Classic Game Club #32: Planescape: Torment

I had a nice marathon session today. All the crypts and tombs except for the Rat area are done. Pharod’s quest is done, and Anna is in my party. And I did the foolish thing of heading into the rat area instead of moving on with the story. IIRC, the first time I played the game, I think I got killed by Many-as-One when I did the same thing. Hopefully I’ll make some better choices this time. Maybe being a mage will help. I have unlocked the 8th circle of Zerthamon by now and have access to some nice spells. I wish I had access to a nice area of effect spell though. That’s what I really need with these god damned rats.

When you get to the Modron maze and set it to hard, be sure to map your progress. Initially I didn’t and got lost and then I bit the bullet and started searching for dungeon mappers and came across this one http://www.davidwaltersdevelopment.com/tools/gridcart/. He’s got a free version available to download or you can do it the old fashion way with pen and paper but my writing sucks balls. Now I’ve got a full party of bickering knuckle heads now that I have Nordom on my team. Don’t know if I will keep him yet though.

I’m a dumbass. I just realized you can buy/sell items per character through the barter screen. This whole time I was swapping things to NO because I assumed he could only buy and sell because he’s the that speaks to NPCs.

I love the ability to make your own notes on the map screen so much. Every place where I had a chest that I couldn’t bash open, I marked on the map as a locked chest. And when I got Annah on my team, I went to all those places and opened up the chests, and then deleted those notes. That really surprised me. Not only can you leave your own notes on the map, you can delete them too!

I don’t know what the Modron Maze is. But will making notes on the map help with that section?

I can’t use the Circle of Zerthimon and I don’t know why. I have the old guide book and done all the conversations with Dak’kon it says I need to do. The T’cha thing, etc.

Edit - ah, had to ask Dak’kon to teach me the Art. Makes sense…

Over in the Clerk’s Ward, there’s a vendor named Vrischika who sells a bunch of exotic stuff and going into this blind I didn’t want to buy an exotic item, find it doesn’t do anything or is just plain worthless. So I Googled her items and one thing in particular turns out to be a portal key and portal which will allow you to do things to get a new party member that’s kind of sort of a robot. Should we be using spoiler tags in this thread?

Anyway, there’s no in game map avaialbe to you when you do the maze because it’s random so you have to map it out old school style like playing Eye of the Beholder without a clue book.

Pretty sure the Maze is part of the restored content and was not part of the original release.

Ahh that would explain it.

No, the Modron Maze was in the original game. It’s not restored content.

It’s easy enough to miss though. I think I didn’t go there in my first play.

Fighting through an area yesterday, I had a pretty good time, getting in some pretty close fights. It’s funny that I hate the combat in Baldur’s Gate so much, but just a few changes make the combat in this one so much more tolerable, maybe even fun sometimes. For one, the damage numbers that float in the air are so much better than watching the dice-rolls and descriptions in a text box. But having an immortal character who can resurrect his companions is what helps the most. Not having to go through saving and loading when things go south is such an improvement that it can’t be understated. The constant saving and loading in Baldur’s Gate was suuuuuuch a drag in that game. I know people have recommended changing the difficulty in Planescape to easy, but I’ve felt no need to do it yet.

Yes, I missed it my first play through 16-odd years ago. I gave it a try this time and quickly said fuck it. It was not fun.

I’m almost done with the game. The story is excellent, but the engine is terrible and I’m definitely ready to wrap it up and never look back (unless Beamdog makes an Enhanced Edition with the BG2 enigne). The path finding is retarded. Every single combat Dak’kon – my most powerful companion – will get stuck on another companion and unable to path to the mob that’s a few feet away. Lack of object highlight is frustrating, and makes looting a chore. Not that trash mobs drop anything of note, it’s almost like the game is taunting you. I can’t believe I looted almost 200 cranium rat tails.

I foolishly decided to play a mage, and I’m forcefully reminded how terrible 2nd Ed. mages are, at least in the IE games. In a table-top RPG as a mage you can role-play, you can use a crossbow, or darts, or whatever. You can do stuff to stay engaged. In PS:T, as a mage, more often than not I just run up to enemies and stab them with my dagger. Casting spells frequently is annoying, especially for trash mobs, which PS:T has plenty of. The action-wheel is a terrible compromise from the hot-button UI of BG/BG:EE. Opportunities to rest are rare, unlike in BG/BG2, so I run out of high level spells long before the dungeon is over, assuming I use them effectively.

