Planescape: Torment

Planescape: Torment is an role-playing game created by Black Isle Studios using the Infinity engine, previously used in Bioware's previous Baldur's Gate titles. It uses the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons system and takes place in said AD&D's Planescape setting. The original version released on December 12, 1999, while the remaster first released on April 11, 2017. It was a commercial failure, but garnered critical acclaim, and is considered to be one of the best video games of all time.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) The voice cast is amazing. Rob Paulsen, Jennifer Hale, Dan Castelleneta, Rodger Bumpass (albeit a minor character), Charlie Adler, Sheena Easton, Michael T. Weiss, Tony Jay, and Mitch Pileggi all voice different characters in the game and bring some pretty good performances, Mort's voice actor in particular does a great job of voicing the character and brings his sarcastic personality to life in really good way.
 * 2) A very complex story, based off of a rather unknown Advanced D&D setting. In the game you play as The Nameless One, who wakes up to find that he doesn't remember anything about himself and discovers he is immortal, and goes on a more personal journey to discover who he truly is and the secrets of his past. This kind of story is quite fresh for an RPG, as taking it on a smaller scale helps make the characters more relatable. As well as that, there are multiple side plots within the main plot that helps connect everything together, and also has multiple endings that make the story and the game itself have more replay value.
 * 3) * In addition, throughout the game you have to discover the truth behind your mysterious past and meet people from your previous lives, much of which is optional, that also makes the plot a lot deeper and strengthens the overall experience.
 * 4) The games's graphics and visual design, while maintaining and overhead view, look really impressive for the time in some aspects, and look even sharper in the remasters. The environments themselves are incredibly well detailed and have a variety of visual effects to accompany them, such as rotating wheels and smoke from buildings. The visual design itself is also really cool, as it moves really far from the typical fantasy settings in order to make a more grim looking, somewhat mechanized aesthetic that looks overall very pleasing to the eye. The character models themselves, while small, also look pretty good, and are very distinct from one another in terms of character design, and once again moves away from traditional fantasy characters like elves and dwarves to instead include a lot of unique and lesser used races like succubi, and one character is a literal floating skull.
 * 5) * The character portraits as well, while they haven't aged as well as the ones in Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale, also look very good and have a lot of facial detail on them. In addition to that there are also full body portraits of major characters to reveal what they look like entirely to make up for what little you can see in the isometric view.
 * 6) Natural for the Planescape setting itself, it is a very interesting world full of unique characters to encounter. As mentioned in the above pointer, the setting is very different from other fantasy games which makes it a lot more of a fresh experience for players. Even putting aside the previous points, almost every aspect of the game world feels like it was made with care and attention, as many characters, even some random NPCs, having their own backstories behind them and having a unique look. Some minor characters that may not have some importance at first can even join your party later on, such as with the character Ignus in the tavern or Annah in the streets at the beginning of the game. There is also a lot of variety in the environments themselves, from a morgue to an underground village and even a living town that is in labor (No, we are not making that up).
 * 7) * Speaking of which, the characters and world are a lot stranger than the typical D&D games, and there are many unique moments that no other game has really had since, examples including the aforementioned town in labor, in-game barrels that have a striking resemblance to radioactive ones, characters with very strange motives, and even the game designers being unsure of why Morte's bite attack skill is related to the Brawling skill.
 * 8) * The game does a good job showing how weak the player is at first and the level of power that is gained. Early on and even in the game's second half, common rats can be very hard to take down, and eventually the player goes on to fight human beings and eventually mechanized enemies and other odd characters later on, and showing how weak the player really is is pretty unique and very uncommon in a lot of games.
 * 9) The game uses the alignment system from Dungeons & Dragons which has many in game effects depending on what your alignment is.
 * 10) * Becoming a Lawful character requires you to never lie or break promises, never converse with skeletons and similar monsters, never join the two chaotic factions (Anarchists or Xaositects) or taunt Morte. This will lead to you being liked by lawful characters and hated by chaotic ones.
