Torment: Tides of Numenera
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Critic Reviews for Torment: Tides of Numenera
Smart and commendably weird, InXile's homage to Planescape Torment doesn't exceed its inspiration but certainly does it proud.
The turn-based combat may be a little disappointing, but Torment: Tides of Numenera manages to live up to the legacy of Planescape: Torment by offering a fascinatingly weird and well-written tale. Thanks to a wide variety of options in conversations and the influences of its tidal system, it offers decent opportunities for replay value and a memorable tale each time. This is the rare game that leans almost entirely on its setting and writing for its appeal, and the miraculous thing is that it usually succeeds.
A slow start gives way to a thought-provoking adventure in a remarkable setting. A fitting follow-up to a beloved RPG.
It often feels more like a visual novel than a true role-player, but like Planescape: Torment before it this has some of the best writing in gaming.
Constant text-reading and unusual imagery are delights to speculative-fiction lovers, but others may be confounded
Aside from some issues with encounter balance and my yearnings for more detail, it's a beautiful, challenging game, content to be ambiguous, rich and confounding in ways that few other RPGs have ever pulled off.
Torment: Tides of Numenera is a fascinating old-school RPG that doubles down on the concept of role-playing.
If one of your favorite things in RPGs is finding a new location, and reveling in the rush of new quests and characters and dialogues and battles, then Torment: Tides of Numenara does that better than just about anything. It's disappointing, although not surprising, that Torment can't maintain that energy for a full game, especially with a rushed ending. But that's a small price to pay for a wildly creative and clever role-playing game.
