Finished Torment for the 3rd time now...

[valkir]

(spoilers)

...and this time I did it the "right" way - I tried to exhaust everything there is to exhaust. For the first time I decided to lvl up a bit in Undersigil and, after returning from Carceri, I took NO to farm the Glabrezu a bit... which doesn't really fit this game, but the prospects of second Aegis were attractive (in the end Grace got her belt and all I was left with were mountains of useless commons ).

I chose a mage - again; the first time I played Torment I went with the fighter. By the way - the first time was over 10 years ago, Torment being the first original computer game I ever bought (and it was worth it! the beautiful, big box with a t-shirt inside). It's a bit annoying that fighters get to choose from a couple of really cool weapons, while mages got a couple of daggers... still, playing the mage is probably the wisest choice due to the stat priority helping with dialogues.

I don't know if others have the same impression, but this game feels a bit uneven in terms of its ambience; I'd say that up to and including the Weeping Stone Catacombs it's brilliant, one can really get into the character, sink into Sigil's unique atmosphere. It's the time when the Nameless One doesn't know too much about his past yet; Pharod - just an old collector in the end - seems to be the ultimate know-it-all. And even though it's simpler - there are no supreme beings in the ploy yet - it's got its allure. The first time you step into the Smoldering Corpse Bar; the Mortuary itself; the Ragpicker's Square. It's hard to describe it, but the excellent designs and terrific music make Sigil alive. We're aware that it's just a small part of the greater whole - Planes - but it's just stories... we hear about different Planes, but they're left to our imagination. Nameless One is just a 'cutter', in the crowd, with his unique condition, but in the end - he's one of many.

However when we pass through the Tenement of Thugs and hop into the Lower Ward, something begins to change. First of all - Lower Ward and Clerk's Ward aren't the stinking, sinking-in-rubbish and crammed with thugs Hive. But we learn a lot more about ourselves in a pretty short period of time and I felt that some of the ambience, the mystery was given away too easily.

Curst and Baator only add to that. They have their shining moments - the Pillar of Skulls is terrific (the voices!), fallen Curst and the utter chaos is awesome as well. But the whole clash with Trias is too straightforward - he was, after all, the only one to know where NO's mortality resides.

I had these impressions before, but this time, due to the intense and thorough nature of this playthrough (I started on Friday and just finished, not a marathon-kin-of a tempo but felt pretty intense to me) I felt they were much stronger. I envy all those who play Torment for the first time.

The universum of Planescape as a setting is great. Planescape is first of all targeted at mature audience, the grim veil it's covered with, and the fact that here the path of a bum in Hive may cross with the path of a deva. Everything's possible, but not in the fairy-like way. Everyone's got his place, and the consequences of one's actions can be more sophisticated due to the nature of the Planes. It lets the developers to do everything they imagine. And we don't have to look at the boring elves or orcs again. Add the superb story and it's a recipe for the best - in my opinion - game of all time.

Aye, none other made me think that much, none other made my imagination work as much as Torment. None other could even come close to Hive's ambience (although while we're on ambience, I must say that among the newer games Stalker stands out in my book).

Conclusions from these random impressions? I want more, and I can't figure out why Wizards dumped the universe.

Some time ago I registered on Platter's forum and a discussion started about making a mod of some kind... I wonder where it ended (I changed the skin of the forum and thus could never access it again ^^). I think I'll look into the fan-made patches and mods now, to know what to get before the next playthrough (didn't use any patches so far)...

I've been browsing through this site and these forums while playing, helped me a bit, so cheers for that. I hope I'll be able to give somebody a hand as well.

Hello ^^

[LastDanceSaloon]

Hi, I've just finished this game for the first time and since you've just done your end of game wind-down 'get everything off your chest' speech, I'll post mine here rather than start a new thread.

I'm not going to repeat everything you've said, and I have to agree, I find everything you've said to be spot on and I can't disagree with a word of it, but I might reiterate a couple of points and throw in some additional negatives (more as a help to troubled players than a tirade against it's quality - though I may list many negatives, they are all minute in comparison to the 90%+ quality of the game as a whole).

What I loved about this game:

1. The choices! Ohhhh, the choices! Wonderful! I thought I'd made a boo-boo when I started the game as a fighter, I couldn't find any the option not to be a fighter, but then, throughout the game everyone is offering you the opportunity to change class. I was a fighter, then a thief, then finally a mage! No re-booting the game just because you suddenly decide you've picked the wrong class!

And then the open ended element of go anywhere in any order! Wonderful! And the way it kept offering ways to ditch and gain party members! And the way every faction had different benefits and sub-quests! And every choice you made effected every future choice! Just too much too write about and so much game-play!

2. The language, atmosphere, art and voice acting was so complete and intricate, it really was as if you were stepping into another world, living another life, you were the Immortal one and you really really really wanted to know why the heck you were immortal and why the heck you couldn't remember past your last kip!

3. All the quests are manageable, there are no dead ends, no need to constantly go on-line and hunt down solutions as to where this or that item is, and even when that did happen to me once (once out of hundreds of quests) it gave you the option to just kill the guy and grab what you needed, even though you really didn't want to. Whoever wrote and wove the quests really does deserves a medal! A knighthood even!