 * 11) * Turning into a Chaotic character will have the player breaking vows they made, lying and bluffing, joining one of the two chaotic factions, or being impulsive. Your relationship with chaotic characters will strengthen and lawful ones will lower.
 * 12) * The Good part of your alignment requires you to be helpful to others, never asking for a reward, and no threatening others. This will cause your character to be well liked by characters with this alignment and despised by people with the evil alignment.
 * 13) * The Evil part of the alignment is gained by doing the opposite, with players asking for rewards, killing innocents, threatening others, and stealing. This will have the opposite effect as good does with characters, now you are liked by evil characers and feared by good ones.
 * 14) * Staying Neutral requires the player to balance out their chaotic, lawful, good, and evil acts and is much harder to maintain.
 * 15) The game has a very complex stat system which allows for tons of variety when crafting your character. Being based on the AD&D system, it used the six main stats from that system, Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma, and Constitution, and mixes it with the game's form of alignment and classes to create a nice system where you are free to make any character that fits your playstyle.
 * 16) * Strength affects how often you are able to hit and enemy in combat as well as affecting the damage you can deal. It is also useful to intimidate in conversations, increases our carry weight, and affects how well you can break open containers and doors. These make it more based around the fighter class since they rely on physical power, and is also useful for chaotic and evil characters since it is used in a less orderly way than most other stats.
 * 17) * Dexterity influences how well your character avoids taking damage from enemies and other sources, as well as lowering your armor class (which makes you more difficult to hit) and heavily increasing thief skills such as stealth and breaking locks. Therefore it fits really well with the thief class and similar to strength has more chaotic effects and is good for characters leaning toward the chaotic alignment.
 * 18) * Intelligence is used to increase your magic capabilities both outside of and during combat. It increases how many spells you can memorize at a time, increases the chance of successfully learning a spell, can drastically affect dialogue, and increases your knowledge of the world. It's better suited for the mage class for being based mostly around magic. It also works well for characters leaning toward the lawful and good side of things for its usefulness being better for outside of combat.
 * 19) * Wisdom is much more of a narrative driven stat, as it gives the player more dialogue options to resolve outcomes usually in a much better way rather than resorting to violence, gives you an XP boost, and helps The Nameless One regain his memories faster, aiding the game's storytelling aspect. It works well for the mage class as well for being less combat focused, and is great for good characters in a similar way to that stat.
 * 20) * Constitution allows party members to have more HP every time they level up, and also regenerates HP at a faster rate. This is great for mage characters since they are much more weaker physically. It also helps for fighters as well to make them more tanky in combat.
 * 21) * Charisma also affects your dialogue options, and also increases how much money you gain as rewards for completing quests. It can be useful for both chaotic players (in terms of lying dialogue) and for lawful characters (to maintain civility in a conversation).
 * 22) There is tons of different ways to deal with situations. There is no real right or wrong way to do them, and you are encouraged to try and look for different ways to complete a task if one certain way isn't working for your character build or isn't your preference. For example, you could simply end a quest by killing who you were told to kill and be done with it, but you can also talk to them and learn of a deeper plot while also gaining the same XP reward. Or you can do the latter option halfway, get bored, and kill them anyway for more interesting future encounters. This makes the game feel much more alive and helps with player immersion.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The voice acting is very limited, which is upsetting due to how good the cast is.
 * 2) The game has a way of punishing those who don't take advantage of exploring every nook and cranny of the environment around them, as well as having enemies usually being a higher level than you often. This inadvertently causes optional side missions to feel more required and can also cause the game to get very grindy at times.
 * 3) There is a ton of reading, which is off-putting for those who enjoy RPGs like Fallout New Vegas and the likes, though this can easily be excused for this game being much more narrative driven.
 * 4) The combat is rather generic, and it makes it no better with the enemy AI, which has pathfinding AI that is far from the best and can easily get stuck, making defeating them much easier.

Reception
Planescape: Torment released to critical acclaim from both critics and audiences, and has been hailed as one of the greatest video games of all time. It currently holds a score of 91/100 on Metacritic, indicating "universal acclaim".