Posted on: March 29, 2018

Twobirds

Games: 357 Reviews: 7

A worthy successor

A lot of reviews bring in outside reasons for giving this game a low score, which I find a little odd. I have to say, I think THIS GAME, RIGHT NOW, is wonderful and just as fun and interesting as the original Planescape: Torment and is absolutely worth your money. I expect most people are going to be familiar with the style of gameplay, so specific to Tides of Numenera, the systems that allow for spending pool points to accomplish things you're interested in really work well - you can pick and choose what goals you have in mind, rather than finding out mid-conversation or mid-combat that you can't follow that choice. Combat, I could take or leave, just as I could in the original. It does some interesting things and honestly my takeaway is that it's best to spread out your points; concentrate on one area if you like but don't short-change your other aspects. I found the characters fascinating as well; one thing the original Planescape: Torment and Torment: Tides of Numenera do well is to have regular people struggling to survive in this bizarre landscape, where something you find while scavenging might kill you or make you a god. Your relationships are all about dealing with this aspect of the world, and you have choices about how you deal with it and how you help your companions deal with it. I think anyone who's enjoyed Planescape: Torment will enjoy this game - it is rich with imagery and depth, and demanding in all the right ways. Personally, I think it surpasses the original in a lot of respects, but even if you don't think so, it's a damn good game.

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Posted on: March 3, 2017

Bunbury

Verified owner

Games: 171 Reviews: 2

Good, familiar story; unfinished game

Oh boy, this is hard to review. First of all, TL;DR: Text-heavy RGP with a good, linear story and turn-based combat. If you like those things, this is definitely recommended. If you don't like reading a novel and a half to finish a game, this is not for you. Torment:Numenera takes you, a new consciousness residing in the castoff body of a god, on a journey through the ninth world - a semi-primitive culture built on the ruins of the advanced civilizations that came before. I am torn about this. I liked playing Torment:Numenera. I had fun, was drawn into the world most of the time. But it won't replace Planescape:Torment in my heart. That is partly because inXile did what inXile does: Remake an old game without much in the way of new ideas. Similar characters, similar story, similar places as the original. What is meant as an homage turns into a clone. BUT if you are new to Torment, and the world and story are new to you, you are almost certainly going to enjoy them. Heck, I did, even though I suspected much of what was coming. The story is definitely the core of this game. Be warned: It is quite linear. You can make choices, but in the grand scheme, the same things happen in the same order. The gameplay is nothing special. Simplistic turn-based combat, not the focus of the game. The exploration system advertises failing tasks, but I found that, most of the time, if you fail, you just... fail. Many small things bothered me: The game seems curiously unfinished. On the minimap, you can't refocus your screen. Zoom is limited, making the world seem small and making it hard to appreciate the full art style. The labyrinth sees surprisingly little use. The trading interface doesn't have an "undo" button. Other things. PS:Torment was not perfect. It, too, was partly unfinished and had, maybe, a little more descriptive text than it really needed. But it was a child of its time. I feel inXile failed to address its problems in the name of being the "spiritual successor".

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Posted on: May 19, 2017

Northchild

Verified owner

Games: 54 Reviews: 1

Like reading a bad novel.

As someone who enjoyed Planescape: Torment when it was first released and PS:T Enhanced Edition now, and as someone who enjoyed Baldur's Gate, Baldur's Gate II, and to a lesser extent, Icewind Dale, I was very much looking forward to Tides of Numenera. I grew up with RPGs on both PCs and consoles. From the first Bard's Tale in the mid-80s to Skyrim, RPGs have always been the games I look forward to the most. Now that I'm older and working full time and have only a limited number of hours to invest in gaming I find that I mostly play RPGs. Torment: Tides of Numenera is not an RPG. It has things in common with RPGs, but it's mostly like one of the old "choose your own adventure" novels, only without much choice and a poorly realized story. My favorite novels include Tolstoy's Anna Karenina and The Kingkiller series by Patrick Rothfuss. I do a little reading everyday, so I'm not adverse to doing a bit of reading in my games, but even I think that the reading is a bit overblown in Tides. I kept thinking to myself, "Maybe this is the part of the game where I'll get to DO something," Basically, in Tides, you explore very few areas. You walk up to people, read a wall of uninteresting text, choose all of the dialogue options to eventually get a more-or-less positive outcome, reload from your last save point if you get a particularly uninteresting outcome (though 99.7% of the time I didn't even bother with reloading because I just didn't care). That's basically it. There are quests involved where you have to say particular things to particular people, and some where you fiddle with some unknown technology, (all handled through dialogue options), but other than that there's not much "there" there. So what's left is a sort of novel. While the writing is technically impressive, the writers failed miserably to establish an emotional connection with me. I didn't care about the world that I was in, I didn't care about my fellow party members, I didn't care about the Changing God or Sorrow, I didn't care about the main character, and I didn't care about whatever problems/opportunities/personal habits the supporting characters had. Even humor, which can sometimes bolster a lackluster story, was curiously absent - Tides is as serious as a heart attack. I put about 25 hours into Tides of Numenera and couldn't bring myself to finish it. I was happy to uninstall it. Not recommended for people who like to *play* games, or people who like to *read* a good book.

