Torment: Tides of Numenera

But that still means it's pretty darn good. It's pretty much a direct retread of all of P:T's beats: mostly-immortal amnesiac tries to figure out who they were; meet a large group of eclectic weirdos and solve their problems; read the better part of a few novels of excellent, thoughtful writing; failure is sometimes just as productive as victory; that sort of thing. The gameplay itself is pretty mid; the "skill checks" in dialogue can be easily save-scummed and/or cheesed, and the combat is utterly forgettable and honestly something I usually tried to avoid. But the writing, story and setting are all top-notch, and I enjoyed pretty much the whole 30 hours I spent on it. At absolute worst, if you liked P:T this should be on your wishlist and got when it's being sold for a tenner.

Lots of folks compare this (with reason) to Planescape: Torment, I have not played Planescape so I won't be making comparisons. Torment: Tides of Numenera takes place in a strange Sci-fi/Psudo Fantasy world, called the Ninth World, built on the ruins of civilizations past, the titular Numenera are old tech so advanced, it may as well be magic. Now, when it comes to the worldbuilding, while I find many elements interesting, other facets of this setting feel weird, for the sake of being weird. It's a mixed bag. The story follows the Last Castoff, a former shell discarded by the Changing God, who now has to contend with a monster called the Sarrow that seeks their desruction. Your character's a blank slate in many ways, fitting the story, but considering your preestablished past as the body of the guy who made you, the Last Castoff is less 'Blank Slate' and more '50% Blank Slate' I don't consider this a knock against the game, as the story does have some good hooks and turns. I gotta be real here. While the story has a fair bit of intrigue, and you get to learn much about the world, many characters felt, as with the setting, werid for its own sake, but others I found more engaging or felt needed more time in the limelight, honestly the lore surrounding the Changing God and the Castoffs is where it all shines. So, gameplay... honestly you're going to spend most of your time reading, as an avid reader, this wasn't too big an issue, if you want something more action-packed, this isn't the game for you. Speaking of combat, the 'Crisis Events' seem few and far between, and while being turn based allows you to think and plan, what your supposed to do, or how the mechanics even work isn't always clear. I do like how each crisis gives you several ways of resolving them. Often I found using my wits or words pretty satisfying most of the time over fighting. This isn't a bad game, but it feels lacking. It's weird, slowpaced and text heavy, but it's decent.

People were given the expectation that this would be something like Planescape: Torment, but that is a creation and an experience that can happen only once. Taken on its own terms, this is a great game, full of heart and obvious craftsmanship. You will only be disappointed if you go in expecting a recreation of what you saw in 1999.

This game has some...issues. The quests can become unwinnable by doing them out of order; the order is arbitrary; this is poor design. Side quests should allow for independent resolutions, but several of them interrelate making them unwinnable due to a character going missing who you need to interact with. There are multiple bugs that will likely never be fixed with graphics. Several times I have observed lighting bugs while scrolling, characters pop out of existence and don't come back until you reenter the area, and text scrolling is not consistent across scollable windows; some let you scroll, others don't, the dialog window scrolls WAY too fast. The text size option makes text that is below the "fold" of the "continue" button scroll past the top of the dialog window, you then need to manually scroll back to read them. There is also a section of the game which breaks immerssion by having the names of the kickstarter backers as text on some readable items. Thats cool as a kickstarter award, very dumb as a gameplay mechanic. There are some goofy names in that section. The game is VERY short. The first playthrough is about 25-30 hours if you read everything. Subsequent playthroughs can be more like 12 hours. Honestly, it's not worth the money. Luckily I got it on sale. This game mimics the surface aspects of Planescape: Torment but not the depth. This game also feels like much of the text was written by an old generative AI which got too into looking at a thesaurus. Some of the text reads like the mutterings of a person with psychotic schizophrenia...lots of words, but no meaning.

OK it is not as good as torment but it is very good. The story is excellent and the world is very unique. It took me about 10 hours to finish and the ending is quite complete and satisfying. Before buying do take a look at the graphics and check out a bit of the world because if you are not intrigued by the setup the combat mechanics and the character build aspects will not be enough to keep you interested. There is a lot of text which means that you have to be willing to read quite a bit to get the most out of the experience. Overall loved it!