Torment: Tides of Numenera

Torment: Tides of Numenera is a story-driven crpg with turn-based combat.
con:
- The game is 70% reading text, but only like 5% of text is narrated and there isn't much happening on screen to go with the text either, usually everything is idle while you read.
- Sidequests. Too many in the first area specifically.
- No character creation, you pick a male or female base model and a class, that's it. (Also you can't respec/change class later on.)
- Character models look dated, you can hardly even make out the faces.
- When you dismiss companions, they won't gain EXP, so some are bound to be underleveled.
- No quest markers, sometimes vague directions.
- Bugs. Once my main character got knocked over and wouldn't stand up anymore (even after a save & quit), so I had to load an older save file. A few times text boxes didn't disappear until restarting the game. Opening a menu while exiting an area once caused the loading screen to not appear and my characters got stuck, so I had to Alt-F4 and reload. At least the game autosaves frequently.
- Units often stack on top of each other and you can't turn the camera around.
- It relies on luck for hitrate and dialogue checks a lot, akin to BG3/DnD. I didn't like it there, don't like it here.
- You have to watch every enemy take their turn one by one, which is tedious when you're outnumbered (just like in BG3/DOS2).
- Skipping sidequests = you're undereleved, you can't farm EXP (just like in BG3/DOS2).
neutral:
- There are a lot of loading screens, but load times are reasonably fast, rarely longer than 5 seconds.
- Combat is more simple and easy than in other crpgs. Not a big deal to me, but some people might not like it.
- I've seen reviews of people claiming they only got 10 combat encounters for the whole game, which definitely didn't match my experience, but they're right in so far that many combat encounters are optional.
- No NG+, you can't carry over things to a new playthrough. Just worth knowing.
- The main story feels too similar to that of Planescape Torment at first, but it does diverge eventually.
- No fast travel, but you also don't really need it for most of the game.
- In typical crpg fashion, some choices may lock you out of future content. It's a double edged sword; makes choices matter more, but is a pain for completionists.
- Skill uses and passing dialogue checks is bound to a resource that only replenishes when resting or using items, similar to the BG3/DnD system, but Torment Tides of Numenera does it better by making rest-bound actions free (to a certain degree) once you level up "Edge". So it still sucks early game, but the progression becomes much smoother after a few level ups.
- The "5 Tides" alignment system is neat, tracks many of your decisions from start to finish, but it only amounts to 1 short paragraph on the ending text. I expected it to be more important.
- The companion characters are mediocre. I didn't care much about any of them, they didn't get much dialogue, but this also means they didn't annoy me, so *eh*.
- Unlimited inventory space, no item weight, but there is no inventory filtering feature and the inventory window is tiny.
pro:
- Difficult dialogue & quest decisions with relevant consequences. The game excels at making you think hard about what the right choices are. Often you also get more than just 2 or 3 choices. I rarely felt like I could only pick from answers that I disagreed with.
- Many of the side-stories are interesting.
- Decent soundtrack.
- The game isn't too long or too short. Around 35-40 hours even if you read everything thoroughly and do almost every sidequest.
- Once you reach the second area, you don't get bombarded with sidequests anymore and it is relatively smooth sailing for the next ~20 hours to the end from there.
- Decent environmental variety and the environments look good too (or at least better than the character models).
- Locations aren't too big, walking speed is ok, some levels have shortcuts or teleporters.
- The main story and ending are overall okay. A bit strange in the way how it happens (e.g. this game has no "final boss"), but I think it is well done, caters to the game's strengths.
Conclusion:
Torment: Tides of Numenera gives a satisfactory, somewhat manipulatable story, but it takes patience to get past the slow early game and you obviously have to enjoy reading a lot.
It is good enough for its price, but there is room for improvement.

Albeit it didn't top the popularity charts, I found Torment: Tides of Numenera very intriguing. The lore and moral choices made this game for me and I was quite emotional about the ending.
Do not expect it to be a continuation of Planescape: Torment - or create elaborate requirements for it, you'll have much more fun. Treat it with open head.

I want to love this game, really. I started it like 3 times and always burned out after max 10 hours. I'm a maximalist and I just like to discuss everything with the NPCs right away, which is a mistake in this game. They just have toooo much to say and I will need to be careful about this the next time I try. Better to focus on the quests and break up the dialogues with some exploring and combat and leveling up. It is okey to not speak about everything, there is time later to go back to the NPCs, I guess.
I love great stories and am generally not afraid of reading, so it is only a matter of time that I will beat both games (yes, I'm in the same situation with Planescape lol.)
So I can only say that the setting and the start of the story is amazing, both games are full of great and unique ideas and the devs put loeds of love in them!
Well, no idea about combat and character developement (and anything beyond the 1st settlement) either, as I didn't see much about those yet. Stange, yeah?
But the fact that I failed this game 3 times and I still want to try again, already says much about the gravitational pull it has on me. Very rare in these times when we buy stuff and most of them we don't ever install.

This is really, really good. Interesting world, fabulous storytelling. For me a worthy successor, but also fantastic on its own.

Just an absolutely fantastic game, story, and world to experience even in 2024.

That said, I don't think this game is for everyone. As others have mentioned, it is a LOT of reading, but I absolutely loved it. I purchased this because I was interested in the world of Numenera and I ended up falling in love with it!

If you're even slightly interested in Numenera I would recommend the novellas in the upgraded game package to start with and then go on to experience the game. I found the novellas to be pretty good overall and a great primer to the game and the world. I would recommend taking your time with the game too and reading as much as you can manage. I found it extremely worthwhile!

Spiritiual successor to Planescape Torment. Lot of fun to explore and interact, heavy focus on dialogue. The setting is really interesting. Personally it doesn't quite live up to its spiritual inspiration, but that's about as high a bar as one could set, and so falls well into the realm of a great game.

Excellent Game. A thoroughly enjoyable spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, though I admit that the ending felt painfully devoid of choice, leaving me to simply see the results of my choices play out when the consequences of those choices were not necessarily clear at the time. Still, the game was an amazing role-playing experience, and one of the closest things to a table-top experience I've been able to play digitally. The way the same resources are used both in and out of battle is a mechanic that needs to be explored much further in the future. And the writing was just top-notch. Every conversation was a joy to play through, and good lord was there plenty of it.

tl;dr: Ending is a tad weak, but you'll love the journey getting there. 10/10