Stationfall and Enchanter. No, I’ve never beaten Enchanter, which is why I have my wife playing with me. She’s better at this kind of thinking than I am.
Love all this Planescape talk! & Enchanter, too.
I actually just got past the Vhailor part, though I messed up talking him out of existence. Oh, well.
My party is Morte, FFG, Nordom, Dak’kon, Annah. Playing as a Magic User.
Yeah, that’s my usual crew too – Ignus is the other companion I don’t usually bring on, since hanging out with a chaotic-neutral human torch seems like it’d create more problems than it solves. Despite jacking my INT, WIS, and CHA to the max, though, I usually stick to fighter rather than mage for reasons that are obscure even to me.
I think Fighter is probably the best due to specialization and some nice gear, even without high strength. I just keep doing magic user out of habit.
On the IF side of things, I really enjoyed 1958; Dancing with Fear.
And for Christmas, I bought Samorost 3 as a present for my son. We ended up playing it together, and both previous installments too. A lot of fun was had by all involved (even the little man in the white leotard, I hope).
Recently I’ve been playing two IF-adjacent games - I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, which I loved, and Pathway, which I also really enjoyed. As an IF player, I really liked Exocolonist’s interplay between mechanics and narrative, and it’s excellent both as science fiction and as a character-driven story.
I always have that party too, but I also prefer to play as a Fighter. (An extremely wise, intelligent, and charismatic fighter, to be clear. I’m not a monster.) Personally, I think the best way to experience Planescape Torment is to turn the difficulty all the way down and spend as little time thinking about combat as possible, and magic is just too involved for that.
Oops, I may have stumbled across Stardew Valley and sunk 57 hours into it so far…
Seeing a trailer for the sequel recently, I went back and replayed Slime Rancher. So relaxing…
Mostly playing Deep Rock Galactic (occasionally) with my partner to keep my sanity while crunching for SpringThing. Also watching Dead Space remake let’s-plays. (My anxiety is too extreme to play it for myself. I’ve tried. I literally freeze at the keyboard and everything freely kills me)
What recommends Planescape? I’ve always shied away from it because I find the setting less compelling than more terrestrial games like Baldur’s Gate. For whatever reason, I don’t know.
I think a lot of people consider it Chris Avellone’s best writing specifically, and some of gaming’s best writing generally. The strengths of BG and PST are really different, so they are hard to compare despite the apparent similarities (AD&D 2E, Infinity Engine). BG combat tends to be really satisfying. PST is more like a point-and-click (with distracting combat interludes).
Most people play it with combat set to easy. Dialogue tends to yield the most XP, anyway.
As a person that was interested in D&D at the time, I definitely found prime material plane settings more interesting than Planescape for pen and paper games. I particularly didn’t like the slang, which seemed sort of insistent in a “how do you do, fellow kids” sort of way.
However, the setting is put to good use here, offering as it does opportunities to visit and encounter a lot of strange stuff that dovetails with the game’s story and themes. That story wouldn’t have worked somewhere else–the setting is central to the plot. The protagonist is rather unique compared with typical CRPG characters of the time. He’s a bit more like a JRPG character, as those tended to be fixed instead of blank slates. Likewise, the companion characters are fully developed, with discoverable backstories.
This is also a game where alignment is more impactful than just “nice guy and jerk guy dialog flavors.”
The emphasis on choice and dialog was unusual and very well written/presented. Games like Disco Elysium have more to do with Planescape than they do Baldur’s Gate. I’d go so far as to call it IF-adjacent.
PST starts as a seemingly familiar “protagonist with amnesia” plot, but things spin out from there. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in story-heavy games and meaningful choice, even if they don’t prefer RPGs (just put combat on easy and whack everything!). I’ve been vague to avoid spoiling things, but the short answer is writing, writing, writing and a vivid experience of playing a role (not always common in RPGs, oddly enough).
Thanks for that great reply! When I get a chance (in the next 2-3 years ) I might pick it up.
Mostly playing Hearthstone lately, thanks to the Hearthstone Access mod. I’m even considering entering a tournament, but I’m not quite sure if I should at this point.
I find Trials Fusion to be the most relaxing game if you play some of the easy, longer tracks. You can find some very long tracks in the “track central” which holds more than 200,000(!) user-made tracks. To give you an idea, here is a video I made: Trials Fusion™_20230204 my first run in “The Cave” - very long track - YouTube
However, if you are a newcomer you should start with something easier if you want to relax. Note that if you like frustration there are lots of tracks to do that as well. And the electronic music fits very well.
I played a lot of Baba Is You this week. I played a lot of it last year and then got frustrated and gave up, but this week without power seemed like a good time to pick it back up again since I could charge my iPad in the car.
If you haven’t played it, go get it. It’s just amazing. And I consider it IF-adjacent.
Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp. It’s therapeutic kind of game.
Baba Is You is a parser-based text game.
I mean, there is a text parser in there.
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you: The Automobile. A heavy duty survivalist charging station for all your electronic gadgets in an ice storm. (Oh, it has wheels too, so if the weather permits it, you can push it to the other side of your campsite.)
I finished Return to Monkey Island recently. Impressed with how well put together the story was, weaved in all the callbacks to prior entries really well, pulled back on some of the silliness. Puzzles were solid but I have trouble remembering any stand-outs (A surprising amount of mazes!). Did find it interesting that it provides a hint book in your inventory, and the book had a gradual invisclue-like system.
Final Fantasy IX! I did list that as my favourite game in the favourite things thread.
Have you played Citizen Sleeper? Played it last November/December, I’ve thought about writing a review post about it. It’s also pretty thoughtful about how it melds its mechanics and narrative. Another game I remember impressing me with its narrative-focused mechanics before is Signs of the Sojourner. Would recommend both for anyone interested in that sort of thing. And funnily enough, both games have people that worked on them that you’ll also find on IFDB (Salt, Mama Possum).