Kayzee

Planescape is actually an old Dungeons and Dragons campaign setting rather then a series. Planescape: Torment is the only video game I know of based on it, though I heard they were making another 'Torment' game that took place in a different setting with similar themes. Hehe, Planescape: Torment actually kind of cheats a bit with the whole 'controlled setting' thing. You do end up spending most of the game in the city, but some areas are in different dimensions/planes. The city it takes place in is basically at the 'center' of the whole larger multiverse and there are portals/doorways that can lead to basically anywhere. In fact there is one NPC you meet early on who is completely and utterly terrified of getting near any kind of archway or door, because they got lost and ended up in the city and accidentally wondered into one of the hells trying to find a way home. It's a pretty interesting way of doing it at least.

This kind of setting does pop up now and then in games. Honestly I am not sure how well it really works unless you are really creative with the setting though. I am sort of reminded of the game Planescape: Torment (and the whole the Planescape setting in general really), witch is sorta kinda more or less the same type of thing as you are talking about only with it's own special infusion of weird fantasy elements (most of the game takes place in a city built inside a torus that is somehow on top of an infinitely high spire in the center of the infinite plane of neutrality which is 'surrounded' by 16 different infinite planes that include 7 'heavens' and 7 'hells' and a plane of pure order and one of pure chaos... and that's just the 'outer' planes). I don't think it needs to be as extreme in it's worldbuilding and otherworldlyness as Planescape is, but I do think you probobly need to really define what your vision of purgatory is really like and make it interesting enough that the player wants to know more about it.

It's not like I don't understand the desire to give the player some optional way of training themselves, but can't you make better ways to train then just doing the same thing over and over to fill up time? Like optional areas or objectives maybe? It's fine to have some dungeons and other areas that mostly exist to level the player up. What I don't like is when a game just kinda stops and blocks you from doing anything until you run around in a circle doing the same thing over and over for an hour.

I don't know about you, but when I think 'grinding' I think of staying in one place and doing the same thing over and over and over. And to me that's just kinda the result of bad (or at least lazy) game design, period. To me 'grinding' is a kind of 'safe but boring' gameplay habit that's way too easy for players to rely on. It isn't challenging or interesting, it just takes time. But not all fighting to level up or gather materials has to be 'grinding'. It's only really proper 'grinding' if you ask me if you are literally running around in circles waiting for random encounters, walking in and out of a room to get a monster to respawn so you can fight it over and over, or clearing out the exact same area over and over in the exact same way. Fighting enemies you have already fought before can still be fun as long as it doesn't literally become a mindless interaction, which it often does. I know I might be overly fond of them, but let's look at roguelikes again. There are exceptions, but for the most part you can't really 'grind' in most roguelikes. Why? Limited resources. First of all, monsters don't just appear randomly in front of you, you have to look for them on the map and they often don't respawn. Also the more you explore the more you often need to risk. Most roguelikes have a time limit for the current floor you have to deal with, either a 'hard' time limit where if you doddle too long on a floor something bad happens, or a 'soft' time limit where you have to worry about finding enough food to keep from starving. The point of having a time limit is to push the player forward and to not allow them to mindlessly grind away. I am not trying to say that roguelikes are perfect flawless games ( even though they are ) and that all games should be like them. I am just saying that one of the main reasons I find roguelikes fun is that the whole genre was practically built from the ground up with the design goal of discouraging bad player habits, pushing the player forward and not allowing them too much safety. You might not share those design goals or want to try doing it in a different way and that's fine. The important thing I think is that you are seriously thinking about the gameplay and what your goals should be.