It's a very simple roguelite where Masculinity is a phobia and Anarchy is apparently a thing to fight phobias, somehow. I see where this is going, so uninstalled it after a few runs.
Let's be honest, my only problem with this module is that it costs money. The movement problems due to poor placement, endless texts to make up for the lack of proper cutscenes, messed up journal entries if your henchmen die, the bugged events and dialogues, the anticlimatic ending, the total lack of immersion since nobody really has any personality, the lack of the feeling of your "meaningful choices"... Honestly these could be all forgiven since the story itself is honestly not that bad at all. Almost a waste to pour this writing into the module as it is, since a short story would have been much better. Yes I say short story, since this is nowhere near the promised 10 hours of gameplay. The only planescape content you find here is some mild references and lingo that is another problem in itself. Not sure what else to say since I don't want to spoil the content itself, buy it as cheap as you can since besides the cinematic intro it really does feel like someone's first try at making a module. That is fine. Selling it for money is not, though.
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.
