Torment: Tides of Numenera

Yes, Planescape Torment is much better. Removing that from consideration, this game on it's own is great. I would recommend this to patient people who can appreciate a good yarn. If you can't finish reading a science fiction book, you probably want to avoid this. Some Pros: -The story is GOOD, and yes, hard to follow. -The world itself is fascinating, weird and leaves you wanting more. -Character development is good, and the cast of character are INTERESTING. Some Cons: -Combat is pretty bad, some later battles are terribly slow in the end turn phases. -The game is indeed too short, about half of what you might expect from the genre. -The combat difficulty varies widely from battle to battle. I have to say, if you find yourself disappointed from the game ending too quickly, that may indicate that you were enjoying it and wanted more. Once I got over that disappointment, I appreciated this game much more.

The setting of Numenera is genuinely intriguing. It’s a world reminiscent of fantasy ideas, yet full of cyberpunk or sci-fi elements, with artifacts, magic and a lot of odd phenomena having some kind of scientific explanation. This world just oozes interesting stories and characters and it feels like you can learn something exciting just around the corner. Yet, in this game the places are interesting to look at and they seem to live their own interesting ways until you interact with them and suddenly feel as if the place is fake, just decorations that will disappear as you exit the scene. Characters pop in and out, mostly with no real impact or consequence. Game does have lots of great mechanics and ideas to tell cool stories in interesting ways, to not boil things down to just fighting or just talking. But there’s always a feeling of the “right way” and a “wrong way” to play the game, instead of different valid possibilities. And the “wrong way” will be less fun and less full on the story. A pretty good, if less impactful than it wants to be, story that is worth checking out. Though even there, apart from few exceptions, the game gets less and less full on interesting ideas as it goes, with most care put in the opening act and later story bits just kind of happening one by one. Oh and there’s also a fact that some of the things that Kickstarter backers were promised never made it into the game… I liked the game. I liked what it tried to do. I liked the music by Mark Morgan. I liked some of the character lines that felt truly fresh and unique. I liked the setting and hope to see more games set in it. But it’s not a title I would really want to revisit.

Incredibly immersive, alien experience. Exactly what I am looking for in RPG's. Have played the game without watching any of the trailers, teaser texts or synopsis. Got completely immersed in the world, all the dialogues, tidbits and items that the game is packed with. Having beaten it, and finally watching the trailer here on in the store, I glad I didn't watch it before. The game should be experienced without any prior preconceptions or knowledge of the world you're about to be immersed in. Experience it exactly as the main protaganist does and should. Make the choice that you would make given the situations, not those you think would result in best outcomes. The game shines through its incredibly confusing world. Continously forcing you to seek your balance and orientation.

Unlike most people who took it upon themselves to review the game, I will choose not to use don on my “nostalgia goggles”. There are several gripes that I have with the game. The player is pretty much a passive observer of unfolding events I felt the game just presented its content before me and the choices that I made really made no difference on the world (aside from modifying a dialogue option here and there). During my playthrough, I eventually got to the point when I was too tired to care about the unfolding events, as there seemed to be no visible validation of my in game choices. All encounters boiled down to exhausting dialogue trees, which was a swift process (due to gamer’s intuition), but very unrewarding. This passiveness is associated, to a degree, with the next issue on this list. Leveling is redundant The character creation system, while innovative, contains several redundant skills. What is more, it feels to me like there is no real point to levelling at all, as everything can be accomplished through the use of in-dialogue skills and resting abuse. The turn-based combat feels like a punishment This issue is self-explanatory. What should be an exciting part of the gameplay experience has been turned into a dreaded chore. While I do like it when a game lets you shrewdly manipulate your way out of combat using your silver tongue and shrewdness of mind, I think that introducing the tedious crisis system was a huge mistake. The player is essentially faced with a situation in which even simple encounters can take an extremely long time to complete. The battles feel random and there is no sense of control or tactics to them (which is a big con for me, since I also enjoy strategy games). Overall, I feel this game takes one aspect of Torment to a twisted extreme, reducing the player to little more than a voyeur bearing witness to an orgy of oddities.

Combat in a RPG is a double-edged sword: on one side it's exciting and challenging on the other it can get a bit ridiculous how you can't basically draw a step without having to stab or blast your way through a trash mob. A RPG is a way to tell a story, only it's often a story that could be some blockbuster action movie given the amount of combat there's in it. "Planescape: Torment" tried to be an exception by putting more enphasis on dialogues and statchecks rather than combat but there were indeed still quite e number of trash mobs and compulsory fights, especially in the far less polished latter half of the game. While the main story of Numenera isn't as strong as the one in the original that statement in RPG gameplay has been brought further along. There are no trash mobs, most of the "crises" can be avoided and the ones that can't rarely can only be solved by fighting and some don't involve combat at all (one is literally a "diplomatic crisis" for example). The only trouble is that the movement interface during crises is not good, it would have benefited from a grid system for greater clarity in my opinion. The stat pool system can be a bit irritating at first when the stat pools are limited and the money to find a place to sleep and replenish them is scarce but after the first level-ups doing sidequests (which are nice little microstories that sometimes tie in the main quest or in the final destiny of your companions) it becomes more sustainable and basically a non-issue in the late game. Of course there are still plenty of options for combat but I don't think that challenge is the main point of a game like this but to immerse yourself in a weird story in a weird fantasy world filled with evocative purple prose and dialogues that convey high concepts and some drama and this game delivers in that sense.