Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale, as well as Baldur's Gate, are classic RPGs or so-called CRPGs; Baldur's Gate was first released in 1998 and then on the same (Infinity Engine) engine that designed the game; Planescape: Torment came right in 1999, followed by Icewind Dale in 2000, and today we're reviewing the Enhanced Edition of Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale.
First of all, Panescape: Torment and Icewind Dale are legends in the world of RPGs .. Rather, they are considered one of the first games that have laid the foundations and rules for this type of games that present to us a story and a philosophical plot that touches the human psyche, as they are nearly twenty years old!
Also, both games enjoy very long hours of gameplay and adventure, as well as have many choices and rich stories, why not and they are based on the world of Dungeons & Dragons and which is well known; Whether from the settings within the story or the game world, the characters and classes within it, even the shields and skills ... etc, from the rules inherent within the vast world of D&D imagination.
As I mentioned above, they are twenty years old; They were developed by Black Isle studio and Interplay Intertainment published on PC, and then an Enhanced Edition was released in 2017 for PC and smartphones, and in October 2019, development studio Beamdog transferred it to us with the help of Skybound Games for publishing to home devices from Xbox one, PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch
First Planescape: Torment
But before I start telling the story, Bear in mind that the game is based on the terrifying and dark world of Planescape from the world of Dungeons and Dragons; Instead of dragons, elves, and dwarves, there will be an army of the living dead and demons, a raging bloody war and black curses, trying to break them and discover their cause!
As the game begins inside multi-dimensional worlds with the hero of the unknown character named As (The Nameless) and of course I am not kidding here; His name is actually The Nameless One, who wakes up one day inside a mortuary in a city called Sigil to discover that he has come back to life again, but with a lost memory of his identity and life .. and next to him is a floating skull called Morte; It is one of the many characters that will join the hero of the game in his career, that floating skull will reveal to him the strange tattoo that occupies the back of our unknown hero, to reveal his terrifying fate, which came from him the name of the game Planescape Torment; Or a plan to escape from torment ... where the torment of our hero here is that he has been incarnated over and over again through past times and died more than once and returned again with another body, and every time he dies and wakes up a part of his memory is robbed ... until he reached his state until he lost his identity His humanity and his memory of all his previous lives, so that he can escape from that unfortunate fate; He has to travel on a journey through the many worlds in search of answers, accompanied by a group of characters that he will meet during his journey; The first of them, of course, is the floating skull, Morte, and there are also other characters, each with their own characteristics and different styles. Like the piercing Grace, the fighter and the magician Dak'kon, and many other varied characters.
Planescape: Torment was one of the first games to set the course for games with good stories and that carried the philosophy of man searching for his identity and thinking about what he did in his life. It even poses an important question within the events of the story that the game world actually entails; Where the question was: What changes the human nature and character ?!
Planescape: Torment offers you several choices within the story's action; Some have even described it as a literary disguised as a game! Unlike Icewind Dale, which had more reliance on fighting style and gameplay than story telling in the game; The two games replace each other with the Enhanced Edition
And on the mention of Icewind Dale; As I mentioned above the game here is considered a game based on fighting and exploration more than story telling, but of course the game must have a starting point or some story to push you to try it!
Here is the story of Icewind Dale simple and not as complicated as Planescape: Torment's philosophy; Where it begins with a group of six adventurers, sitting in a bar in the world of Easthaven, and while they are chatting and drinking wine, a strange and unknown character approaches them who asks them to go on a mission..Our heroes, of course, answer the call, and seek to leave to the frozen north of Faerun; A land within the forgotten realms of the world of Dungeons and Dragons, rich in detail
But unfortunately, Icewind Dale is only a fighting and exploration game and it is not related to stories or details of worlds, maybe at the time of its release in the year 2000 it was a great fighting game, but now; The lack of a side of the story affects her a lot.
Planescape: Torment is one of the influential games on the Dark Souls series, especially the third part; The one whose hero wakes up from a cemetery one day and does not know anything about his previous identity .. and is assigned the task of lighting the fire responsible for life in the game world. And travel between several places or various worlds.
For example, at the beginning we have the hero of the game The Nameless One, who can customize his abilities and the class he will belong to from the start of the game; And the categories here are between a fighter who can deal with heavy armor and large weapons, a magician who can cast numerous magic spells, or a thief with graceful movements and a high skill in avoiding, as well as opening locks and closed doors lightly and quickly.
