Torment: Tides of Numenera

Torment: Tides of Numenera is an infinitely complex game which no review can truly capture. The sheer number of side quests, characters, dialogue choices and endings require that the game be played multiple times. Brian Fargo and his team have created an absolutely stunning experience—I just wish it was as technically sound on Xbox One as it is on Windows 10.

Time will tell if it hits the market with the impact that Planescape: Torment had. I would guess not, just due to the games industry being a different beast these days. But in quality of writing, and in its ability to make you care about characters and force you kicking and screaming to actually think about things like good and evil, and the value of life, Tides of Numenera is every bit on a par with its illustrious ancestor.

Torment: Tides of Numenera is a modern take on classic computer RPGs that tells an engrossing and original story, meditating on complex themes of identity in a strange world that just begs to be explored. While the combat seems a bit forced and uninspired, it doesn’t detract too much from the rest of the experience, and as a result I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Torment is the purest expression of Infinity Engine RPGs we will ever see in the modern age.

Wonderful writing, deep quests, and the ability to truly shape your character make for a quality RPG. [Apr 2017, p.78]

It took almost twenty years, but finally Planescape: Torment has a worthy successor. Torment: Tides of Numenera has a distinct and unique personality, thanks to a ruleset created by Monte Cook, the story written by the amazing trio McComb-Fargo-Avellone, and an incredible freedom to approach the game. If you have even a small amount of love for CRPGs, this is the game you don't want to miss this year.

It's Torment. It's back. If you have the courage and strength to face the mental pressure, as I do, the result is a memorable experience.

Torment is far more than just a phenomenal role-playing game. It’s a challenge to restore the depth and nuance for which the genre was once known.

Torment: Tides of Numenera is all about choices. You can finish the game five times with five completely different scenarios; and that’s because its writing is one of the best ever. Every single thing you want from a solid and classic RPG is on offer here.

A stunning comeback. If you like RPG and don´t mind a tons of texts-to –be-read, a rough story and a little chaos from all the strangeness around, then you just have to play Torment: Tides of Numenera.

Ultimately, Torment: ToN offers a very compelling balance between deep gameplay, accessibility, and character-driven story. While it may seem overwhelming at first to those unfamiliar with the genre, it nurtures a sense of exploration and quest. Failure in your quests is often just as interesting as success, and that the entire adventure is closer to twenty hours than forty makes it more reasonable that you’ll finish and replay it again.

It’s a well-executed set-up with a wondrous payoff. Whereas the fun in a game like For Honor comes from physically learning how to play, the fun in Tides of Numenera comes from achieving encyclopedic knowledge of a whole new universe through truly meaningful choices.

TToN truly is a grand story: riveting discoveries and interactions drive the narrative forward while inviting you to dive head first into this very cerebral experience. The writing team, led by designers Adam Heine, Colin McComb, and George Ziets, show their chops throughout this engaging experience, as shown by the way everything comes together, like a rubik's cube of moral dilemmas. Discover the treasure of TToN, rich and rewarding for lovers of the RPG genre, new and old alike.

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. The pieces under the hood flow seamlessly into play, and while I did run into some slowness, especially when entering new areas or navigating in-game menus, for the most part the game ran smooth.

The new Torment exceeded my expectations. After finishing Tides of Numenera I felt great - it was a truly otherworldly adventure, surreal and crazy, with unique characters and choices. But there's nothing surprising about this; after all, the game depicts a future so distant you simply can't imagine it. Torment: Tides of Numenera follows up on the idea of a philosophical RPG with tons of high quality writing. Thank the gaming gods.

The weight of expectation could have proven too much, but inXile has delivered a remarkable narrative experience which deserves to be savoured.

30 hours of RPG gaming later and I don’t regret a moment of it, and I’m sure when I play it again I’ll create a totally different experience for myself. Torment has flaws but none that will stop me from considering it a great RPG.

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.

With Pillars of Eternity, Torment: Tides of Numenera is the best isometric RPG of the new wave of the genre.

Numenera ended when the credits rolled, but in my mind, the story is still going. That wouldn’t be possible without top-level writing and world-building – the kind that sucks me into its universe regardless of technical shortcomings. In other words, it’s the perfect follow-up to Planescape: Torment, as thought-provoking, mature and challenging as its predecessor. For those who like their sci-fi more than a little weird, I can’t recommend it enough.

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.

One of the best CRPGs of recent times, with a rich world to get lost in, and some great mechanics to keep you playing for hours.

Tides of Numenera requires the will to familiarize oneself with the game, and a passion for reading, but rewards the player with one of the best stories in role-playing games.

A slow start gives way to a thought-provoking adventure in a remarkable setting. A fitting follow-up to a beloved RPG.

