Codex Review RPG Codex Review: Torment: Tides of Numenera

[Tacgnol]

They did also run a post-Kickstarter funding drive to expand the Bloom though.

Really needs to be a smilie.

 

[M0RBUS]

This isn't a review of the game, it's a review of the kickstarter campaign :\

 

[Tacgnol]

This isn't a review of the game, it's a review of the kickstarter campaign :\

What does criticising the games terrible systems and design have to do with Kickstarter?

 

[Prime Junta]

I don't remember if Prime Junta had it as a complaint in the Tyranny review, but if he didn't complain about non-combat skills in the Tyranny review, he has no right to complain here.

From my Tyranny review:

Support skills like Subterfuge (lockpicking and sneaking) and Athletics will quickly become trivial as they will overshoot all the thresholds in the game: past Act 1, I didn’t encounter a single skill-thresholded check I couldn’t pass. The only skill to which I did pay attention was Lore, and that only when intentionally focusing on the spell system. The best that can be said of it is that it does function as a leveling-up mechanism, and there aren’t that many obvious ways to abuse it. It does not do much to promote creative character-building, reward specialisation, or encourage looking for alternative solutions to challenges.

 

[Crispy]

Crispy do you have access to the content forum? 'Cuz those are good catches and I would have appreciated somebody pointing them out pre-publication.

It's not my job to correct your glaring mistakes. You, as a "writer", shouldn't make so many of such a basic nature.

Maybe you can convince someone over at RPG Watch to help you out.

 

[Roguey]

Who edited this piece of shit review, anyway?

The editorial staff is like 100% ESL man.

 

[Prime Junta]

Who edited this piece of shit review, anyway?

The editorial staff is like 100% ESL man.

Me too for that matter.

 

[Crispy]

That's no fucking excuse.

But, I'm done here. Don't want to spam up the News forum too much. There's already enough spam in it as it is. Your "review", for example.

Edit: In response to Nick's post below, because I am a man of my word, the creative and judicious use of the colon in descriptive text can provide flavor, it's true. But dumbass here does it so often and so inappropriately as to be embarrassing. He's apparently never heard of a semi-colon, for example.

 

[Serious_Business]

Yeah I agree with this review. Can't find the motivation to slug through this thing. I do think the review missed a particular point - but it would have been too generous to talk about it, I suppose - namely, the relative originally of the setting. There were a couple of interesting encounters there and there, weird stuff, things that weren't attempted since the original Torment. Things like the guards being created from a year of the citizen's life and being reduced to ash when the year goes by. Of course, as the review points out, you don't really have a lot of motivation to visit all this "weird stuff". It all feels very superfluous, and the design of the areas does not help at all : every encounter is just there on the small maps for you to read through 'em. It feels like going to a museum, which has its appeal to me, but I understand that it wouldn't generate a lot of enthusiasm. Still, you have to give some points there, at least if you're the type to give points for originality's sake. The value of this originality is questionable, though - in front of many of what the industry does, it seems original, but as it is trying to make Torment itself a "template", it fails miserably. There's something in that that fated them for failure : they tried to replicate an original, spontaneous experiment. Furthermore, they really shot themselves in the foot by thinking that the spirit of this experiment was "a lot of words". Avellone said himself many times that the usage of so many words was only a crutch in the original development. I do think that being limited in means forces creativity, certainly on the literary front, but still, this isn't the ideal of video games - this was discussed in that faggot's article on rpg writing. The original Torment was really a product of the times, or rather, a mistake of the times : an exception. It just happened agaisnt all odds. Not sure what this is going agaisnt, not even sure what it tries to do. Anyway, good job little man

 

[Infinitron]

Who edited this piece of shit review, anyway?

The editorial staff is like 100% ESL man.

For whatever reason, American Codexers tend to be low key, on-staff or off. You could easily get the impression that the community consists entirely of Europeans and Brazilians.

Crispy here seems to barely pay attention to what's going on in the staff forums, which is bizarre coming from somebody who loves to involve himself in drama.

 

[Prime Junta]

But However, I'm done here. Don't I don't want to spam up the News forum too much. There's already enough spam in it as it is. Your "review", "review," for example.

FTFY

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Those colons are quite fine. People who think there's some universal rules of punctuation don't know anything about punctuation.

 

[an Administrator]

 

[Kem0sabe]

Mediocre review, focused on the mismanagement of the campaign and development of the game, instead of focusing on what is terribly wrong with the actual game.

Just reads like a codex hit piece...

 

[commie]

Bullshit. Games are fluffy shit for commuters. Shit C&C, no strategy since you can just hire what you ain't got. Can't remember a single thing from the whole series apart from the dwarf coroner in the first game.

