Posted on: August 31, 2017

Voukras

Games: 165 Reviews: 6

A true successor to Planescape

Despite some failed promises, Tides of Numenera delivers exactly on what Planescape left me hungering for - a deeply compelling and immersive universe that reacts to my decisions and makes me feel like I'm genuinely exploring something instead of being taken for a ride down a specific script. If you also have that kind of hunger, I _urge_ you to consider ToN with an open mind. Depending on your tastes in story, you might find ToN to be at the same level as Planescape or slightly lower. One thing is for sure - ToN is different in many ways and that's what makes it a true successor. A true successor to Planescape could never be a game that just copies the formula faithfully and expands on the story. That's not possible because the artistic fervor behind Planescape is something that cannot be replicated in the same way. ToN did the only logical thing and crafted its own rich universe with its own specific worldfeel to it. ToN's world combines technology with magic in a way completely distinct from standard magical sci-fi or steampunk-with-magic universes. It's almost seamless - a magical nanite plague is right at home here. The combat is definitely better than Planescape. The system is based on resource pools and the pools can be used on non-combat actions while exploring, which makes the experience feel more tightly knit together between combat and exploration. It's at times, I dare say, fun and interesting, but by the end I grew very bored of it, yet it was still significantly less painful than the boredom Planescape's combat can give. It definitely needed more abilities and more polish and it would have been genuinely good. There are still a few masterfully crafted encounters that are positively amazing in terms of the feeling they give you and the combat system shines there. The overall experience gave me exactly the feeling of _journeying_ that Planescape had given me. It is a majestic addition to the gallery of western "old school" RPGs.

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Posted on: March 25, 2017

gogro

Verified owner

Games: 21 Reviews: 1

Not a good game

Mechanics The characters have a pool of three status: might, speed and intellect. These are depleted with your actions during combat or dialogue. For example, to deceive someone, you need to apply points from your intellect; to pickpocket, points from your speed. In combat, you use your might, speed or intellect to cast abilities or make your attacks more powerful and accurate. This seems like an interesting system, but its implementation falls apart very early in the game. Due to the edge attribute, which allows applying a number of points into a task without any cost, your party will be doing max damage with the maximum accuracy and passing all the skill checks for the conversations without spending any points. This isn't in the endgame, but after the very first big area. For the dialogue, this isn't a big deal, but for the combat, it makes it easy and thoughtless. Setting and plot Numenera never feels like a real place. It's artificial, like if some RPG fan wanted to write a fanfic, but couldn't make his mind about what. There's werewolfs, robots, sentient plants, aliens, dragons and a cyberspace, but it never comes together. Those things are just there, never interacting with each other in any meaningful way. Your party consists mostly of RPG archetypes, with the exception of one interesting subversion. Even the main antagonist, an interesting character at first, falls back into the mundane by the end of the game. The worst aspect of this game though is how poor of a RPG it is. Games like Witcher or Deus Ex - that have you playing characters with a lot of baggage - give you more interaction options than a game that has you playing as a literal empty vessel. This game favors some specifics kinda of alignments. Players who like roleplaying as evil will find themselves short on good dialogue options.

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Posted on: June 7, 2017

SeamusAndroid

Games: 76 Reviews: 46

What defines the nature of a thesaurus?

Ruined beyond redemption by the writers' raiding of multiple copies of thesauruses, ordered brand new (or nearly new) from a Mazon. O unhappy day! The purple prose tries far too hard and falls flat on its pampered and spotty fat rear end every time. It is this which strangles the game more than any other fault it may have, and there are many. Sort of interestingly. this could well be a modern phenomenon! in gaming. Divinity OS also read/sounded like an excrutiatingly hammy amateur dramatics society script too often. Were you really expecting PS: Torment to be eclipsed or equalled? Keep looking.

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Posted on: March 6, 2017

fadingtheory

Verified owner

Games: 239 Reviews: 2

Torment: Too Deep For It's Own Good

I liked Torment, but it's not a perfect game. To break it down easily... The Good -Torment has one of the biggest, most intricate, and best described worlds in video gaming. Pretty much everything can be looked at, and even vendor trash - Each individual piece, mind you - has a story -While individual characters aren't rendered in much detail, the world as a whole is gorgeous -Engrossing story -All the systems of the game work well, from leveling (Which is done in tiers), to the stats, to the problem resolving skills. You can fight and talk you're way out of just about anything -Torment often rewards failure - Even if you lose at a task, you can still win, or get an interesting result. It really dissuades you from save scumming, which keeps the game moving forward, instead of redoing the same thing for hours. The Bad -In many ways, Torments world is TOO big. The huge wave of individual details often hit you so frequently that it becomes hard to focus on each one. While I can remember the world as a whole quite well, I'm at a loss over many of the smaller aspects of it. Characters often start to run together, and even your party members become indistinct in the face of the world -Mandatory crisis (This games version of combat) distribution is inconstant. If you play through with the intention of avoiding them at all cost, you'll succeed for the most part - Until the very end of the game, where they dump several on you in a row, which no real way to resolve them before hand. You can still resolves these events peacefully, but the lack of previous exposure makes the game feel like it's changing the rules on you -The ending, while satisfying, feels out of place, with several assumptions the game has made for you getting overturned in rapid succession with no prior warning. It feels like the game, in many ways, ran out of rope Overall An enjoyable game, and a true story book experience, that unfortunately gets mired in it's own expansiveness

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Posted on: July 13, 2022

Silolvuli

Games: Reviews: 22

Not what I wanted

I wanted a well written RPG with mildly competent real-time combat and RPG mechanics to actually do things like barter, sneak, cast useful cantrips that unlock doors etc. Instead I got a drama-driven visual novel with cheap turn-based combat and unsatisfying stat-checks every 2 steps. This game is NOTHING like Planescape. This is the game that made me swear to never back a kickstarter project ever again and I have kept to that promise 9 years and counting.

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