Someone had, yeah, but it wasn't very descriptive. Remembering all this shenanigans with savegames, combat, bugs and beetles - heh, T:ToN beta looks like God-tier.
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As for me, I'm still playing it, will probably post more spoilery detailed impressions later, but right now I can say that the game is a big improvement from Wasteland 2, but, sadly, it's not the PS:T 2.0.
The Good
- Some of game's writing is genuinely good, but you'll need to be patient to reach it. Right now the beginning is needlessly verbose, full of adjectives and prolonged for no good reason at all. The writing in the second location despite all its numenera and trying to be different, kinda failed to impress me, because it's still overly verbose and we're not given any narrative hooks why should we care about it, save maybe getting some cyphers. But when you reach Sagus Cliffs - well, there are some lovely quests with reactivity and C&C, interesting NPC dialogues and places descriptions. Quality varies though, as are writing styles. I don't know who did NPCs and quest in SC, but either it were multiple people and there was not enough unifying editing, or if that was one man/woman/tranny - he/she/xhe wrote it during a long period of time with long pauses, and it still needs to be edited for consistency.
- Music is really good, though something is missing to make it truly great. Mark Morgan is very talented musician and composer, though I confess I like his earlier works (Fallout 2, PST) way better then the newer (Wasteland 2, Stasis). This time he delivered again, music is very good, it conveys various mood very effectively - but either I became old and cranky, or the main theme in particular, and overall soundtrack in general can't hold a candle to PS:T. Still, you'll hear some familiar motives reminding you of it, but overall music is distinct and stands on its own. It's just not a masterpiece.
- Most quests are very interesting, if somewhat conservative. By conservative I mean that they are made in the same vein as PS:T, mostly through dialogue and some FedEx. So when the writing of some quest is good, it really reminds you of all good times in PS:T, but sometimes writing isn't up to task, and the quest then looks like it came out from BG. Still, most are good, they are reactive, they respect your choices (save some quest flag bugs, but it's beta), and there are some real, not cosmetic consequences of your actions. Still, there are boring FedEx elements as well.
- Locations visual design is quite nice. It isn't a generic fantasy landscape #9000, like some feared, but, sadly, it can't compete with Planescape. It isn't coherent enough, it isn't as otherwordly and mysterious. All and all, it has some good elements, some bad, but definitely better than PoE, or (God forbid) W2. There are some technical problems, mostly with their overpaint, cobblegate wasn't as ridiculous as it sounded, the texture is p. shit and lowres, since it's overpainted 3d, it won't change with resolution, so it's not a LOD problem. Quite a few others have a similar rushed feeling. Still, some elements are genuinely different, interesting, and nice to look at.
The Bad
- Locations are too small. If the demo is really one third of the game, it's real bad news for me. Sigil was quite big, not as big as Athkatla, but full of content (and way better designed). Sagus Cliffs is, well, maybe a third of Sigil, maybe less. Locations not only are small, they feel small (due to props and NPC placement), so there's no sense of discovery of some hidden map corner, or building, or other point of interest. It's better than empty PoE locations though, at least.
- Combat is broken. It's not a complaint about it, at least not fully, but right now combat is almost unplayable. It's unintuitive, unresponsive and very slow even for TB. And I'm a fan of TB. Also combat interface hasn't got a grid, which is my main complaint right now, and movement points and combat points indicators are really need to be reworked for more clarity. Right now half of the cyphers doesn't seem to work, AI breaks all the time, turns are getting stuck, etc, etc.
- There's too much handholding. Right when you enter the city, you will meet a kind soul, which explains you about the Sagus Cliffs free of charge, and the info is legit. NPC in general know too much what you need to do and some quest and make suggestions for your course of actions (go there, talk to this guy) even if they aren't quest givers themselves, or even if they are, but have no reason to even remember where to go, or who is to blame for their predicament, etc (Death-of-Self). Sometimes they give you clear directions. It's not bad in itself, and I already seen people asking for quest compass (probably not trolling even), so some hand-holding is a given. But I can't help but remember mage class quest in PS:T. And also nobody told you "Find Pharod. He's a criminal martermind, a fallen noble, has an adopted daughter and lives in Buried Village, you can get there from Ragpickers Square" right off the bat.
- There's too little argot, or cant in NPCs speech. For me Planescape's argot was a really different experience. I'm not a native speaker, so I didn't know many UK slang words, not to mention Planescape specific ones, and was forced to research them. It only added to experience, and really helped the atmosphere. Granted, it's a highly subjective complaint, but it's sad that TToN has some unique words, but not a unified slang.
- Character models are ugly as fuck, and also very tame in design. I'm not a graphix whore, I can even live with most of ridiculous portraits (which are mostly shit-tier, but it's again subjective opinion). But character models are fucking ugly. Especially fem!PC. She looks like a Chernobyl survivor or an extra from Wasteland 2 in her portrait, and also as a fucking mutant if we look at ingame model. She is ugly, and not "cool ugly" as TNO, she is pitiful ugly. Party members are sometimes better, but still, they are both ugly and somewhat boringly designed. I'm not even talking about Tumblr haircuts, but from all PST party members only half could've fit in BG's party, for example. Here all of them, save maybe Callistage could have easily fit into both PoE and W2, at least visually.
- Interface is a mess. I know that it's a first iteration or something, but it really looks like some more ugly Vista themes, with gradient, bold lines everywhere and rounded edges. It's unresponsive, clunky, and, frankly, hideous.
- Numenera game system. I don't like it. It's needlessly complex for newcomers, and for storyfag RPG in general too, but also not really fun to tinker with for systemfags. I couldn't test it in combat other than in tutorial battle with tentacled pieces of
shitSorrow, but I don't think it would appeal either to combatfag or a systemfag. Also it doesn't punish realoding, so if you don't want to spend effort in many cases you can just save and reload until you pass attribute check in conversations. I'm not sold on Tides too, but I've seen too little of their effect in beta, so I don't have a final opinion on the matter.
The Neutral
- Party members. I'm not sure I like them, but it's a Beta. OTOH they are way less talky and distinct then PST ones, on the other - they are better then most PoE companions already (save GM and Durance). Still - I want more interactions. If what I got during the beta is the full (or near to it) extent of their conversations - well, it won't do. Also my complaints about their visual design still stands. And I still find their portraits ugly and amateurish.
- Interactions with the world consist of mostly using text interface. It's a PST thing, sure, but tech is marching forward, so I would have liked to see some more dynamic parts of the environment, changes matching text descriptions. It's a minor gripe though, and I'm mostly neutral on the subject.
- CYOA parts. They could work, sure, but right now they fell awfully disconnected from player. Why should I care about the whale, for example, if I know that this is the past, and probably would be only mentioned once again in a minor conversation with clerk? Strongest PST memory stories were tied to TNO or to his party members, or to Deionarra. The whale though? Eh.
tl;dr Right now what I fear the most is the game's length. If the beta is really a 30 or so percent of the full TToN, then it would be shorter not only than PST, but also PoE and W2. Also in its current state it's not a PS:T 2.0 EE, it's a, well... If PS:T was a movie, then TToN is its basic cable TV series adaptation. It's a good game on its own, no mistake, but it's not a RPG genre saviour.
so i'll probably play Numenera at some point, looks like theres some really big flaws compared to Torment though, fuck knows why they wanna make protagonist so fuckin boring in comparison to Nameless. See why when I eventually play it though.
