Planescape: Torment's sole redeeming factor is they got the name right. The writing is a load of pretentious overwrought wash too absorbed in its own breathless obsession with detail to realize that dumping 900 pages worth of text in the player's lap in the hope they'll think density = depth is not effective writing. Teach me about your world through the story and the characters, not through endless dialogue trees. Chris Avellone's strength is not in fantasy settings, I hope he's realized that by now.
Outside of the shitty writing you have shitty gameplay mechanics that defenders love to simultaneously insist is both not the point of the game and integral to it (why should I have to fucking die over and over just to be able to eventually defend myself against low-level punks in an alley?)
The whole thing is so drenched in its CREEPYCOOLDARK ridiculous fantasy freakshow setting that it's hard to take the game as seriously as it takes itself.
As to Fallout 2... I don't know. I found the writing to be a bit messy in that game, and its sheer size introduces new problems that Fallout 1 didn't have. FO2 brings very little that's actually new to the table, and most of what is new isn't that great. (New Reno redeems a lot of the game's mistakes, though.) I like Fallout 2 (took me a while, but I got there) but Fallout 1 is superior in almost every way. It's a smaller, shorter game, yeah, but that means the writing is tighter and the gameplay doesn't meander as much. I found the combat difficulty progression to be a little more balanced, as well.
I haven't played KOTOR2 (and Bioware didn't make it just btw, Obsidian did) because I'm deathly allergic to Star Wars.
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Outside of the shitty writing you have shitty gameplay mechanics that defenders love to simultaneously insist is both not the point of the game and integral to it (why should I have to fucking die over and over just to be able to eventually defend myself against low-level punks in an alley?)
The whole thing is so drenched in its CREEPYCOOLDARK ridiculous fantasy freakshow setting that it's hard to take the game as seriously as it takes itself.
As to Fallout 2... I don't know. I found the writing to be a bit messy in that game, and its sheer size introduces new problems that Fallout 1 didn't have. FO2 brings very little that's actually new to the table, and most of what is new isn't that great. (New Reno redeems a lot of the game's mistakes, though.) I like Fallout 2 (took me a while, but I got there) but Fallout 1 is superior in almost every way. It's a smaller, shorter game, yeah, but that means the writing is tighter and the gameplay doesn't meander as much. I found the combat difficulty progression to be a little more balanced, as well.
I haven't played KOTOR2 (and Bioware didn't make it just btw, Obsidian did) because I'm deathly allergic to Star Wars.