Good: Excellent story, characters, dialog, voice acting, setting Bad: Ending not significantly altered by your ac
There is a LOT of reading in this game. It's one of its strengths and it's all well done. The text reveals the deepest story, setting, and characters available in any game I've played to date.
However, the voiceacting, although limited, is probably the best I've heard in any game to date.
As the story progresses, I had some very emotional moments when I really felt for the characters. No other game affected me as deeply.
There are a lot of great roleplaying opportunities. But in the end, your actions don't significantly affect the destiny of the main player character. Given all the other deep roleplaying allowed throughout the game, this ending to the game disappointed me greatly. But it was consistent with the story.
The planescape setting is unique, graphically, as well as conceptually. And it is huge. This setting is much more expansive than your typical DnD game. There are lots of unique creatures, locations, factions, and people to interact with. Part of the fun of this game is the learning about the setting and its deep history. Playing it is truly a fresh experience. Although, at times, the setting (especially in the first area), can be a bit morose. This is not about happy elves singing in the valley. After the starting location, the setting really opens up, and becomes quite a wonder to behold, and, at times, a bit disturbing as well.
The user interface for combat has been improved over the Baldur's Gate games upon which Torment is based. So combat is less tedious, which is great. There are many new unique spells and items that don't appear in any other games. Some of the spell graphics are very funny and invoke monumental cut scenes, that can be quite entertaining.
The most unusual aspect of this game is that the typical gameplaying goal of trying to stay alive at all costs is turned on its ear. You play an immortal. If you die, you wake up fully healed with all your companions nearby. In some cases, it's actually desirable to die to complete some of the subquests.
Much of the gameplay is centered on dialogues with NPCs, and trying to find out about the player character's past history. Because of this, characteristics such as intelligence, wisdom, and charisma are much more important in this game than combat related stats such as strength and constitution. Although you can play a warrior with high combat stats, you will miss out on a lot of interesting dialogues and setting/story related info. You can also roleplay a thief or a mage, or so some combination of the three. This fun aspect is also unique to this game.
One last thing, the music is fantastic. It's quite haunting at moments, and it truly amplifies the emotional content of the story.
Don't miss playing this classic before it becomes too hard to play on modern machines!