It has its share of problems, but nonetheless this is a very good adaptation of Monte Cook’s bizarre sci-fi world - decisions, conflict and fascinating characters included.

Tides feels like a complete, if strangely assembled, game. You'll find surprising depth in some areas while other aspects aren't developed quite as much as it feels like they should be, but the total package is a huge success. Commit to learning the game's vocabulary and don't let yourself get overwhelmed by lore at the game's beginning, and you'll be richly rewarded.

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.

Torment: Tides of Numenera is a role playing game like you have not seen for years.

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. If you love cRPGs or finely crafted, complex stories and interactions, Torment: Tides of Numenera is the game for you.

Torment: Tides of Numenera is certainly not for everyone, and its reliance on world interaction and a quirky, abstract but grounded world gives it a distinct feel. If you want a thought provoking, interesting world to spend some time in then you can do far worse.

Torment: Tides of Numenera is a worthy successor to the cult classic people are still fond of after eighteen years. It is not a fast paced game, but it is a rich experience with strong writing and excellent performance on pc.

Torment is back, not literally though. Tides of Numenera mostly lives up to the expectations, forged by a beautiful world and intriguing storytelling. A text-based masterpiece.

Tides of Numenera is an almost literary experience, it is amazing, it offers a rare combination of thought through world- and character design and the feeling of freedom is almost overwhelming.

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.

Cerebral and often disturbing, Torment is a rabbit hole of significant depth, where you can get lost in improbable imaginings of warped realities and existential angst. If you can wrap your head around a non-linear narrative all about consciousness, identity, and memory, Torment is a riveting departure from expectation.

Even though it probably won't be remembered in 20 years, Tides of Numenera is a great game for those who love tabletop, pen-and-paper RPGs.

InXile's successor to Planescape Torment doesn't manage to live up to the storytelling of its predecessor, lacking distinct major characters, memorable moments, and well-developed themes, but it compensates for its failings on the main storyline by providing plenty of memorable and distinct little stories in a fascinating world, with quests that offer multiple solutions that rarely rely on combat.

Doubtlessly it’s the best written RPG game in years and there are moments when it borders on true brilliance. Fascination, reverie, delight, admiration, fear, joy – I experienced all of it while playing this game. On the other hand the abrupt, mediocre ending felt like a slap in the face, skill checks become meaningless over time, the in-game economy is awful, there are plenty of bugs and overall the game feels like a budget product. [04/2017, p.66]

The sidequests are among its strongest features, challenging your expectations about how RPGs are structured. [April 2017, p.116]

Torment is a niche title for those who want to left click between pages of a book.

Torment excels at great narrative and storytelling, colorful characters and integrative quest lines. Wonderful and weird world of Numenera will soak you in for dozens of hours, but weak fight mechanics will definitely turn off some hardcore RPG players.

Torment doesn't sugarcoat it: You can shape events but you can’t change the world — and your actions always have consequences beyond your control. It’s depressing, but effective. Torment: Tides of Numenera is relentless in how it treats its characters and the Ninth World, but that’s what makes it so fascinating. 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.

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.

The result is a game that packs meaning into almost everything you do. It doesn’t surpass the emotional heights of its late 90s forebear, but Numenera’s incredibly distinct world and unique approach to gameplay offer something really untraditional to sink your time, thoughts and choices into. For RPG fans this is super exciting, and will be sure to entertain across multiple playthroughs over dozens, if not hundreds of hours.

Torment: Tides of Numenera impresses where it truly matters. The intriguing premise and a world filled with eccentric characters begs to be thoroughly explored from top to bottom. If not for the technical issues with the combat and the rather abrupt ending, this could have easily ranked with the best of what’s turning out to be one of the best years for gaming. While the issue of whether or not it lives up to the lofty standards set by Planescape is a question I’m not qualified to answer, I can say without any hesitation that Numenera deserves your attention either way.

All in all, Torment: Tides of Numenera is an enjoyable nostalgic trip into the strongest days of PC RPGs. It's well-written, engaging and interesting, if occasionally bogged down in its own setting. Both reactive and exciting, it makes the simple act of talking to characters or exploring areas feel rewarding and exciting. Only some lackluster combat drags down the experience, and that's easily avoidable. Those looking for a successor to Planescape: Torment should find a lot to enjoy here, but this offering does not eclipse the original. It's an enjoyable game, both as a spiritual successor and on its own merits, and that's all you can really ask.

A fun and engaging game set in a future world full of mysteries and a story that is heavily influenced by your decision making. However, the amount of information about the world and gameplay may look intimidating to some players at the beginning of the game.

Despite the mechanic shortcomings, there’s still a lot to like and should be enough to satisfy anyone who’s looking for an old school RPG. inXile has some solid talent on board and this strong offering can definitely fit the role of a suitable successor to one of the most enjoyable RPGs of all time.

