Okay so I finally had time to finish the last third of this game and got a few of the different endings.
It goes without saying that this RPG excelled in the story and the writing department though given that it was really trying to recapture the feel of Planescape: Torment, the results were hardly surprising in that regard.
At times it felt like a complete reboot since the while the story isn’t the same, there are more than a few concepts in it that are very similar. In some ways it’s a little better than PT since they created their own unique setting and told a story in it (Even if it was similar to the original) rather than telling a story in a pre-made setting that wasn't theirs.
The only real draw back to the unique setting is that they put in so much background lore in it to flesh it out as much as possible that sometimes you feel like you’re missing out on some of the game.
You’re not though, because there’s usually stuff that is just mentioned in passing and then it’s never visited again because well it isn’t the focus of THIS story. Basically they really liked a lot of background fluff, even more than PT since that was a pre-existing setting and while it wasn’t exactly mainstream, it probably had more than few players that knew some of the basic concepts of it so there wasn’t as much need to go into details on various things.
Plus it’s emphasized in the game that there are just a lot of mysteries that go unsolved in this universe by most anyway, so the player is no different in that regard. Still, there’s a lot of interesting stuff so you kind of start wondering about things that don’t get mentioned again.
I probably wasn't quite attached to the followers like I was in PT. They weren't bad by any means in this game and they obviously put a lot of thought into them but I sort of saw them all as useful tools as opposed to “OMG These guys are my best friends forever!”
Though to be fair, I often feel that way about most followers. They're usually just there for me to exploit their abilities, use as meat shields and/or fuck if I get really bored. Speaking of which, it was a nice change of pace to have a RPG that didn't waste valuable coding space with badly written romance shit.
Most quests have more than one way to finish them based on your various abilities. In general it seems like the intellect stat is going to help your character the most, but I managed to raise them all up fairly high where doing different approaches to things wasn’t going to be a problem.
They had the 3 traditional classes (Warrior, Wizard, Rogue) though they were called Glaive, Nano and Jack. Jack was the most versatile (Obviously) since you don’t really need to fight all that much in the game if you focus on the “talky” abilities. (You can easily get by with the one follower glaive in the game) and you get the choice of two nano followers right from the beginning of the game (You can only travel with one since they don’t like each other though) and you can get by with them.
The exploration aspect isn’t something you could compare to say a Bethesda game, but all the main locations are interesting enough and filled with a lot. It’s basically on par with PT in that regard. The first bit takes place in one big strange city and then later you travel to a couple of other places.
All of that was fine, though it played out in a linear fashion. Basically you really had to make sure you did everything you were going to do in a particular “hub” because you weren't coming back.
That was true for even the first city you start in, and I sort of thought I might be coming back there. I read that initially they sort of intended for you to come back to the first city which would have changed based on what you did the first time you were there, but there wasn't any time I guess. Sort of was disappointed you didn't get to return, but it didn't matter too much.
Combat is turn based. Everyone got 2 actions though I wasn't really fond of how it was set up since you never felt like you could do enough. For example, you could use both of those actions to move farther than you normally could, but you couldn't say attack twice in a row.
Being able to use your actions to attack twice (or use an ability/item) would have come in a lot more handy once you were already up close to the enemy (or standing back and just shooting at them with a laser gun)
It wasn't horrible, but it obviously was the weakest aspect of the game, but then of course you could pretty much avoid combat completely for the most part.
Finally the whole “choice and consequences” aspect. Well it pretty much excelled in that. More than I thought it was going to actually.
There were several things you could do in the game from major to seemingly insignificant that will get mentioned in the ending. All the followers get different endings as well. (Based on how you interacted with them, did their personal goals, etc)
It’s also not a case where you’re able to reload before the last encounter and just pick a different choice to eventually get all the different endings. I mean you can still do that to a certain degree, but as I said a lot of the smaller things you did all the way back in the first part of the game get mentioned too, so in order to get all the different outcomes, you’d really have to play through it again a few times.
If I was going to compare it another game, I’d say it rivaled Fallout 2, Arcanum or some of the Geneforge games with all the different ending combos. Actually, it might have had even more.
There was one major ending I did where some of the minor outcomes didn't make as much sense given the wide repercussions, but that was a minor flaw in what was otherwise being spoiled for choice.
Anyway I wouldn't mind seeing another RPG in this setting, though I doubt if that'll happen. Still, it was one of the better RPGs I've played in awhile.
I liked it a lot.
