Torment:ToN - Review @ Hardcoregaming101

Hardcore Gaming 101 has reviewed Torment: Tides of Numenera and compared it to Planescape: Torment in the process.

Note: the review is rich on spoilers.

Numenera is a victim of its own hype: it is a good game but it's simply not as good as the thing people imagine when they hear 'record-breaking Kickstarter campaign', and 'spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment' while at the same time looking at the amazing concept art. Paradoxically, it is too much like Planescape: Torment (when it comes to story and themes) to be judged on its own but to little like it (when it comes to mood and atmosphere) to be a worthy follow-up. Many of those sins could have been forgiven though if the game had a bigger emotional impact - but unfortunately and ironically, Torment isn't good enough at tormenting the player.

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SO whats UP with patches and delivering the Kickstarter promise? Where is the Hype in Newsreporter land that Torment is best, because inXile creates so awwesome games?? Like the crap WL2 and ilk.

A fair review I'd say.
I'm playing Torment for about a month and my initial enthusiasm wanes minute by minute. Great setting, not so great game - just like PST ihmo.

By the way: are there any "book-ified" text transcript versions of ToN?
PST has one, and I think it is a much more enjoyable experience than the game.

I really loved PST and was a big backer for that one.
I had a similar experience too, my initial enthusiasm withered to the point where I nearly had to force myself to finish it.
Huge deception for me at least

Torment aptly named for all the reading---a well written novella usually packs in tons of information.

I really enjoyed the game myself - had a lot of fun with it and enjoyed all the reading and lore.

Loved the setting, loved the lore.
Backstory and text was fine for me. I can read.
Gameplay fell a little flat for me but overall happy with it.

I am a big fan of an involved deep game. I tried ToN and I was beaten to death by the reading. Normally this is ok, but in this case, I couldn't walk 5ft with out some descriptor popping up. I gave up in the end.

The one thing that helped is that I didn't play it all hyped on previous Torment game.
Pretended they were not connected at all.

PST is one of my favorite games of all time but ToN didn't do much for me, and ultimately I stopped playing after about 10 hours. The setting and characters were decent, but the gameplay was only so-so.

I could be okay with that but the stories within the game mostly seemed separate from each other, as if reading a bunch of isolated short stories. I would encounter someone who had a rich story to tell, but it wouldn't feel to me as though it fit into any larger narrative and after only a few of those stories I stopped caring about each of the separate stories I encountered.

PST had a whole lot of similar-type stories, and I wonder if those stories too could have felt as though they were separate from each other. I didn't notice the issue in PST, though.

There's no need even to compare it with a hardcore RPG such as PST as most media are doing. Because when you evaluate TToN on its own it folds like a wet paper bag easily enough.

Numenera failed at core gameplay. It's super easy and banal. The fact it reads like a CYOA booklet is not the problem strictly speaking, but rather systems designed around accessibility. Between Effort and using companions for checks it's nigh impossible to fail at anything. And that butchered character development. Obviously the target audience were newly-baked RPG casuals and edgy millennials who need to feel awesome all the time.

With or without the DC I have to say WL2 is a lot better. Sadly Numenera is a populist RPG, veiled in nostalgia, and without serious modding it is probably beyond repair mechanically.

Yeah I think for me it was the general weirdness of the setting, combined with all of the reading and wandering around you did without much context for why you were doing most of it. PST was weird too, but it was at least grounded enough in traditional fantasy that it never felt so off the wall that I couldn't relate to it. But ToN often felt like it was being weird for the sake of being weird. Add that to the fact that I didn't feel like it had strong game gameplay mechanics behind it, and I just couldn't get into it.

I only got about 3 hours in, asked myself what I was doing, it just wasn't fun for me and stopped. I realized that what wasn't fun was the combat system, just didn't feel like there was any really meaning to the choices, just a small puzzle here or there. Nothing overly challenging, no wow moments. Granted 3 hours isn't very long, but I'd have thought something would happen.

I enjoyed Torment a lot. Not at the same level as PS:T maybe, but still the most satisfying game I've played the last year. I agree with Luj on the difficulty though, the effort system really didn't work very well since I almost never failed a check after the first half of the game. The combat was ok to me, apart from a certain battle mid game that was annoying as hell.

But the writing (to me) was excellent and I loved the setting, much more interesting than you ordinary Fantasy and on par with Sigil in my book. I had no problems whatsoever with the amount of text. The story was also pretty damn good. I'm looking forward to my second playthrough in a year or so.

Yeah the writing is fairly good I suppose. I don't mind purple prose, or reading a lot. The Numenera setting itself is cool as fuck. However the plot would have instilled more mystery had it been less exposed during the marketing campaign and in various trailers.

I'd love a comic set in this universe if it's well-drawn.

Originally Posted by luj1
However the plot would have instilled more mystery had it been less exposed during the marketing campaign and in various trailers.

The plot was known beforehand? I can imagine that taking away quite much from the experience. I went in not having seen any videos or read any previews though, so I was totally unspoiled.

I enjoyed it, but it's certainly no PS: T. Recently played the EE version of that, and it's simply miles ahead, even today.