Codex Review RPG Codex Review: Torment: Tides of Numenera

[Viata]

"Gameplay" is becoming a loose term it seems.

The comparison is insulting to CYOA books. They have more gameplay and better writing than ToN.

Also, worth your time.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

So what game is better then Planescape: Torment o Torment: apeescape?

 

[ERYFKRAD]

So what game is better then Planescape: Torment o Torment: apeescape?

Realms of Arkania HD

 

[vivec]

So what game is better then Planescape: Torment o Torment: apeescape?

Realms of Arkania HD

Your consistent spam of this name has now forced me to buy it. Happy?

 

[Junmarko]

The comparison is insulting to CYOA books. They have more gameplay and better writing than ToN.

Didn't play Early Access, so the Anachoic Lazaret was the first moment I realised how frustratingly unfinished the game is. No CRPG mechanics have been fully realised outside text-delivered C&C. It's so lazy.

 

[Lurker King]

Didn't play Early Access, so the Anachoic Lazaret was the first moment I realised how frustratingly unfinished the game is. No CRPG mechanics have been fully realised outside text-delivered C&C. It's so lazy.

Yes. The items are the same thing. You find a bunch of chirurgical upgrades with cool descriptions such as artificial eyeball, numenera analyzer, blood nanites, encroaching darkness, etc., but they only give you more points in stats. It's disapointing as fuck. That’s the price you pay for bad management, serial production of kickstarters, and console ports. Sorry Stalin, but quantity has not a quality all its own.

 

[Junmarko]

Yes. The items are the same thing. You find a bunch of chirurgical upgrades with cool descriptions such as artificial eyeball, numenera analyzer, blood nanites, encroaching darkness, etc., but they only give you more points in stats. It's disapointing as fuck. That’s the price you pay for bad management, serial production of kickstarters, and console ports. Sorry Stalin, but quantity has not a quality all its own.

Indeed. The underutilised/pointless items are the icing on the cake, it's was so obvious brutal cuts were made late in development. McComb must really hate ANY strategy outside dialogue, which is more trial-and-error than tactics anyway.

I wonder if Fargo felt Wasteland 2 was too tactically heavy, thus stifled Torment. Guess we'll never know, they're more concerned with saving face than honesty - now that they have a publisher

 

[Prime Junta]

McComb must really hate ANY strategy outside dialogue

The Complete Book of Elves should have been a warning sign.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Your consistent spam of this name has now forced me to buy it. Happy?

Soon you will spam it too.

 

[cruelio]

McComb must really hate ANY strategy outside dialogue

The Complete Book of Elves should have been a warning sign.

No shit...I completely forgot about that.

I wonder if it'll take him 20 years to apologise for this botched mess.

Edit - (Lurker King: 2013, Colin McComb Officially Apologizes For Complete Book of Elves - sourcebook was published 1993)

You'll have to give Brian Fargo 2.5 million dollars first.

 

[Junmarko]

You'll have to give Brian Fargo 2.5 million dollars first.

2.5m = Partial apology, blames those uninvolved - no promise to restore cut content.
3.5m = Full apology, still with no promise to restore cut content.
4.1m = Full apology and promises to restore all cut content*.

(*still only plans to deliver half)

 

[Monolith]

Great review, thanks! I can't stand mediocre or bad writing, superficial choices and clumsy controls (in games) nowadays, unless there is some pretty good gameplay at some point down the line. Doesn't look like it here.

 

[harhar!]

Everybody has something to say, but you're given precious few reasons to listen.

Pretty much my impression of the game so far (couple hours in).

 

[Decado]

will there be more reviews like with Pillars?

Sure. We agreed that this time Roxor will do the Decado one and Infinitron will do the neutral-positive one himself.

I beat this game a few weeks ago, came back to read this thread, I think I agree with most of your review.

I liked it somewhat, but it is not a game I will play twice. I will say that I really, really liked it after I finished it . . . but after I thought about the experience for a while, I realized that it had some pretty severe shortcomings. It went from being possible contender for RPG of the year (this was before I played Divinity 2), to me thinking it wasn't even a finished game. It was kind of like junk food, in that it tasted pretty good while I was eating it but, upon reflection, I was hungry and felt gross for scarfing it down. If that makes sense.

This is why I like waiting a while before I think out loud/write about a game.

