Even after dedicating two full episodes to Planescape: Torment, I feel that I still haven't done the game justice. Planescape: Torment is more of a cultural milestone than a game in my heart. It touches on subjects and taboos that no game has even attempted to discuss, and does so with grace and tact. While many games have attempted to tell a similar story, no game will ever manage to capture the strangeness that is Planscape: Torment.

Admittedly, I was a little nervous to come at Planescape: Torment from the position of one with fleetingly little experience of '90s CRPGs, outside of Fallout 1 & 2. I'd heard for literal decades just how special this game was, but I found its aesthetics, hard-to-parse menus, and archaic battle system a little hard to overcome. Fortunately, Beamdog's recent Enhanced Edition managed to solve the menu problem, and the remainder of my issues just needed an open mind and a bit of good will to see past.

I'm glad I put the time in, because Planescape: Torment is indeed special. Yes, it's based on a Dungeons & Dragons setting, but it's just about the weirdest setting you can imagine. The Planes are a decayed, swirling mass of magic and moral structures, where you're just as likely to become the prisoner of a subterranean skeleton nation as you are to find the personification of the letter O knocking back beers in a bar. Chris Avellone is one of the most talented games writers out there, and Planescape: Torment allows him to cut loose and subvert all the usual fantasy tropes in some very interesting and unexpected ways. This game really deserves to be experienced first hand. Just dial the battle difficulty down and you're golden.