I knew before I read the review that Blood Piggy was going to slam it.
He's very similar to russ in how he views games.
Anyway: the 'review' of BP is crap. It's a huge pile of mental masturbation, is way too long, totally unbalanced, is *extremely* subjective and exaggerates facts constantly to make his point. It's the typical kind of anti-fanboy review I tend to ignore because of its extreme view and those are rarely helpful except to those that agree. It misleads rather than guides people.
His entire review can be summed up in one line: Planescape has crappy gameplay which is an excuse to tell the story. Tadaa. Not that I agree, but that's really what those heaps of text are trying to say.
In any case, for many people, a good story is what pushes the game onwards. The main reason I give up on games, is the lack of a proper story and even a mediocre game will make me complete it if the stories interests me. Only with the very best games, a story is optional.
Personally, I prefer a game with an amazing story and good combat over a game with amazing combat and no or a pathetic story. Even games with amazing combat tend to make me think "well, what's the point?" after a while. For example: I loved Wing Commander Prophecy when I first played it, because the story was cleverly made to draw you in. The actual space combat was less than amazing but I still completed the game.
About Planescape: loved it and although I can see some of Blood Piggy's points, I think he's wrong, rating it based on what HE believes an RPG should be like instead of reviewing it on its own merits. Nothing worse than people bitching about a game because they wanted it to be something else, like the idiots that threw crap at Thief because you were weak in combat >_<. Planescape was ALWAYS supposed to be a story-rich RPG.