Torment: Tides of Numenera

I just finished game and it feels bland. Story is interesting in the first few hours of game but as you progress you will find that story just run around in circles eg. every character says basically same vague things about endless war. Character level up is just awful and uninteresting, companion related quests are boring and short. Combat system is strange and lot of quests are just walking from point A to point B and back. At the end of game you will face mass effect kind of ending just choose from several options it doesn't matter what you did prior to that. But the absolute worst thing are game breaking bugs that occur even after all this time since the game was released. I played game for the first time right after release and didn't finish it because of some bug with the ring and guess what after few years there are still bugs with Anechoic Lazaret, dead npc come to life after sleep, battle freeze etc. There are some good things, you can solve quests in number of different ways including violent and non violent solutions, cyphers are fun to use and can help you in difficult situations, some quests are very interesting and merecasters can give you interesting perspective on things. Overall this game isn't RPG per se but feels more like virtual novel adventure. If you seek cRPG experience similar to Baldur's gate you should give this game a pass.If you think this game is good as planscape:torment you will be disappointed. If you like to read a lot, want to immerse into world and just want to see where the story goes and don't want to bother with complexity with anything this is a game for you and you will like it. Finally for god's sake use save often or bugs will get you!

Hear, hear! It took me 37 hours to complete the game with all sidequests, and experience everything in game, and I rather like it than dislike. It has all the problems of Wasteland 2, which I think now is Inxile's speciality, hence the title. Game only has one TRUE way of playing -- playing by Nano character. Otherwise, you will simply have some content missing without substitution. Play it like it is "supposed" to be played (like a book, not a game). It is not PS:T, but mostly enjoyable. Cons: - Bugged quests (I had to fix scripts in game files to move forward, namely in "Ashen Imitation" and "The Anechoic Lazaret"). - Very uneven storytelling. Some quests shine (e.g. already mentioned bugged "Ashen Imitation"), other are frustrating (e.g. finding a particular object to interact in a *huge* and *dull* location of Sagus Cliffs to progress Oom quest forward). - Awful combat. No, worse combat that I've ever seen in game history. And the problem is not in turn-based combat itself, but rather horribly designed encounters, like if they had it designed for RTwP and in the last moment switched to TB without doing any meaningful redesign. - Companions are boring. No, listen, they all are created by using the same formula: a) Unique element (Aligerns' tatoos, Callistege's copies, Erritis voices, ...) b) No trust for Last Castoff at the beginning or want to use LC for their purpose. d) No romance with companions means no romance. e) No own opinion or personality or impact on Last Castoff; dull and forgettable (except Rhin, because you will hate you, since you can't unattach her from party). - XP is given equally to the active party. If you play solo, you won't have XP boost. Some moments in game can't be done solo (e.g. stealing Cortex in Bloom or avoiding fight in final part of the game) - Worst epilogue ever that highlights game's weaknesses. It feels like devs lost interest and rushed to finish it. Mb. just right after Kickstarter campaign ended.

Looks like all POE engine games seem to share the same flaw- the character creation and combat system is way too developed and complicated compared to ..... duration of the game. Literally, you have 6-8 different kinds of damage you can take or deal in combat, but you will fight maybe 10 fights throughout the game. You have various secondary skill to choose from while 90% of them is totally useless, or you do not even bother to make additional click to use it. I was able to finish it in less than 30 h, looking under every rock. The story and world has a huge potential, however too much of it had been revealed at the very beginning ( even in trailers). Definitely not Torment style. The game gives you a little bit of freedom, however only within a particular location. The best of Torment - wandering around a city with no clue what to do next, will not happen here, since plot is linear and it is very obvious what to do to push it forward. Some pluses. The world itself is quite fascinating, the main storyline is consistent, and really interesting. In few places you can find relations to original Torment that will bring a smile on your face and chill down your spine. If it just could have been 60-80h game not 30 h game....

Title frankly says it all. I bought this a few years after it came out in the hopes that the bugs would have been ironed out. They haven't. I "played" this on Linux, so this might not apply on other platforms - please keep that in mind. The game is very unoptimised - making the use of the "Pillars or Eternity technology" bit that you get in the intro sequence rather annoying. It also suffers from some rather unfortunate memory leaks. Now, the good part is that I actually succeeded in playing it. Once, in the tongue-and-cheek die before the first scene even starts that I'm sure somebody thought was very clever... and then the problems started. I got stuck at the death screen. Unable to return to the main menu or load another save - since there were none. Force closing the game showed me the game had left a few hundred megabytes in memory so I restarted. With the computer restarted I tried launching the game again. No problems yet. Then I tried starting a new game. This time wiser in regards to what choices not to make. The game never loaded the new game. IT got stuck. I had to force close the entire computer via the power button. Here's the thing. I don't buy games to make them work, I buy them to play them. Since the start of the year I've already completed a full playthough of Tyranny, one of West of Loathing, and am currently doing one of Pillars. All three Unity games, two of which use the same base as Torment. I know for a fact Unity works on this machine and how the Pillars version of the engine should behave. Torment is unoptimised, badly programmed and suffers from a rather serious memory leak issue. I know GOG doesn't like it when we bring other games into these reviews but in this case it's a matter of the engine and Torment themselves using the name of Pillars of Eternity in their own game. Torment invites an engine comparisons to Pillars and other Unity CRPGs. Pillars and other Unity based CRPGs work, Torment does not.

Loved the 90s Torment. Still my favorite game. This... I love it less. There is always danger in comparing something new to nostalgia, always some nit to pick. Frankly, though, the designers begged for it by calling this the 'spiritual sucessor' and naming it toment. So here goes: Story: Yes, Tides is a story driven game. The world, the pacing, the descriptions, all top notch. Plus, the way they marry sci-fi and magic is quite fancy. The environments, hard to talk them up without spoiling the story, so I wont. suffice to say they are intricate and always decorated with interactable flavor of the world, much like PST. As for the characters, they feel true. They feel like full fledged people. The last cast off isn't as compelling a character as the nameless one, but the supporting cast is quite good. Just like PST, It's esentailly a book shaped like a game. A kind of moral choose your own adventure. Sadly, It won't ask you to re-evaluate your values and perception of reality the way PST did. Thats asking a lot, I know, but it is the 'spiritual sucessor.' Expect an excellent but not terribly challenging Sci-Fi story. Combat: Like PST, you can get through the whole game never slamming anyone with that uber hammer you paid a bazillion of the game currency for. This is fantastic. You can be a true pascifist and still feel satisfied at the end. On the other hand, if you do choose to fight, the combat feels weak. The tactical decision making is obvious... always. Tankers tank, healers heal and dps go dps. If there is a thing to use in the environment, use the thing. The move/action system they landed on leaves little room for player originality. The combat feels dumbed down, even compared to PST fighters, and that's saying something. Other: Graphics, AI, and sound... Its not hard to beat a 90's game. They do resoundingly. Final thoughts: Worth your money, but don't expect the same level of wow you got in PST or any type of combat challenge.