All of you Elex fans out there, you know what I'm talking about.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Hmm. You know, it occurs to me that I never did a review of NumaNuma like I did with PoE.

Here you go:

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

Hi guys. I have a really good explanation for how this game cost over five million real life moneys with no divinable explanation on how those moneys were spent. It's because the moneys were given to Brian Fargo. Brian Fargo, who is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, failures in gaming's relatively short history. Brian Fargo, who took a successful company called Interplay and drove it into the ground by making spectacularly bad decisions with money. This was a known fact about Brian Fargo. It was why Brian Fargo was exiled from polite gaming society to make cell phone shovelware and was a toxic name to people who aren't stupid. You guys saw this Brian Fargo and said to yourselves "this Brian Fargo will do good things with our money" just because while Brian Fargo was busy driving Brian Fargo's company into the ground smart people were able to make good games for Brian Fargo. They must have been like software ninjas, sneaking in at night when Brian Fargo was asleep to make good games before Brian Fargo could realize what was happening and fuck them up like Brian Fargo fucked everything else up. And even these insane software ninjas could not stop Brian Fargo from destroying Interplay. So really in the end it isn't Brain Fargo's fault. Failure is caked deep into Brian Fargo's essence. It's your fault for giving Brian Fargo your money, so Brian Fargo could expose himself as a fraud and a moron all over again for a new generation.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

I don't see what money/project management has to do with a good story, which is all the first one had. The best stories are often written on a budget of whiskey/coffee. That this game's story didn't live up to whatever people expected isn't really a surprise. PS:T was kind of a freak accident. One of a kind thing.

Now imagine that you could go back in time and fix this mess. What would you do after this complete failure? If I were Fargo, I would use my salesman special powers to convince Avellone to work for me full time, give him dictatorial powers over the rest of the team, pay him five million bucks, and say: “Dude, don’t worry about your expenses no more. Hookers and cocaine are covered. Your mother healthcare expenses are covered. We hire a special nurse to take good care of her. Just write an ambitious cRPG from te ground up and take your time. You can take 5 years if necessary, live in a hotel in Las Vegas or in the Cayman Islands. Whatever is necessary. The artists and the others will implement everything your superior brain dictates to them. If they don’t play ball, I will fire them on the spot. Now, let’s get to work”. I’m sure the game would be a critical and commercial success, with cuts or not.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

jewboy Boy, you are dumber than a second coat of paint.

Follow the quest compass:

1. ToEE had a very very tight implementation of 3.5. Good.

2. The encounter design was shit. e.g. diversity of enemies was shit. Bad.

3. AI was shit. Bad.

4. Number 2 and 3 negate the advantages of 1.

New quest:

1. I specifically mentioned the "bugbear conga line", which unless you are really bad at english, you would understand that it references an encounter with a shit-ton of bugbears that takes forever to finish in TB because you have to wait for each one to move. It takes forever and it would even cause the game performance to drop on the machines of the time. Just look at the picture in the spoiler

Spoiler

Sidequest:

1. Knights of the Chalice despite having very low production values, also uses 3.5 and manages to create awesome encounters by drawing on the full monster manual and doing interesting combinations with them. So even though it only has 3 of the core classes, it's encounter design elevates its combat experience well over TOEE which despite having an excellent engine it sucks balls since said engine is never really used to even 10% of its potential.

3.5 is D&D 3.5 btw. Open license in case of KotC.

Get it now, dimwit ?

Don't forget the shitload of pointless trash combat in ToEE. Kill a frog. Walk a little bit. Kill another frog. Walk a bit more. Kill more. I think this praise of ToEE is pure graphicwhorism.

 

[Deleted Member 22431]

[...] Why are backer characters invariably bad? Undertale did well to hide its custom backer character into an area that can be easily missed (good call, said character is cringeworthy and barely fits with the setting). [...]

Hoooonestly, though, while I hate the idea of backer characters, I think that much like everything else in Torment, inXile does this hit and miss, and the swings with the backer characters are huge. I honestly did not notice that several backer characters were backer characters.

Some of the backer characters were probably more imaginative and interesting than your companions and the main story. This tells you all you need to know about this game.

 

[Prime Junta]

Some of the backer characters were probably more imaginative and interesting than your companions and the main story. This tells you all you need to know about this game.

Codex's character was a high point actually. Says it all really