The games work incredibly hard to build their worlds (or multiple worlds) in the game. Many of your interactions are short paragraphs, and you’ll have to rerun through conversation menus to glean every fact from someone. This is not a game for someone who doesn’t like to read. The dialogue can be hammed up a little here and there, but it’s well-written and there is a lot of it. You’ll be switching out equipment, resting to heal, reading your trusty journal for your next quest, and talking to everyone. Both allow you to level up and travel with companions, choose classes, and they allow you to guide the destiny of your main characters. Even though I think the story presentation is superior in Icewind Dale, the contrast between the two games is great and seems like a marvelous pairing. Both games are built on Dungeons and Dragons rules, but this one is more standard with seemingly less player choice than the other. You’ll pass through towns and underground lairs killing monsters and finding loot. You and your party venture out to uncover and stop a growing evil in a fantasy world. Icewind Dale: Enhanced Edition and the included expansion pack are more of a classic tale of high adventure. When you do fight, it’s more of a standard affair of dice rolls and RNG. You can kill the person rambling on, or you can listen and gain more experience and maybe another quest. Decisions are everywhere from whether to kill or talk your way out of a situation in many different quests.Ĭombat is usually a less interesting option.
The main story is linear, but the game lets you decide how to get there. You are given an ample amount of freedom to craft your path. That’s one of the best parts of the game, and why I think it’s the superior title in the package. You have no memory of who you were, and, depending on which lifetime you see, not all the clues you find paint you in the best light. Set in a world where doorways and portals can lead you to all kinds of different dimensions with both good and terrible consequences, it starts with The Nameless One (that’s you) waking up on a cold slab after being dead. Planescape: Torment is legendary, and I can see why. The package combines two of the best CRPGs ever made, and I was able to experience some of the games of this era when they were new on the PC. Should you overlook the bad for the good to enjoy them in the present, or do these classics deserve to stay back in history? On the other hand, you have rough visuals and clunky mechanics that didn’t age well. At one end, you have some amazing writing and ideas combined with a slower pace to enjoy them and soak in the world and lore.
“They don’t make them like this anymore” is something that kept going through my head as I played through the Enhanced Editions of Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale.