PST still stands as one of the best RPGs I ever played (at the top somewhere along with Fallout2). My girlfriend on the other hand, thinks it's nothing special. So as you can see, it's perfectly possible to unite both sides heh. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
To her the problem is that she can't be female (argued in one of the first posts in the thread). So overall, we can say that the lack of female character sort of turned off quite a few potential players.
Some people could argue there's not enough classes, but that's kind of a weak argument since if you played a low intellingce character, you missed over half of the story. Besides, the spells were too nice to ignore, so really, mage is the only true class you can play PST with and have the full game experience.
The NPC's all actually have characters. You can say what you want, but very few games actually have that. Most NPCs are just there with a flimsy background, rarely doing something new. In PST however, the NPC's had a deep background, some of which isn't uncovered until a stat was high enough, or you entered a certain area.
Of course, you had to read a lot. It's one of the main downsides of the game for many who didn't like it. The odd thing is, I usually don't like reading entire novels either, but the story was solid enough for me to be entertained throughout the game. A newer game, Neverwinter Nights, bored me to death with it's dialogues. They were shorter, but done in a such a way that they felt "dead" to me. Yet everybody praises NWN, whereas I actually see nothing special in it. Such is PST a jewel to me, underrated by the majority (it sold pretty bad overall, even Icewind Dale, also made with the same Infinity Engine, but more hack&slash and less story value sold better).
I have this odd thing though: I play games for their story. If I get stuck in a game, I mean, really stuck, I'll go for a guide or cheats (never online, only singleplayer). Why? Because I want to know the story. PST went well though, until the ending part with the shadows that kept getting to me. I forgot the piece of the negative plane - that costed me heh. Similarly, I also played IWD for the story, but I only ever played it twice, whereas my count of PST stopped somewhere around 6 I think...
All in all PST is a rock solid game to me and you can't do anything about it. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif" alt="" />
As for the original topic: <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/riftrunner.gif" alt="" /> being similar to PST, if it is, it'd be a good thing for me. Though it would be even better if the game was solid on it's own, without needing to borrow from PST <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
