How far along did you get? Any milestones? The starting area doesn't quite capture the essence of the game.

Much of the game depends on conversations with party members. Try finding your first couple and keep talking to them regularly after they've joined you. Couple of interesting areas to aim for are the tavern and the old woman who can train you in magic. Afraid I can't remember enough of the early progression to offer more guidance.

It might not be for you. It's very serious much of the time and draws a lot of inspiration from real world philosophy and psychology. On the other hand, some of the philosophy it incorporates makes pretty heady fantasy. If it helps, later on you'll encounter thieves, undead, demons, angels, hive minds, and shadows, although the atmosphere never approaches conventional fantasy.

Jesus, that's like asking what's better, a McRib or a Kobe steak sandwich. They're both awesome, you should try them both at some point, but one is refined and takes some level of snobbery to truly appreciate, and the other is a delicious guilty pleasure.

If you don't mind reading walls of text every few minutes and having a story that's actually complex compared to the norm in video games, then play PS:T. It's iconic for the RPG genre, and carries with it the merits and failings of RPGs, the Infinity engine, and BioWare writing.

If you don't mind having to control six characters at once while you play Diablo with less clicking, then play IWD with expansions. It never got the reception that Diablo got, and that's probably because it was less action, more RPG. If you like a dungeon crawl, you won't go wrong with it.

Not that IWD is bad by any means, but the over-traditional black/white fantasy setting, simple storyline and repetitive battles against hordes bored me out by some point. I never finished it, but it appears I got very close to doing so. I might give it another shot some time.

Torment is the other way around. The combat system feels unfinished and lacking, but I forgave the game because of what makes it great: the story, setting and characters. There is no world to save, no damsel in distress (well, not one you can't ignore, anyway), no resurrected dark gods, no attack of the elemental evil, no legendary warhammer of Mog the Godslayer. Hell, there is only one sword in the entire game as far as I know. It's a welcome break from traditional fantasy. Sure, I spent at least as much time reading the game as playing it, which might sound terrifyingly tedious. So it's not perfect, but playing it, I realised that, in a way, it just is.

Both games are among the best at what they try to do, but they're not readily comparable.

Torment is primarily about investigative role playing. It puts you in a weird-ass situation, and tasks you with making sense of it. It's as free-form as BG, but where you were drip-fed the story of BG, in PS:T you have to actively discover it.

Icewind Dale, on the other hand, is all about the combat. It takes the random trash combat of BG and makes it interesting, and throws many more & far better set piece battles into the mix than BG had. IWD isn't free-form at all, it's very much an old-school crawler that you beat by clearing one level at a time.

So... If you want the best Infinity Engine combat, pick IWD. If you want the best Infinity Engine role playing, pick PS:T.

Also, both games are quite lengthy. I'd guesstimate 40'ish hours each.

I have a similar problem with PS:T, although not as extreme as you describe -- I usually get past the first few hours and then really get into it for a while but, at some point, somehow lose interest. The last time I played it was last year and I got further than I ever have (Clerk's Ward, and did a number of quests there, too) but the game lost me once again. I backed up my save though and fully intend to finish it, hopefully later this year.

I love all the other infinity engine games and have finished them all multiple times, so I've been trying to wrap my head around why I can't seem to stick with Torment for an extended period of time. I don't mind the reading and, modded with the widescreen mod and Ghostdog's UI mod, the game looks great and is (both graphically and text/dialog-wise) very easy on the eyes. I don't mind the setting either -- admittedly, I doesn't appeal to me as much as the Forgotten Realms do, but I still think it's fun, interesting, quirky, a nice change of pace, incredibly well realized in-game, and the characters are awesome too. So maybe it's the combat then? It's the only real weakness the game has, especially when compared to the other IE titles, especially Icewind Dale and Baldur's Gate II, which feature some seriously epic strategical encounters...

It's a dense game, especially if you stop to do everything. Burnout is possible. The main storyline isn't always apparent. You could try skipping some of the side-quests and pushing forward?

Major payoffs await once you're past the Clerk's Ward. Should be enough to renew your interest for a while.

Yeah, Torment's combat system actually was a bit... I don't know, I found it clunky at times. But then again, seeing as how half the time (or so it felt) you could snap people's necks through dialogue options, who needed to bother with combat? (Snort.)

Personally, I pick Torment over IWD any day, but that's because I did a fair amount of tabletop under the Planescape setting and I've always liked it. That, and IWD really did just bog down into too much "Fight this, fight that, fight this with that and these guys, too." All with a cast of characters that you didn't really give a damn about because they were generic PCs you rolled from scratch and had no real interactions with anything other than whacking them over the head and taking their stuff.

Well, the game has dark undertones layered beneath dark overtones, constantly. Like wvpr said, burnout is possible. Additionally, Sigil in all it's glory, isn't exactly a fantasy vacation hot-spot. At least not most of the locations you travel to in the game. Before playing PS:T, I was so excited to play a game that takes place in that city (from reading about it on the internet and the references to it in BG2:SoA & ToB) and then when I started playing PS:T, I grew to hate the city. But the thing is, despite my dislike for all the locations, it's still perfect for the dark story(-ies) told in the game. My 3rd favorite game of all-time behind the BG series (I haven't played IWD 1 or 2 yet).

Go for Planescape: Torment! One of the greatest stories ever told in the history of video games!
Tbh, I still have a big poster from this game on my wall :)

Best regards!

Thanks wvpr, AlphaMonkey and bladeofBG.

I have no doubt that my interest in the game will be renewed when I get back to it and, considering the fact that I'll be continuing from that save, I also have the feeling that when I do, I'll be able to finish it. And yes, it is definitely a pretty dark game with dark themes but that's part of the appeal for me as well. I hope that when I've finished it at least once, and kind of get the bigger picture in terms of the structure and flow of the game, I'll be able to re-visit it and finish it more easily in the future. It's one of a kind, that's for sure and, even though it's probably my least favorite Infinity Engine game, it still easily makes my top 10 of all-time favorite CRPG's.