Planescape Torment: Enhanced Edition

The pitch

Planescape: Torment casts you as The Nameless One, an amnesiac immortal waking up in a mortuary in Sigil, the City of Doors, trying to answer one question: what can change the nature of a man? It's a 1999 Black Isle Studios RPG built around dialogue, philosophy and a genuinely strange setting rather than combat, and this 2017 Beamdog remaster brings it to modern resolutions and platforms while keeping the original systems intact.

The reputation, tested against real reviews

It's rare for a game's hype to survive contact with its actual review corpus this well. Reviewers across the page, year after year, arrive already having heard the reputation and come away agreeing with it rather than deflating it. "PT:EE is a game that I would recommend as an essential game to play for anyone who claims to be a fan of video games, let alone RPGs," reads one detailed review. Recent sentiment confirms this isn't just legacy goodwill from original players: the 100 most recent English reviews run 88% positive, a healthy figure for a 27-year-old game whose audience today is mostly discovering it for the first time.

The honest part: the combat really is the weak point

What makes this corpus worth reading in full is how candidly its own fans discuss the game's real flaw, rather than pretending it doesn't exist. "Combat" appears in 73 of the 100 most-helpful negative reviews — not as a minor gripe but as the central subject of many of them. A 2025 review puts it starkly: "The gameplay is horrible. Its story may be good, and its writing may be superb, but at the end of the day, when you click buttons, it [falls apart]." A March 2026 review frames it as a tonal problem rather than just a mechanical one: "Writing, world, characters are great, you get immersed right off the start, until D&D creeps in. The gameplay unfortunately shows up and ruins the vibe." This isn't contrarian pushback against the hype — it's the same praise for the writing appearing right alongside a specific, consistent complaint about the combat, from reviewers who still recommend the game.

A minority who think the reputation is wrong

A smaller but real thread pushes further, arguing the whole reputation is overstated. "This is the most overrated game I have ever played in my life," reads one blunt 2022 review. A more measured April 2026 review, from someone engaging seriously with the game's historical importance, writes: "I am going to say some unkind things about a foundational piece of art... You see so many things here that you've seen in later titles," while still finding the actual playing experience thinner than the legacy suggests. These are a minority position in the corpus, but worth including because they push back specifically against buying on reputation alone.

The bug that generated real anger, and appears to be behind it now

Between 2018 and 2020, a specific complaint recurs with real weight: a bug capable of halting story progress roughly three-quarters of the way through the game. "Known major bug that completely stops progress about 3/4 of the way into the game making it so you can't finish," reads one 2019 review; a 2024 review, frustrated the issue persisted for some players, asked "Steam, stop selling it until Beamdog fixes these outrageous bugs." Checking the 2025-2026 dated negative reviews in this same corpus, that specific complaint doesn't appear — current negative reviews are almost entirely about the combat and pacing rather than progress-blocking bugs, which suggests Beamdog's patches have substantially addressed it, though this review can't independently confirm every configuration is fixed.

Depth and completion

Achievement data shows an unusually steep drop-off for a game this acclaimed: the top achievement sits at 53.0%, and the median across 50 achievements is just 7.75%. For a slow, dialogue-heavy RPG with combat many players actively want to minimise, that's consistent with a real share of buyers not finishing — not necessarily because the game is bad, but because its pacing and systems ask a lot of patience the hype alone doesn't supply.

Value

At NZ$28.99 with no in-app purchases, this is a fair price for one of the most historically significant RPGs on Steam, delivered in a genuinely improved technical package over the 1999 original.

Verdict

Planescape: Torment: Enhanced Edition earns its reputation on the strength of its writing, cast and philosophical ambition — nearly three decades on, its own recent players still say so in large numbers. What sets this review corpus apart is its honesty: fans and critics alike agree the combat is the weak point, not a myth invented by people who don't get it. Buy this for a story few other RPGs have matched, and go in accepting the AD&D 2nd Edition combat as the toll you pay to get there.