Torment Does anyone here like Numenera?

[Morkar Left]

When I want to read a book, I can just do that. When I play a game, I want it to have gameplay. Tworment makes you go through many hours of reading between moments of actually getting to play the game, and the reading isn't interesting. The setting fails because every square foot of it is screaming "hey look at how weird this thing is", and when everything is weird the weird becomes mundane. It doesn't feel like a world people live in, it feels like a creative writing major has cornered you and is now assaulting you with every idea he's ever come up with.

Most of that holds true for the PS:T too though, right?
So what makes Numera suck? World less interesting?

The writing is definitely of lesser quality and the world has a less morbid scenery. The later ones makes the world different but it's definitely interesting on its own.
The problem is really the writing. Planescape Torment tells a very good story with very good writing. Numenera wants to do the same. But instead they should have focused more on the rpgs aspects instead of thinking of Torment only as interactive fiction. You can design good gameplay but you can't enforce good quality writing that captures the players mind. the later one might happen or not despite having good writers on board. And imho good rpg mechanics (exploration, chargen, leveling, loot and combat) can help a good portion of capturing players into the game and into the story/writing. Otherwise you're better off with books or movies really.

 

[Luckmann]

Tides was the rare game that even after playing 78 hours and completing it, I wanted to immediately play again. I'm not seeing what you guys are seeing, clearly.

I do find it interesting how many here complain about purple prose and walls of text describing "mundane, non important shit". I love that kind of thing in an RPG, especially one like Tides with the unusual and strange world it presents. Then again I love reading lore in RPGs, I once spent a Morrowind playthrough reading every lore book in the game. I am a nerd and get very invested in good RPGs.

Oh, I love that too. The difference is that the books in Morrowind are actually interesting, and you say that you get invested in good RPGs. Numanuma isn't a good RPG.

• The setting is (explicitly) nonsensical in order to allow for any scenario or campaign; there is no "lore" to peel back and examine, as opposed to virtually any D&D setting (even a kitchen-sink like Golarion), Nirn, or practically any setting that isn't Numanuma, honestly. Literally any Cypher System setting is more interesting to explore while still allowing for practically anything.
  
• The world isn't "unusual and strange", because the very concept of "unusual" and "strange" only has meaning in a relative sense that is utterly alien to Numanuma since "anything goes" and is explained with "lol weird", followed by something equally unrelated that is also explained as "lol weird". This, too, is explicit - as long as there's no whyte peepl, because that would be way too weird, according to Monty Cuck.
  
• The combat doesn't serve as a paced break, but is instead the singularly worst implementation of turn-based combat known. It is slow and clunky, yet shallow and simplistic. Other variations that are also "slow" usually allow for well-considered actions that have meaning, but you have to be functionally retarded to fail at Numanuma, bar situations with circumstances you couldn't possibly have known about anyway - as is often the case, pursuant of points 1 and 2.
• Most of the writing is awful. No, not because it's "a lot of text you don't like to read ha ha ebin xD" but because of purple prose, unwarranted exposition, and meaningless loredumps that often doesn't seem to have any relation to anything. Often it is not even related to the immediate vicinity of where you are. It doesn't relate to where you are or what you're doing or somewhere you might go, it doesn't have a quest attached to it, it doesn't explore the cosmology that influences the universe at a base level, nope, it's just a 5000 word expose on a far-away country which will never be relevant in any way, covered in personal anecdotes and tiresome purple prose. This isn't "exploration of the deepest lore", it's relentless masturbation, and as opposed to the Lusty Argonian Maid, it's not advertised as such.
• The story is awful. From the get-go, you know what is going on. There's no genuine mystery to uncover. They try to mimic waking up in the mortuary, but it is immediately followed by a loredump that explains everything, as if the trailers leading up to the game didn't spoil the game enough, yet you're intended to go on this quest of discovery, rife with utterly nonsensical plot-holes, for seemingly no other reason than you wanting to.. for some reason.
• The storytelling is just trash. There's no pacing whatsoever, and you go from this content-dense small-town-presented-as-big full of loredumps and unrelated random quests, with nonsensical snippets that make no sense that relate to you for reasons, and then it just peeters out. There's no unveiling piece-by-piece as you tie it all together, there's no "Aha! Y makes sense! This explains X!" ever. You just go through the motions, read the dumps, and do the things, and then the "twist" isn't a twist at all, because it's been explicitly spelled out to you repeatedly prior. Sure, you can argue that this is largely because enormous parts of the game was just straight-up cut, but that's really no excuse; it's part of the game, and it mars it.

I do understand if you don't care about that kind of thing, the game might not be for you. Some gamers want more action after all.

Oh get over yourself, you blithering fucking idiot. Enjoying braining yourself with a thesaurus doesn't make you some kind of fucking connoisseur, it just means that you're a masturbatory masochist with the resulting brain damage to brag about it.

I guess it's too mediocre an RPG to recommend it. There's dozens you need to play before this. Get Atom instead. Russians also know how to keep their women in check, unlike current Westerners. So an upvote for them.

"Dozens" aren't nearly enough. I genuinely can't think of a CRPG that isn't better than Tides of Numanuma, even if we include JRPG's and ARPG's. It is genuinely the fucking worst.

 

[Fedora Master]

You are arguing with Fluent, dude.

 

[Swigen]

The physical copy comes with a map and soundtrack cd. Good gaem, 10 outta 10!

 

[Luckmann]

You are arguing with Fluent, dude.