You spend 45 minutes talking to Ravel and the game dumps you into combat as soon as you’re done without a save. I was terrified. Fortunately, the combat wasn’t hard.

I killed Ignus after a conversation path (I didn’t want another mage, anyway), and said screw it I’ll just pick up Vhailor later. Then I missed him. Sigh.

What Balarsarius just said. I’m wrapping things up but I certainly won’t be revisiting this unless it gets Enhanced Edition loving. The pathfinding is ass and inventory management is a pain - I’d give a testicle for a fucking keychain! Not a whole lot of rest areas and if you’re going in blind like me, you’ll get shafted real quick if you don’t have a lot of healing charms saved up once Fall-from-Grace expends spells. More often than not I found myself save scumming a lot because I ran out of healies in a tricky area like the landscape of Baator looking for the Pillar of Skulls* where there are packs of abishais’ who hit really hard. I had to adjust the difficulty down to easiest to deal with that section. If I had played P:T before or spoiled myself it wouldn’t have been as aggravating.

*Poor Pharrod. I expected him to face some sort of punishment after I sold him out to the dusties but I wasn’t expecting something of that caliber.

I didn’t rat out Pharrod. I have lost Morte now though. My inventory is filling up with keys.

Is there anywhere I can store the keys and come back for them, where they won’t go away, for 100% certainty?

You turned over Morte?! You’re a monster.

I’ve been storing my crap in a container / shelf in the Mortuary next to the slab you wake up on. Keys, tattoos, and all the other crap that the game won’t let you sell for some reason.

Disappointed there’s three side quests in my quest log that can’t / won’t progress, even though two of them definitely should. But they won’t. Just because I got the ruby by opening the box doesn’t mean I don’t have the ruby the mage is looking for. Dumb.

I finished it. The high INT came in pretty handy and opened up a lot of conversation opportunities I hadn’t seen before. I was able to resolve it four different ways, though there are only two videos.

Edit - make sure you bring Pharod’s Bronze Sphere with you.

Yeah I just finished it with high INT too but after merging with the Transcendent One I get the merge video and then it cuts back to the fortress roof where Morte is resurrected but I can’t speak to him for some reason. Oh well, I was able to find my ending on YouTube. Fantastic game but this is one I won’t be replaying unless Beamdog gives it some EE loving but I’m still very much pleased that I dove into this. Now I can add P:T to my PC gamer street cred.

So, as it turns out, I never was able to make much progress. Planescape demands more time than 20-30 minutes at a crack, several days apart. Tried starting twice, never could get through enough to make meaningful progress on the game. Complicated by the UI age, and the fact with limited time I wasn’t going to spend it modding.

sigh

Only 8 more weeks and perhaps I’ll have time for RPG’s again.

I wouldn’t feel too bad about it. Often times I threw my hands up in frustration with the game because of its age and frustrating design choices. If you got your copy from GoG there’s a book that comes with it based on the game and so you could just go that route and forgo playing the game. There were times where I would rather to just read that than play P:T because walls of text have no place in a vidya game as far as I’m concerned. I searched Beamdog’s forums and there is certainly interest for an enhanced edition of P:T but the devs never stated anything concrete about something in the works so who knows what will happen.

Yeah, this is a far older copy I got with the other D&D games in a bundle from Direct 2 Drive (I think). Had them sitting on my hard drive for years. Don’t even have the manual PDF, if I ever got one.

Afaik the included book from GoG is just thisone, which is freely available. It’s a poor substitute to playing the actual game though.

  • Game text transplants terribly to novel form, no matter how well written it is.
  • It documents one path through the game, and misses out lots of content and detail
  • IMHO, the thing that sets RPGs apart from all other forms of narrative (novels/tv/movies/adventure games) is the attachment you form with the characters by virtue of spending 50+ hours grinding them up, watching them grow, playing dress up. etc.

I’d suggest waiting the 8 weeks instead. Here, I’ll even give you an official exemption from hosting another BSG game until after you finish Torment! :)

(disclaimer - I consider Torment my favorite game of all time, but I haven’t played/replayed it for over 10 years, so I don’t know how well it holds up really.)