Torment: Tides of Numenera Reviews
If you're looking for a story-focused game where your choices truly matter, set in a rich, nuanced world absolutely crammed with sci-fi obscurities, fantastical beasts, and mind-warping trans-dimensional phenomena, you will adore Torment: Tides of Numenera.
Torment: Tides of Numenera is more than a nostalgic homage to Planescape: Torment – its own innovations will mark the genre as much as its spiritual predecessor did.
It's slightly too short, a bit technically ropey in places, and extremely heavily front-loaded with some very dense lore, but once you work your way through the initial overwhelming lack of direction, what you'll find is an exceptionally rewarding RPG filled with deep systems, a ton of genuine replay value, and a lot of love and care.
Tides of Numenera is best approached as one might a weighty sci-fi novel from the likes of Clarke and Asimov; intimidating at first glance, with more exposition than explosions. Allow yourself to become immersed, however, and you'll find a trippy, twisty title with a myriad of ways to experience it.
Torment: Tides of Numenera is a role-playing game like very few others, giving players total freedom in how to approach any given situation, even allowing them to complete the game by avoiding most fights through this deep choices system. With excellent writing, lively and creative world, engaging story and characters, and solid mechanics, the role-playing game developed by inXile is a game that those who love immersing themselves completely in fictional worlds have to play at all costs. Giving justice to the Planescape: Torment's legacy was a very difficult task, but the team proved that they were more than up to the task, creating a game that builds upon this legacy with the utmost respect, despite some small issues which don't impact the game too much.
Torment looks like a future-fantasy Lord of the Rings, plays like a collection of extreme short fiction, and emerges as the most alien world I've discovered in decades. Be ready for the narrative equivalent of combat fatigue. But if you’re in the mood for a complex world operating under a complex moral system, then it’s worth examining Numenera's overriding question: "What does one life matter?"
The mechanics are not unique, but the way it’s presented already showcases the strong writing of this game, and that level of storytelling remains consistent throughout.
A sci-fi marvel, Torment: Tides of Numenera lays a narrative path for what could be something major. The pristine storyline shines through for those willing to sift through the cumbersome issues
Torment: Tides of Numenera impresses where it truly matters.
Torment: Tides of Numenera is a game unlike many others. In many ways its tale more closely resembles a book than a game.
If you've built up Planescape: Torment to legendary status in your mind, or if you're looking for detailed mechanical systems, you may find Torment: Tides of Numenera a bit lacking. It's strengths are in the writing, art, and atmosphere. It's also a bit expensive right now.
Sometimes exceptional, always ambitious, but periodically falling short of its aims, Torment: Tides of Numenera is testament to the tribulations of following a universally established creative triumph. Well worth playing, nonetheless.
This is not even a breath of fresh air! It is a bottomless oxygen tank. In the universe of Numenera almost every meter of space, character or scenario penetrated by some phenomenal madness. Torment: Tides of Numenera is a masterfully written interactive book with a gripping storyline that makes you want to reread again and again. If developers will correct numerous technical problems, feel free to add another score to the final grade - both on PC and consoles.
Review in Russian | Read full review
Torment: Tides of Numenera is a worthy follow-up to the original and a fascinating game in its own right.
It’s really surprising that a game could be configured so well from PC to console and yet fail in so many other areas under the hood. InXile has the controls, menus, and navigation down pat for console, but it needs more tweaking in its engine before this game can be recommended to anyone. I hate giving this score for Torment, especially knowing that it’s a patch or two away from being a shining cRPG example on the PS4.
All told, Torment: Tides of Numenera shows that, even after some controversial post-Kickstarter adjustments, the money and time that went into it has paid off. It’s an all-around great experience with minimal bugs and a rich story.
Torment: Tides of Numenera proposes an adventure full of twists and with a great lore. Its turn-based system is the most interesting thing, and probably is the part of the game that makes it unique and different from other actual RPGs
Review in Spanish | Read full review
While appealing to players of the first game or longtime fans of the genre as a whole, new players will also find much to like about Torment, most notably the experience of playing a game that isn't funneled down a pre-determined avenue of "discovery", but one that rewards exploration, time and diligence to NPCs and locations and much more.
It’s rare that a game allows me to use my failures within itself to build a unique narrative, and that in itself allowed me to approach Torment: Tides of Numenara from a new light. Ironically, the lack of a Game Over led me to be more cautious as I know the world has evolved, even if just by a tiny bit, as a result of my failures.
The '90s have nothing on this. Torment: Tides of Numenera might have been fuelled by nostalgia but outstrips its contemporary peers in reactivity, writing and invention.