Planescape: Torment (Enhanced Edition)

Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition is a classic isometric RPG built on the Infinity Engine, set in Sigil, the so-called City of Doors at the center of the D&D multiverse. You play as the Nameless One, an immortal who wakes on a mortuary slab with no memory of who he is or how many times he has died before. What follows is one of the most aggressively written RPGs ever made -- not in terms of bloat, but in terms of density. Every conversation has weight. Every companion has a history that intersects with yours in ways you will not predict at the start. The game is unambiguously story-first. Combat exists and it works in real-time-with-pause, using AD&D 2nd Edition rules, but anyone expecting a tactics showcase should adjust expectations. You can, in fact, talk or think your way through a surprising number of encounters, which rewards pumping Intelligence and Wisdom over raw fighting stats. The Nameless One can be built as a Fighter, Mage, or Thief during the run, and switching between them is actually encouraged and tied to lore rather than treated as a mechanical quirk. That alone makes the class system feel more narratively grounded than most modern RPGs dare to be. Companions like Morte the floating skull, Dak'kon the githzerai warrior, and Fall-from-Grace the succubus priestess are not party members in the BG3 sense of deeply branching personal arcs, but they are strange and specific and worth talking to at every opportunity. The Enhanced Edition from Beamdog adds widescreen support, zoom, updated UI, and a handful of new companion conversations and content. It is not a radical overhaul. Purists debate whether the changes add or dilute, but for a first playthrough in 2024, the quality-of-life improvements are genuinely useful without touching the original writing. The writing is, to be direct about it, the reason this game has a reputation decades after release. The prose is dense, literate, and occasionally exhausting in the best possible sense. Reading skill unlocks additional dialogue options, which means your stat build has a direct effect on which version of the story you experience. That is good design. What does not hold up as cleanly: some fetch-quest pacing in the Hive district, a few combat encounters that exist purely to slow you down, and inventory management that will annoy anyone who has been spoiled by modern UI conventions. The final act also compresses in ways that feel abrupt given how methodically the early game builds mystery. These are real criticisms, not nitpicks. But they are criticisms of a game still asking more interesting questions than most titles released in the years since. If you care whether your choices have philosophical weight, if you want companions who challenge your assumptions about identity and morality rather than cheer you on, and if you are willing to read -- genuinely read, not skim -- Planescape: Torment is a foundational text for the genre. Play it before someone spoils the answer to its central question.

Monika · Scout Team

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