Numanuma still makes me mad. It's unfair. It had promise and it was supposed to be good, dammit.

I will never not be salty about it.

 

[Fedora Master]

You are arguing with Fluent, dude.

It had promise

Not really. I understand the era of "crowdfunded AA RPGs by former big name devs" was supposed to save RPGs but they really didn't.

 

[Luckmann]

Shit, I was so butthurt I didn't even go into how fucking useless the concept of the Tides turned out to be, or how absolutely laughable the adaptation of the Cypher and pool systems were, and how you have to actively try to fail to fail.

You are arguing with Fluent, dude.

It had promise

Not really. I understand the era of "crowdfunded AA RPGs by former big name devs" was supposed to save RPGs but they really didn't.

I'm not talking about that era (which is easy to dismiss after the fact, but it had promise, it just failed) I'm talking about Tides of Numenera specifically. It had promise, being well-funded, with an interesting premise, ostensibly talented writers, independent management, and an adaptable setting in which you could conceivably do anything.

It failed due to gross mismanagement, an inability to grasp the appeal and nature of the supposed spiritual predecessor, squandering existing talent while focusing on big names that weren't invested in the project, meddling by politicals and incompetents such as Monty Cuck, a perceived rain of seemingly infinite money handled by californian hobos and an embezzling Jew, and misappropiation and misallocation of resources including practically stealing from investors to cover other pet projects. As a result, the game blew out of proportion, went into all kinds of feature creep, stalled, and was cut to pieces.

None (or very little) of this was a given in the onset and the initial pitch, the "promise" that was had. It's easy to see how it was obvious that it would fail, but only in hindsight, and it really salts my fields because it didn't have to be this way. They didn't have to involve south-asian kiddy-fiddlers on the other side of the planet, they didn't have to funnel money to other projects, and they didn't not have to tell Cook to go fuck himself, and so on.

 

[Daedalos]

I thought it was a mixed bag. Some things were quite good and gave me that good old school PS:T vibe, other things were jumbled, messy and extremely incoherent or just flat out bad.

Overall, I enjoyed the game, but I quit right before I got to the bloom, which might be ironic, as I've been told that the bloom actually is some of the best content the game has to offer.

I would like to replay the game, but again, it's very time-consuming. It's very wordy, often times too much so that it hurts the flow and experience of the game, because it just kind of goes overboard.
The overarching enemy - the sorrow - isn't all the intriquing either, and the combat system was so-so.

But like I said, it definitely had some great moments, they were just kind of half-ruined by some other really bad moments and annoying parts of the game - most of all the mechanics were poorly done and thought-out

 

[a100167]

I gave it a good 5 hours and it was one hell of a chore.

 

[McPlusle]

I only played it for about six or so hours so I can't tell you about the supposedly much better latter act but I didn't hate it. I thought the visual design (and this extends to the tabletop game as well) was pretty neat, and the world did have some interesting nooks and crannies that I felt were worth exploring. My main issue (and this extends to the tabletop game as well as well) was with the rule set. I don't think the game played poorly, but the Cypher System rules really are a disservice to a setting with such potential.

 

[Starwars]

This thread inspired me to start replaying this game.

It's pretty much as I remember it. A bit of a mixed bag. There is some stuff about Sagus Cliffs that I really quite like. Some of the quests are pretty good, provide you with nice options and I like that there is a time aspect to some of them (though it's pretty badly implement through just the resting mechanic since there is no day/night cycle). Mark Morgan's music helps the atmosphere quite a lot.
Currently in the Valley of Dead Heroes which is a pretty boring "in between" area. One thing I actually love about the game are the mere text adventures. They vary a bit in quality but they are a lot of fun I think. But... pacing is weird. I think you find one in the all of Sagus Cliffs (unless I missed something) and then in the tomb place in Valley of Dead Heroes you go through like 3 if you do all the quests. Since they feel kinda "meaty" it kinda screws with the pacing a bit, though some of them are optional I suppose.

Pretty enjoyable even with varying quality in writing and the "let's go from attraction to attraction" feel. There are flashes of greatness here and there.

 

[Deleted Member 16721]

This thread inspired me to start replaying this game.

It's pretty much as I remember it. A bit of a mixed bag. There is some stuff about Sagus Cliffs that I really quite like. Some of the quests are pretty good, provide you with nice options and I like that there is a time aspect to some of them (though it's pretty badly implement through just the resting mechanic since there is no day/night cycle). Mark Morgan's music helps the atmosphere quite a lot.
Currently in the Valley of Dead Heroes which is a pretty boring "in between" area. One thing I actually love about the game are the mere text adventures. They vary a bit in quality but they are a lot of fun I think. But... pacing is weird. I think you find one in the all of Sagus Cliffs (unless I missed something) and then in the tomb place in Valley of Dead Heroes you go through like 3 if you do all the quests. Since they feel kinda "meaty" it kinda screws with the pacing a bit, though some of them are optional I suppose.

Pretty enjoyable even with varying quality in writing and the "let's go from attraction to attraction" feel. There are flashes of greatness here and there.

Yeah, I actually enjoyed the "theme park" aspect of it - going from attraction to attraction. "Ooh, what's this weird thingy?", "What happens if I do this?", that sort of thing. It brings out the kid in me, and it helps that the world is in my view genuinely interesting lore-wise, so you're learning about a pretty cool place. I can't get enough of these types of CRPGs, I guess you'd call them Text-Heavy CRPGs? Currenly playing Disco and it's like PS:T all over again. Really love when the games have a ton of cool writing.