So what is this gaming challenge? Me, and decided to do something fun involving games.. so I picked a game for Joel, Joel picked a game for Jenx and Jenx picked a game for me and we play for a week then post impressions and stuff.

So Jenx picked Planescape Torment for me.
Now I`m usually fine playing old games as graphics aren`t big deal and I remember when this game came out and everyone and their grandpa was playing it and commenting it, those who were into PC RPGs anyway. I remember reading about it in a PC magazines and had a vague idea of what the game is about. I know a lot prised it for its story and some made it sound as the RPG of RPGs when it comes to PC RPGs (Something like how we say Chrono Trigger is the RPG of RPGs when it comes to console RPGs of old times?) so needless to say I had an overall good impression for the game and good expectations. Also I used to think it`s called "Planescape Tournament" ...


Jenx probably forgot about my easily-upset stomach as the start of the game was in some building where you can see opened up people all over the place and zombies everywhere and my stomach quickly protested. Now the game isn`t anything overly detailed nor the zombies were coming to eat my brain (even if my hero fella looked like a zombie himself) and I could talk with them and all that friendly stuff so there was nothing actually creepy in this but my stomach simply could hardly chew the blood and gore all over the background.

I`m a person who was mostly playing jRPGs where the story pretty much forces you in one direction or another and you have a good idea on what to do most of the time however PC RPGs are known to be more free and you have all this stuff like alignments, talking and taking decisions change series of things, attacking one person can lead to a whole gang attacking you and so on. This is much more realistic of course however it was more difficult to me because the majority of time I played the game I had no idea what to do. The most "fun" I had when I spent 10 minutes or something trying to figure out why a key doesn`t open the locked door..just to find out I was supposed to unlock another door with it. I felt so dumb XD;

The game has crap load of dialogues which is always a good thing. The dialogues are very detailed and gives you good info on nearly any NPC you meet in town and around. Unlike jRPGs where generic NPC#13 will talk about the weather over and over and over again then walk in random pattern and block the stairs or something like that. Eventually you collect and collect and collect information on who you are and where you are and why you are here and eventually get short or long quests. Jenx advices me to save a lot which saved my neck several times as even simple NPC talk can result in something unexpected. I didn`t proceed with the game much, mostly due to being really slow when it comes to PC RPGs and because it couldn`t keep my interest for too long. Let`s face it.. I`m used to animu bishonen wielding swords about and goofy girls pointing wands and crap. While kiddies on a quest to save the world began to annoy me, I must with guilty hand on my heart say I`d prefer that to hunk zombie and a floating skull in a world of dead souls and the like. On a side note, Morte made me chuckle numerous times through my play.

Anyway this is pretty much why I could hardly proceed with the game and my interest was constantly slipping away from that game. For the short time though I found the main hero kinda charming maybe because I enjoyed picking the polite lines in my convos and really enjoyed NPCs getting all excited and thankful that someone helps them without wanting anything in return. The music made good impression to me and I found it pretty ear-pleasant. It made me dive more into the atmosphere of the game.

Overall, the game is classic from what PC RPG veterans say and I have no doubt it is.. but it couldn`t keep me play for long. Then again we all have different tastes right? FF10 put me to sleep in hour and a half after I started playing it and while I enjoyed Wild Arms 3 and WA:ACF once I reached the final boss, I got too bored to finish.. so yeah I`m really picky and can hardly find something that I`d play from the start till the end and enjoy every second of it.

*thinks of Suikoden 1/2/5, Chrono Trigger, Kartia, SaGa Frontier*

How much I enjoyed the game? I`d say 4 out of 10.




Just not my kind of thing. Doubt I`ll be playing it more but may leave it installed for now.

Anyway.. that was fun challenge! We should do it again sometime ~



Vist Team Insanesoft!