At the time I played Planescape; torment my most favorite games were WRPG such as Fallout and JRPGs such as Xenogears and FF7. Have greater philosophical depth than Xenogears but letting my make choices?YES Let my choices be the most important gameplay element to leveling up my character? YES

As a slight confession - ever since I finished my MA in Writing [maybe before ... but I didn't try to revisit for years until then], the writing of Planescape Torment just grinds me, now. It needed editing. I think Chris Avellone said similar, himself - but I can't find the quote atm. The plot is nice but the quality of the writing itself, on the technical level, average. Sadly.

Xenogears is boring like hell... Tried to sit throught it more than 10 hours this year, couldn't.
People kep saying how the story was great, ect... it ended up being a total disappointment for me.

This may actually be true but when I experienced the game as a teenager it was amazing. Like I said in other posts in this topic, the xp rewards and being rewarded gameplay wise made the story in PS:T more engaging to me at least than a straight novel would have. I'm actually a bit nervous to tell people who read a lot and are older to try playing the game cause i played it back so long ago and I can't judge how truly bad or good the writing is.
I played Xenogears back when I was like in my early teens and didn't read much so it was like WOAH this story is awesome. Also, I tried to play it again not that long ago and the slowly appearing text drives me crazy. I think I don't read fast BUT when I try to play Xenogears now I get so bored waiting for the text to appear. I must have read a lot slower back then, lol .Even with nostalgia I find the game very boring too play now. If they made some kind of remake where I can change the speed of the dialogue appearing it would be a different story maybe.

The thing I don't understand is that... Chrono cross came nearly at the same time, it's an incredible game, still fun to play today, fresh and original, incredible story and freedom, and yet all the praise during the period went to Xenogears...
Go figure...

Chrono Chross was good BUT I think it's main problem was that it was the sequel to Chrono Trigger and people would compare them thus not judge Chrono Cross on its own merits. If Chrono Chross was a stand alone JRPG not sequel I think it could have been much more popular.

Well, I'm one of the few who thinks it actually surpasses the original.
And I'm not the time of person who automatically prefers the newer game of a serie.
Chrono trigger, while a great game, was much more tedious than Chrono cross.
I just finished chrono trigger this year, it was fun, but energy and time consuming; and Ironically enough, I followed it by final fantasy 6 thinking of doing a marathon of the best snes titles.
I dropped final fantasy VI halfway through... couldn't bare the cheap difficulty at times.

Now I'm on final fantasy XII and Fallout 1 ^^

If you found Chrono Trigger tedious than I don't see how JRPGs can be for you, lol. To me that is probably one of the best JRPGs. No random battles, fights are generally quick, and no grinding necessary. Unless maybe the game was too easy for you.

Played Chrono Cross so long ago I barely remember it. :(

Chrono Trigger was not easy, nor difficult. The problem was that you had to run back and forth between the same periods. The ennemy was visible, but all the same, a group jumps at you form nowhere every screen.
The end boss was literarily pathetic looking ... no strong point here.
Practically no dialog between protagonists. No major twist during the game...
I was just playing a long, predictable 30-40 hours adventure, with every gimmick, generic stuff from past rpgs popping up.
Crono Cross was a fresh breeze. For once you felt like you belonged in a world, and the world didn't depend on you.
People lived, the world evolved... It wasn't always the same stereotyped chancellor who turned out to be an imposter (Happened 2 times in chrono trigger ! )
And finally the Antagonist in Chrono cross was so charismatic and enigmatic...


I've also recently finished Wild arms 2... I hated it. Wild arms 3, for me is way better... not as generic, great music, captivating battles. but a little too easy once you figure out how to have an unlimited supply of carrots..

One great RPG would also be Grandia on PS, but never finished it.
I played Breath of Fire 3.. pretty generic, standard for the genre, but it was done so well that i actually enjoyed it. Pretty easy also once you have access to the fairy garden...

I think the 'storytelling' in the game is pretty terrible. Reading long passages of text is not a particularly interesting way to communicate a story in a game.

It is simply the best game ever.

The way the game unravels the story and your character, it's simply unrivalled.

I also despise the Infinity engine, but consider PS:T the only game were it worked. I consider the "isometric view period" of RPGs (mid '90s to early '00) the worst. No immersion and cumbersome mechanics nearly turned me away from RPGs during that time.

However, I never got the major complains about PS:T. I find the gameplay and especially the combat a lot better executed than it was in other IE games (Hello, Baldurs Gate). And the start of the game (the morgue) is one of the best expositions in gaming.

I remember booting PS:T up, just to see how that new widescreen mod would look and I ended up playing through that game again.

I find PS:T and Morrowind are the best examples of how voice acting killed complexity in storytelling. (Even thought I love modern RPGs).

That's exactly what I meant. There was a time when long, well-written passages of text were considered an _excellent_ way way of communicating a story, be it in games or elsewhere. They give the writer total freedom, he doesn't have to limit his ideas so that they fit in whatever can be visualized with the current technology. Text is a much better medium for transporting thoughts and impressions than graphics are. Text can - with ease! - transport descriptions of nauseating smell, sour-sweet taste, biting cold, and a million other things that graphics and sound have a very hard time to make tangible. Text can convey and trigger emotions in a much more direct way than graphics can. In an imaginative reader's mind, text can create more powerful images than any current technology can display.

There once were great, hugely enjoyable games that consisted of nothing but text, games that touched players in ways that modern games barely manage. For about 10 years now, game developers have shunned away from using text - and games like Planescape: Torment show how much has been lost due to that.

It's pretty saddening to see someone stating that "reading long passages isn't a particularly interesting way to communicate a story in a game", as if that was some absolute truth. But it underlines my point very well ... unfortunately.

I really like the NWN graphics, they aren't as good as DAO but they are nice and neat, certainly light years better than PST or Baldur's Gate II (too bad as I am intrigued by the latter game too).