Of course, we do not forget the side characters that help our hero on his journey, who can form his squad from them, as each character has its own special and useful fighting characteristics, such as the piercing Grace character, which falls under the Cleric category; She can heal herself and the group members during the fighting and use some magic properties, but she cannot deal with and use weapons! While the character Dak'kon, a warrior and a magician at the same time, can use fighting and magic, but he can not heal anyone, as for the character of Annah, which is from a race called Tiefling, which is considered a hybrid between humans and demons; She has combined the two abilities of a warrior and a thief .. as she can fight well in battles and use weapons at the same time lightness and agility, as for the character Morte, which is a floating skull, was one day a living human .. He is considered a fun character and at the same time knows information about the hero's past and on Although he is talkative, he avoids Easter directly about what the hero was in his previous life; But the player will have to interact with him during the missions until he finds facts one after the other of him.
The world of Planescape: torment is huge, bifurcated, and varied as well, and each world has its own laws and characters that endemic creatures follow; For example, you have the world of the nine Hells, Baator, which is ruled by demons called baatezu, and you will find that they are cruel and evil who are exactly like their infernal world.
We also have the city of Sigil, which is located in the middle of the game world, and has many gates to move to all other worlds, ruled by a strong and mysterious character called The Lady Of Pain and under her rule 15 sects are fighting among themselves to control Sigil, and the hero of the game can join any of them .
Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale are 2D games with isometric static environment; As you have to locate or click on the place or thing that you want your character to move towards!
They also contain a number of main and side tasks, which require you to read the immersive dialogues well; Especially in Planescape: Torment; As the dialogue is immersive and full of wonderful and moving details, the game is also amazing; Created a classic game from the old generation and they were able to make your choices and your conversations affect the building of your character and the interaction of the side characters NPCs and the interaction of enemies .. Rather, the interaction of the world with the hero of the game or with your choices! It is easy for us to see how this game won great praise from critics when it was first launched in 1999 .. to the extent that it was considered one of the games that set rules and foundations for RPG games of the type of The Witcher, for example, or Cyberpunk, Dragon Age or others. Games that include many dialogues and details within each option make the game flip 180 degrees every time you play and choose a different choice.
In addition, the two games give you exploration inside the Dungeons in Icewind Dale and in the multiple worlds of Planescape: Torment, and reward you for that exploration of armor, powerful and rare weapons, and magic spells like any RPG game.
On the other hand, we come to the Icewind Dale game, which lets you start the fight immediately with a group of six characters from different sects; As each of them has different qualities, properties and characteristics that are useful for combat. Icewind Dale is more of a Hack & Slash than an RPG. As we mentioned, the game here focuses on combat more than story, unlike Planescape: Torment, which in my view makes this game weaker; Whereas, the gameplay here is outdated ... and what makes Planescape: Torment powerful is the story, characters, and various options, while Icewind Dale is only a fight..but maybe a certain type of player will like it; Especially for those who love 2D gameplay in a stable isometric environment!
In addition to the distinct fighting movements of each of the characters, whether in Planescape: Torment or Icewind Dale; Also, each character has a distinctive movement of its own, from running to breathing movements from the rise and fall of the chest, to the movements of each character's interaction with the world around them, making you wonder how a classic game twenty years ago was filled with such dazzling details ?!
One of those details that I liked as well is that if you skip the game or pause for a while without moving the controller .. without doing anything at all; The character of the hero will start a dialogue with the characters accompanying it .. whether about the weather or what he feels, or about a specific place within the game .. The artificial intelligence AI the game is so impressive that it makes you regret the games of this generation!
Not to mention the amazing music that Icewind Dale or Planescape: Torment brings to us
Also, it is also great that the improved version has improved graphics quality; I do not say that it has become 3D, but the colors and details are clearer than before. It also addressed many technical problems, especially in the UI and the game menu .. where it became more smooth than before.
Also, the enhanced version of the two games did not encounter any technical problems on home devices; Whereas, the development studio Beamdog has already excelled in transferring the improved version that was released in 2017 on the PC to home devices in 2019 .. Even the control of the game was smooth and compatible with the joystick, whether on the PS4, Xbox One or Switch
In the end, Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale Enhanced Edition is a great opportunity to try it in the current generation, which is witnessing some decline in the level of open world games. Typical of the current and new generation of players.