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Posted on: March 4, 2017

Maltriestrei

Games: 113 Reviews: 2

Great promises, unique world, uninspiring result

10 hours playing: For my intellectual logical side and for the part endlessly fascinated with everything new complicated and weird it is a delicious feast. Such quirky disorganized world made from different parts of millions of worlds and times. Anything possible. You can stick any oddity there, any person or creature - and theirs presence won’t be weird. Weird is new normal in Numenera. This world has endless possibilities as a playground. Not as much as Sigil, possibly, but that city itself was more organized, structured, wholesome, it had that feel of the crossroad, main one, the Capital of All Crossroads. Living in Numenera is like living in the giant junkyard, filled with all sorts of nonsense, disconnected and random. It has it’s charms, I enjoy world-exploring side of the game immensely, but emotionally it fails to engage me. I do not care for my avatar and for my party, I sometimes feel fleeting compassion for NPC, but that’s all. No deep emotional connection at all. And here I’m really disappointed. I wanted to live in Sigil, my heart was broken for Deionara, I adored Morte and Nordom, names of most NPC from PST are still stuck in my memory, hell, I’ve replayed whole game second time to save every member of my party in the end. This one… it’s one play-through only. One highly enjoyable play-through. In the world where AAA RPG titles have dialogue wheels it’s a lot. I really missed walls of mind-chewing text and crazy ideas and intellect as the main skill. It’s better than I feared It’s worse than it promised to be. P.S. About graphics: Dear InExile, Nameless One is ugly done right, Last Castoff is ugly done WRONG! Why?! My eyes are bleeding every time I move camera to close to them or open the inventory. 20 + hrs playing: It came to the point where I do not feel a pull to continue playing. I’ve just entered Bloom after awfully constructed battle with Sorrow and Specter reveal. All of that supposed to make some emotional impact on me, I think. And I felt nothing. After many hours of playing moving pictures on the screen are still just that There is something very wrong with storytelling in this game. And with graphics. And with voicing. And with animation. And… OK, I don’t know if I’m gonna to finish it just for the sake of finishing with so many good games around and beautiful classics waiting for rerun. Such a waste of world, ideas and predecessor’s legacy! Such a waste…

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Posted on: March 26, 2018

mereskarse

Games: 200 Reviews: 3

Absolutely great... as a standalone game

If you want to review Tides of Numenera, you need to decide upfront if you will measure it against Planescape or not, because it's a deal breaker in this case. If you want something like Planescape was, then you may skip this game entirely, but in case you are just after a great and modern roleplaying game made in the last years then Numenera is absolutely recommended. The world itself is a bit overwhelming as it's on the constant edge on sci-fi and fantasy, featuring tropes from both kind of universes, that may make the more experienced reader feel like it is suffering from a kind of schizophrenia like Star Trek: Discovery. There were massive number of writers involved in the game, that led to greatly varied quality of quests and story parts you will meet as a Castoff. The main point of the story will be to make up your mind about the idea of a kind of self-made godhood and immortality and how to judge such actions. There is a reason why the story still works so well, but I don't want to include any kind of spoilers here as someone who haven't played Planescape is in for a real treat. Even though you have limited options throughout the game and these options force views on you, somehow it manages to make you keep playing with the illusion of real decisions. This is honestly the best a video game can achieve. A serious aspect of the game is that you can solve almost every single encounter without using violence, that seems like a good idea but given the world and realistic problems in Numenera, easily becomes silly a lot of the time. A common solution is to frighten and intimidate others, persuading them that you are tougher than you look – something you can be successful at even against like 8-10 fanatic cultists and such enemies that leads to awkward dialogues and silly situations. I wasn’t rushing the game through yet it took 21 hours to complete that is decent for someone like me who doesn’t have that much time to play, but could be considered short by some.

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