll likely be starting up conversations with your party members constantly, hoping for a new and interesting dialogue tree to open up. The game has very few cut-scenes, so most the story and story-significant sequences are spent on the dialogue screen. But although you usually have quite a few dialogue options throughout the game's many, many conversations, don't expect to be altering the story in any serious way by the ones you choose. While you can make many a decision that matters in the game, you aren't capable of doing anything on the level of Chrono Cross (for the less video game learned, Chrono Cross had around 10 different endings and many plot altering choices you could make). The game proceeds in a fairly linear fashion, for both story and gameplay, but this is one of the few cases where a game has actually used this mostly to its advantage. Torment uses its linearity to deepen the plot and characters, which would almost definitely be much less interesting if your many decisions had any serious effect on them, since the time spent developing this game was not nearly enough to put the same depth seen in the single way the story can unfold, into several completely different ways the story could unfold. The dialogue of the game is exceptionally well-written, and it's obvious that a lot of care went into its fine-tuning. Each of the game's characters has a very different method of speech and a different take on the world, and these things are portrayed amazingly well regardless of whether a conversation is voice-acted or not. From Morte's sarcastic remarks and obnoxious banter, to Fall-From-Grace's courteous speeches and kind comments, to Nordom's odd and not precisely sane-sounding (or reading) gibberish, this game could probably keep you interested with its dialogue alone. The game also makes use of some extremely high-quality voice-acting, but that isn't exactly surprising coming from a Black Isle game. The voice actors all fit their roles perfectly and bring their characters to life amazingly well. The only real complaint you could have about the voice acting is how little of it there is. I'm not sure why Black Isle decided to have so little voice acting in this game, especially since the voice actors did such amazing jobs, but this is still only a minor complaint and the small amount of voice-acting doesn't really detract from the overall experience. Yet another audible achieve this game makes is its musical score. The game's music extremely well composed, and is as amazing as most everything else in the game. And although you probably won't get any of it stuck in your head for days at a time, it really manages to help bring to life the many strange characters and locations you will meet and visit during your journey. The music of this game was composed by the same man responsible for Fallout's music, but it hardly shows. Fallout's music was on the simple side, even if it was good, but he really created something fantastic with Torment's music. Another great thing about this game is its staggeringly beautiful pre-rendered backgrounds. These are easily the best out of all the games developed on the Infinity Engine (Baldur's Gate 1/2, Icewind Dale 1/2, and Torment). Through sheer art-direction this game's backgrounds are some of the most amazing ever created, and the way they bring the game world to life is incredible. On the subject of art-direction it is hard to not bring up the sprite character models. Regardless of the fact that they are sprites they still animate very well and manage to look as unusual and interesting as the rest of the game. It would also be folly not to mention the game's many eye-popping spell animations, which are easily some of the best I've ever seen in a Role-Playing Game. Since I have spent the entire review so far lauding Torment, I suppose I'd better make the few criticisms possible for this masterpiece. The gameplay is noticeably worse than the Baldur's Gate, Fallout, and Icewind Dale series. Most every fight in the game is on the easy side, and you cannot roam free like you could in Baldur's Gate I and II, or Fallout. Also, the Nameless One cannot wear any armor outside of the beginning area (where it is possible to kill a Dustman and steal his/her robe), there is an unfortunately limited variety of weapons to be found, the only character capable of using ranged weapons is Nordom, and the spell animations, while exceptional, usually take a long time to finish, making using them in combat take far longer than it should and even become a chore after awhile. But don't let these flaws deter you from playing Torment, as they are easily overlooked during the game. All in all, Torment is a masterpiece in every sense of the word. And if you're still on the fence about whether Torment is worth buying or not, then here's your push: buy it now, it is worth every penny you could possibly spend on it. In a few years it will probably become impossible to find, but as of the writing of this review it can still be found quite cheaply on the internet and at the few game retailers who still stock it. 
