It really is. Tides of Numenera ended up being a pretty good game, but nowhere near the one it aimed to be a spiritual successor to. Small parts of it, on occasions, managed to replicate the feel you had playing Planescape but never for long.
And then Disco did it, from an entirely new angle. And it was fucking awesome. Mind you, given ZA/UM's legal issues, I'm trying to resign myself to the fact we might not see another one, at least not from them.
My usual description of it is: it can touch you as deep as a very good book can. That's basically because, as you said and like DE, it's basically a great interactive book.
I regularly post this here but if you're looking for other games where writing, worldbuilding and dialog are - by far - the main focus of the game and quality of the same is excellent: Sunless Skies, Sunless Sea, Pentiment, A House of Many Doors.
It's excellent, just dont go into it thinking it's like Baldur's Gate or one of those other isometric tactical rpgs, it really isnt. Honestly the closest I can think of would be Disco Elysium.
It hurts a bit to read Baldur's Gate described as a "tactical RPG" given it's one of the classic CPRGs and perhaps, if talking about BG2 at least, the most well-rounded of them all to this day (when you consider not just writing but combat, ruleset, gameplay, amount of content - including a metric shitton of secret content - etc. as well). The writing in BG/BG2 is good - above most games. It just pales in comparison to games like Planescape or DE, obviously. I'd say a pure combat / tactical version of BG would rather be the Icewind Dale games.
Anyway, your point was that combat in planescape (and in fact most aspects outside of writing/dialog/atmosphere) is nothing special / sucks, and you're absolutely right.
I kid, I kid, I did enjoy my time with the Baldur's Gatesies story wise just fine, but it is a lot more of a tactical rpg than Planescape could ever hope to be. I just didnt want to call it a crpg which is a category so wide as to be meaningless.
I just didnt want to call it a crpg which is a category so wide as to be meaningless
For a few years now tons of people have also been using it as meaning "Classic RPGs" - and not in the sense of "one of the old games" but more like those old games, meaning "getting closer to that formula from the isometric golden age of RPG". So using the term to describe PoE, PoE2, Tyranny, DE, the Pathfinder games from Owlcat (all of which putting quality-of-writing as an important selling point if not necessarily the main one), etc. but not, say, Skyrim (which doesn't - you have a sandbox and it's very fun in its own way but the sand is not that deep, and the writing is poor mostly - compare it to Morrowind for example, which was much closer to the former examples despite its gameplay being much closer to the latter). Basically describing the similar games of the new golden age for them we've entered for a few years now.
With a few exceptions, it seems Steam at least now does the same, too - see the CRPG tag over there. It's almost exclusively that kind of games, or very close to it.
how i wish sometimes that terms like "Doom-like" or "Rogue-like" became the actual genre names, the description of the gameplay is right in the name :sicko-wistful:
The true spiritual successor for the throne after Planescape Torment (i've been told)
It is.
It really is. Tides of Numenera ended up being a pretty good game, but nowhere near the one it aimed to be a spiritual successor to. Small parts of it, on occasions, managed to replicate the feel you had playing Planescape but never for long.
And then Disco did it, from an entirely new angle. And it was fucking awesome. Mind you, given ZA/UM's legal issues, I'm trying to resign myself to the fact we might not see another one, at least not from them.
Never played PT but been meaning to for 15 years
My usual description of it is: it can touch you as deep as a very good book can. That's basically because, as you said and like DE, it's basically a great interactive book.
I regularly post this here but if you're looking for other games where writing, worldbuilding and dialog are - by far - the main focus of the game and quality of the same is excellent: Sunless Skies, Sunless Sea, Pentiment, A House of Many Doors.
It's excellent, just dont go into it thinking it's like Baldur's Gate or one of those other isometric tactical rpgs, it really isnt. Honestly the closest I can think of would be Disco Elysium.
It hurts a bit to read Baldur's Gate described as a "tactical RPG" given it's one of the classic CPRGs and perhaps, if talking about BG2 at least, the most well-rounded of them all to this day (when you consider not just writing but combat, ruleset, gameplay, amount of content - including a metric shitton of secret content - etc. as well). The writing in BG/BG2 is good - above most games. It just pales in comparison to games like Planescape or DE, obviously. I'd say a pure combat / tactical version of BG would rather be the Icewind Dale games.
Anyway, your point was that combat in planescape (and in fact most aspects outside of writing/dialog/atmosphere) is nothing special / sucks, and you're absolutely right.
Damned with faint praise.
I kid, I kid, I did enjoy my time with the Baldur's Gatesies story wise just fine, but it is a lot more of a tactical rpg than Planescape could ever hope to be. I just didnt want to call it a crpg which is a category so wide as to be meaningless.
For a few years now tons of people have also been using it as meaning "Classic RPGs" - and not in the sense of "one of the old games" but more like those old games, meaning "getting closer to that formula from the isometric golden age of RPG". So using the term to describe PoE, PoE2, Tyranny, DE, the Pathfinder games from Owlcat (all of which putting quality-of-writing as an important selling point if not necessarily the main one), etc. but not, say, Skyrim (which doesn't - you have a sandbox and it's very fun in its own way but the sand is not that deep, and the writing is poor mostly - compare it to Morrowind for example, which was much closer to the former examples despite its gameplay being much closer to the latter). Basically describing the similar games of the new golden age for them we've entered for a few years now.
With a few exceptions, it seems Steam at least now does the same, too - see the CRPG tag over there. It's almost exclusively that kind of games, or very close to it.
how i wish sometimes that terms like "Doom-like" or "Rogue-like" became the actual genre names, the description of the gameplay is right in the name :sicko-wistful:
it's one of my top 5 of all time, amazing writing