Torment: Tides of Numenera

Having prior role-played within the rules and boundaries of Planescape: Torment and having written most positively about that construct I can enthusiastically categorize Torment: Tides of Numenera (ToN) as emblematic of Planescape's intentions and direction. In other words ToN is a worthy sequel and a worthy spiritual successor to a beloved masterpiece. A successor yes and not a template constructed by carbon, an entirely new work whose prose is masterly penned independent of it's fore-bearer's own genius.
The two works share the options to avoid potential combat though the elder is imbued by real time as opposed to the turn based nature of ToN. The elder's foundation is in an older Dungeon and Dragon rule set where the new sibling is founded in the tabletop rule set of Monte Cook's Numenera. The D&D - Numenera rule set differential is refreshing and pc and npc alignments not only have new meanings but are important triggers intricate to the presented story lines.
Comparing combat between the two and I may or may not be in the minority, I found ToN's combat to be more robust, strategical and imbued with more options acquired through inventory mechanics. Mechanics are sufficiently communicated to the user through a well designed gui. P:T's combat, though real time, felt entirely cheesy and I welcomed the new turn based direction. The caveat is how you play. What combat do you avoid. In ToN you may find yourself playing 10, 15 or more hours without any combat or just a few battles. One can categorize ToN as having a slow start but this is entirely subjective.
Concerning potential npcs who you can lobby to join your party; I know I missed opportunities to recruit due to choices made but I never felt that either game denied me a decent pool from which to recruit. Of those I recruited in ToN, each was supplied with an extensive background, many by questing, and the game presented good dialog choices when I choose to interact with each party member. Switching out party members surprisingly was simple and was within the rules of the lore and world the authors and designers created.
Inventory mechanics which I've previously mentioned in the context of combat additionally played a pivotal role and adds to lore and your role playing possibilities. Obtained world items may or may not have various uses, uses which are up to the player to trigger and initiate. New paths may be discovered or you may drastically change events.
Finally I would like to briefly mention character classes, character attributes, character leveling and party rejuvenation. Briefly because these mechanics are best discovered and have cautioned myself not to completely divulge to the detriment of my readers.
Based on the Numenera rule set leveling mechanics I found to be thoroughly unique. Your PC's class can be determined in the beginning. Character attributes are determined by various attribute pools affected when your character levels. Character levels are denoted by tiers. Within each tier you have five choices and each choice may only be utilized once per tier. Upon utilizing all five gets you to the next tier. Tiers are not just representations of leveling abstracts but play an existential function inherent in the game's systems. Finally the world continues and quests may be lost even as you sleep though rejuvenation is possible during various situations and conditions.
Able to distinguish itself while introducing new *tides*, Planescape: Tides of Numenera represents distinctive and enveloping story filled narratives immersed in a science fiction fantasy charmed filled construct ready to be traversed by the next beckoning adventurer. Like P:T, ToN deserves a second play through.

Edge is an important thing to upgrade early since it essentially makes any task 1 effort cheaper across the board for that stat.
Cyphers can be very powerful but don’t be afraid to use them if it’s a nuke/bomb type of thing. You may want to save ones that scale with level if you’re planning on using Rhin. The economy and combat is balanced for you to use cyphers and it’s not hard to get more if you need them.
Talk to everybody and learn everything you can. Curiosity is commonly rewarded mechanically.
Oddities are generally meant to be sold. There are usable ones though so check their description before you sell them.
If you want to do a run with very little emphasis on combat, go for Intellect since that influences most checks in conversation.
Don’t save scum. Even losing a combat encounter isn’t the end of the world and can lead to interesting results. Try to focus on controlling decisions as opposed to controlling outcomes and the experience will be much richer for it.
No party member is useless (even the one who REALLY seems useless). Pick someone for your party because you think they’re interesting, not for optimization. Any party configuration can make it through.
Do the Mapper’s quest in the early game. It gives you the ability to swap out party members on the fly.
Tides are largely a flavor thing and represent your alignment DnD style. There is one party member whose abilities can change based on your alignment but otherwise they just represent the things your character views as important based on their choices.
If the game says you should wrap up any side quests before you do something, listen. You can’t really go back to old areas once you leave.
Quests can advance in the time while you’re resting. If there’s a quest that seems like it might have a time-sensitive element to it, consider using items to recover your stat pools or HP instead of sleeping.
THANKS

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.

There's a narcissistic sort of RPG who goes to a party to prove how fascinatingly brilliant it is. "Who, me? Oh, I'm just reading about the gamification of space colonization. You know, something light, before I get back to mingling." The kind of open world adventure who wears glasses with no prescription, because it wants people to think it's very intelligent.
Then there's the genuinely brilliant RPG, who didn't get invited to the party in the first place because of how incredibly f**king weird it comes off. "Look, officer: there was an idea, and now there's a hypothesis, and that bears testing; but there are too many square meters of soil to test, and not enough geiger counters to test them with, and that's why there was no time for PANTS, you see, because there might be SAMPLES. Ok? Ticket me if you must. I regret nothing."
This is very much the second sort of RPG. Inaccessible, but not unapproachable. Obsessive, but not pretentious. Neither over-complicated nor under-complicated, but firmly mis-complicated--complexity that balloons off sideways, in ways that make perfect sense... but only from a single, exceedingly obsessive, distractedly warped perspective.
The narrative will absolutely take the time to try to walk you through the labyrinthine, brain-meltingly bizarre logical connections it makes. From a distance, a few of them even make sense. Pretty soon, you find yourself drawn into the fascinating Ninth World, all the while wishing you had known that this particular party was BYOB. Because damned if you don't need a few drinks after trying to make sense of any of that.
In the end, this sort of RPG is not the kind that gets invited to parties. It's the kind that's best enjoyed in measured doses with a qualified trip-sitter. The kind of game obsessed over by two specific kinds of people: the kind of people who think they really GET quantum mechanics so long as they're off their meds, or the kind who live by the MST3K mantra. "It's just a show; I should really just relax."

I don't think I've ever played a computer game that was more true to the spirit and the feel of tabletop role-playing games, than this one. This feels to me as close as one could possibly get to a genuine table-top role-playing game, for a single player game played on a desktop computer. Incredible!

A good book

If you are looking for a Torment game, you will find a toned down version of Planescape. The writing is good, but not as good. Gameplay design is rough, but not as bad. Companions are a mixed box of ok to great. Where this game has its predecesor beaten is in the sense of wonder and strangeness of everything you come across.
If you are looking for a Numenera game, this has the same philosophy that runs through the TTRPG of never let your players grow too bored or accustomed to the world, and keep throwing curve balls. You will also find some of the staple criatures of the setting. Word of warning: Focii are few and bland, but you will be better off considering your character focus being "who owns a mental labyrinth", cause in the end it plays that way.
In general: expect a lot of text to read, and be aware that due to how weird everything is, fast reading is not really recommended. Be aware that there are quite a few points of no return. The interface needs more work, especially during crises. There can be as much or as little combat as you want. If you have never played Numenera, the system is easy to pick up (I would encourage to start with a nano with scan minds for extra info). It respects your time and has no grinding or filler content.
A good game. Not the masterpiece one would expect from its pedigree, but still very entertaining and interesting.