Let's face the elephant in the room: Planescape Torment this is not. Still, we're talking about a very deep and rewarding CRPG that borrows some mechanics and game design choices from its famous ancestor and tries to walk a different path, making the player read and dialogue instead of mindlessly fighting. A good pick for old time D&D players, but the crown is still held by Pillars of Eternity.

While its ability to match the cult classic status of Planescape: Torment has yet to be seen, the high quality writing, unique questlines, interesting characters, and plenty of bizarre moments make Tide of Numenera defintely worth making time for.

A delightfully weird and extremely well-written RPG that strikes all the same chords as Planescape: Torment. But beware: InXile still has some bugs to squash and patches to release before the game truly lives up to its masterful namesake.

Great writing and environment design, combined with an epic story and wide range of player choice, make Tides of Numenera a wonderful RPG. The reliance on text won't be for everyone, but fans of the genre are going to love it.

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.

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.

Numenera should be played like Call of Duty. Don’t try to make sense of things, don’t try to roleplay anything, just relax and take in the sights. Help a robot deliver his robo-babies, mess around with hi-tech devices, watch the story unfold. It’s not a worthy successor of Planescape: Torment by any measure, but a good enough ride on its own. [Issue#218, p.50]

Like the way that the Ninth World rises from the ashes of other civilizations, Torment: Tides of Numenera is a layered experience. For role-players keen on experiencing a game of consequences and twisted fantasy, it’s well worth the adventure.

It could have been a masterpiece if the writers knew when to stop.

I never got the chance to play the original Planescape Torment, and so I wasn’t totally sure what to expect with Tides of Numenera. But the game brings with it a story that is wonderfully detailed. Each choice you make and each person you meet along your journey seems to alter the course of the game and those within Numenera. And this is to be commended. Unfortunately, though, many may feel that there is not enough action or combat, and I’d probably agree with them. The game did take me a long time to warm up to it and I’m still not totally sure if it was worth the time I’ve spent. But the story has drawn me in as I delve further into the story of the land and its characters. With some wonderful visuals and some beautiful locations, Torment: Tides of Numenera is well worth a look for RPG enthusiasts.

An amazingly deep and unique roleplaying experience but marred by roadblock mechanics and repetitive game elements (Hollingworth). A deep and fascinating world with a compelling narrative and large degree of player agency (Wilks) [Issue#260, p.53]

If you want your western RPG games full of text and lots of reading, Tides of Numenera will deliver. It has a very well written script, interesting quests and a rich world to explore, but lacks in the battle system and its technology.

Torment : Tides of Numenera brings us back to the time of the first Fallout, Baldur's Gate and Planetscape Torment with a very rich background that will require players to read a lot in order to immerse into the story. A better UI and more complex fighting mechanics would allow more players to have fun with it.

In the end, if you have enjoyed the wave of Kickstarter PC RPGs so far, then you will enjoy Torment: Tides of Numenera too. It will likely be a game that you want to finish, but it likely won’t be one that calls you back for a second or third journey.

That Torment: Tides Of Numenera is still a thoroughly engrossing experience despite its issues speaks volumes, and we’ve no hesitation in describing it as a worthy sequel to the original. But even so, this does not seem the best vehicle for its story or gameplay ideas. And it’s ironic that a game set so far in the future is relying on technology and concepts that are clearly decades out of date.

Torment: Tides of Numenera is a game that tries to deliver a supreme classical narrative experience and, in doing so, suffers from elitism and some sort of misuse of the medium. It’s an interesting experience, for a very few.

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.

Torment Tides of Numenera is an ambitious RPG with superb dialogs, but it has the bitter aftertaste of a incomplete game. It's an interesting experience, but not enough to be a must-have RPG.

I failed to get into it. I skipped lightly along the plot, confronted by moral and ethical choices I for the most part either didn’t understand the implications of or didn’t care enough about. Interviews I have read with the designers indicated they wanted players to consider the question “What does one life matter.” This game didn’t make me consider that. It did make me consider what a dozen or so hours of my life are worth, and this wasn’t it.

Quotation forthcoming.

Tides of Numenera would have made sense as a quiet, indie, choose-your-own-adventure/RPG hybrid set in a strange and fascinating world. A small, indie game for a niche audience. Usurping Torment’s sacred mantle to present a barely competent CRPG with heavy interactive novel trappings that fails to elicit any sort of emotional connection with the player or give any meaningful context to his agency or interactions with the game’s world, will not be taken lightly, or forgotten any time soon, by its backers, this writer included.

What Tides of Numenera offers is a rich experience in learning lore and then making a final multiple guess at the ending, all the while never being fully satisfying in terms of presentation. There's more playability to this take on this game, but it might be better off being used for a title that has far less baggage.