4. The NPC and Monster originality was superb. I cannot describe how pleasing to the eye it is to have so much variety in this respect. The humans are all shapes and sizes, the monsters are all shapes and sizes and somehow, heaven knows how, but all the characters even move in accordance with their personality - the Harmonium officers marched arrogantly, officially but at the same time kind of comically. The doddery mages and witches scattered about or hobbled meekly respectively - the detail in this department was astounding.

5. Everything you do in the game will be a totally new idea or concept, but like the character in the game, it will all be understandable and you learn how each object or language works as if you knew them all once in a previous life and the game is just reminding you about them. Incredible!

6. Sitting down for a quick hours gaming turns into 6 hours within a blink of an eye, and you want to keep playing because you want to keep playing, not just because you want to finish it for the sake of finishing it.

What annoyed me about the game:

1. My initial route led me to a wererat quite early in the gameplay and my weapons were ineffective, so I had to equip an unidentified weapon - which turned out to be cursed. I was a thief at the time with just Morte for company. There was no NPC or PC that could remove it. The only way I could remove it was to become a mage - but this was fine as I wanted to become a mage and dedicated myself to Mebbeth's quests after the Pharod quest. Unfortunately, I couldn't then level up once converted to a mage without crashing the game as I was equipped with a non-mage cursed item and I had yet to find a Remove Curse scroll. I spent a lot of unhappy run-around gameplay at this point getting frustrated that my gaming was being ruined by the availability of one specific scroll.

2. I have one the set-ups which meant that during combat a large black rectangle covered the screen when a spell was cast - kinda ruins the fun of watching fun spells do their work! In order to prevent this the the game readjusted somehow so that my mouse curser then drew pretty white lines all over my inventory screens. And the game still regularly crashed during or right after an important combat - for example, I had to replay all the Ravel dialogue three times before I got a non-crash result - and that's a LOT of replay even with the best save point possible!

3. The game does die a bit once you leave Ravel and enter the Planes. I was reminded of how Divine Divinity ended - it kind of finished but needed lots of additional nonsense to build up the the final destination. The curst quests are kind of pointless and lame (those that I bothered with) and I don't think any are necessary or greatly rewarding. Baator was horrible, just a screen full of repetitive monsters (waaaay to many) as was the screen with the giant skeleton - this is where I started to learn about the 'run' feature...

4. The music is superb. Faultless. Until a monster shows up and you get this loud repetitive over-dramatic thunder which goes 100% entirely against the whole rhythm of the rest of the game and really distracts you from all the concentration the game was dedicated to forcing on the player.

5. Using items in combat was clumsy and ineffective. Sometimes you were going to you inventory and clicking 'use' after right clicking the item, sometimes you were using the character dial which comes up by right clicking on the character (the quick menu) and sometimes you had no idea if what you've clicked has actually been put into effect. Sometimes you'd click on a monster for a regular attack and your character would just completely ignore the instruction or worse run in the opposite direction. The spells would often say they did 4-40 damage but in reality most did nothing or just 3 or 4 damage to anything better than a street thug. I unloaded everything I had onto one corrungen, nothing seemed to have much impact, and there was no clue as to why.

6. The game contains some regenerating monsters. I hate regenerating monsters! If it's cleared then it should stay cleared IMO, exp be dammed. I have no idea what Under-Sigil was for and I wasted a lot of time and trouble and crashes finding out it was a waste of space for the Exp farmers. I also got driven mad by the recurring white bats in the crypt, just such a waste of time and in such an irritating place.

7. The game has tons of quest items and virtually no equipment slots. The primary reason you were reluctant to dispose of party members was the fact that it left you unable to carry anything. The plot had little to do with this decision making. It didn't matter how many times it told me to sell/kill/ignore party members, I just couldn't lose the equipment slots. There is no way on earth you can know which unsellable items will be useful and which will be a waste of space or a red herring (eyeball, intestines, leather strap, those tent peg things, rags, chalk and cheese?! It was endless!) so you just have to lug everything about

8. The bronze sphere didn't work for me either, and I had tons of INT and did all the dialogue necessary. After lugging it all that way... lol.



Needless to say, all these were just minor gripes compared to the whole, and this game is 90% easily playable without the need for a walkthrough in order to complete it. The only time I went on-line was for the cursed weapon/mage change problem and to find out if all my crashes were normal.

I decided to play properly and not care if I missed stuff or did anything wrong (like killing Pharod's daughter before I understood the dialogue mechanics properly, or killing the Red Gem Mage before I understood the Chests in houses mechanic) and I found the game flowed excellently and was completable.

I turned out to be Chaotic Good with a tendency to drift into chaotic or true neutral, which is what I am, so that aspect of the game works 110% spot on!

How did you turn out (the first time)?

[Makatak]

How did you turn out (the first time)?

Badly.

I didn't bring stockpile enough healing items before heading to Curst Underground. So by the time I got to Trias in Carceri, I was screwed. And I didn't want to go all the way back to a Curst saved game. So I gave up.

I didn't expect the game to stretch on for that long without opportunity to go back to a town to rest/restock.