I understand where you're coming from. But, while catered for commuters, it was good as any CRPG could've been with such restrictive hardware.

Yet, it's still more consistent and engaging, than a game made with the PoE engine - over four years...

Shameful.

Well I dunno, don't think so to be honest, but I can see why the game would polarize opinion. It's quite a specific thing that you either get into or you don't and doesn't have other factors to fall back on(Fallout might have had average at best combat, but had reactivity, alternate solutions etc. to fall back on for example.) I make no secret that overall I liked TToN but that doesn't make me blind to its limitations and Cunta's 'review' in particular tends to focus on obscure and useless points far too much...can't see the forest for the trees sort of thing. For me TToN as it stands has mostly ONE thing, so if you're not into that specific thing, you won't find anything else good about it.

 

[Infinitron]

FWIW, I agree that this isn't our usual sort of review. If you can find somebody to write a more traditional one (and maybe neutral-negative rather than fully negative), we'd be happy to publish it.

I once thought that Vault Dweller would be a good idea, but I don't know if he has that kind of time these days.

 

[janjetina]

There is only one solution. For the sake of balance, let Darth Roxor write an alternative review. After all, who would argue that Roxor and Junta have similar perspective on RPGs?

 

[Prime Junta]

We did discuss the possibility, but regrettably we hit an insuperable obstacle: he hates the game so much he refuses to play it.

 

[Iznaliu]

Prescriptivism is evil

 

[SwiftCrack]

This review reads like a HRC speech.

 

[Vault Dweller]

FWIW, I agree that this isn't our usual sort of review. If you can find somebody to write a more traditional one (and maybe neutral-negative rather than fully negative), we'd be happy to publish it.

I once thought that Vault Dweller would be a good idea, but I don't know if he has that kind of time these days.

I might write something if I ever manage to get more than 2 hours of playtime. It would be interesting to analyze what they did, where they succeeded and where they failed, mainly because inXile attempted to do something different and deviate from the formula.

Btw, does anyone know why they decided to keep combat to a minimum? It seems a very odd decision, considering they had WL2's combat system.

 

[Infinitron]

FWIW, I agree that this isn't our usual sort of review. If you can find somebody to write a more traditional one (and maybe neutral-negative rather than fully negative), we'd be happy to publish it.

I once thought that Vault Dweller would be a good idea, but I don't know if he has that kind of time these days.

I might write something if I ever manage to get more than 2 hours of playtime. It would be interesting to analyze what they did, where they succeeded and where they failed, mainly because inXile attempted to do something different and deviate from the formula.

Btw, does anyone know why they decided to keep combat to a minimum? It seems a very odd decision, considering they had WL2's combat system.

Because it's more Tormenty to make it a low combat game with lots of dialogue? I've never really thought about it, seems kind of obvious. You've had communications with Kevin Saunders, haven't you? Ask him if they ever considered making it a more standardly combat-heavy game.

 

[Gruncheon]

I like it, the line: "This is a combat game for players who hate combat; a skill game for people who hate to fail; a story game for people who measure story by word count" captures the problem pretty succinctly. I think there's a more extensive review to be written about ToN, but it's not really deserving of any great analysis. Nothing interesting happens in the game, all of the dilemmas are half-assed. All I'm interested in understanding is how they managed to misinterpret PST so badly. How you can imitate so slavishly, get each element wrong and make a product worse on every level. Seriously, it's like if the Larry the Cable Guy incarnation of the Nameless One immediately followed the Practical incarnation.

This review reads like a HRC speech.

Go on...

 

[vivec]

FWIW, I agree that this isn't our usual sort of review. If you can find somebody to write a more traditional one (and maybe neutral-negative rather than fully negative), we'd be happy to publish it.

I once thought that Vault Dweller would be a good idea, but I don't know if he has that kind of time these days.

I might write something if I ever manage to get more than 2 hours of playtime. It would be interesting to analyze what they did, where they succeeded and where they failed, mainly because inXile attempted to do something different and deviate from the formula.

Btw, does anyone know why they decided to keep combat to a minimum? It seems a very odd decision, considering they had WL2's combat system.

It was in a response to demands from a lot of vocal backers. Not very surprising considering that it's a PST successor. Unfortunately, that did not translate into more effort/quality into the storytelling.

BTW. The combat mechanics is quite novel and can be "balanced" to be better. You should definitely have a look at it.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

FWIW, I agree that this isn't our usual sort of review. If you can find somebody to write a more traditional one (and maybe neutral-negative rather than fully negative), we'd be happy to publish it.

I once thought that Vault Dweller would be a good idea, but I don't know if he has that kind of time these days.

I might write something if I ever manage to get more than 2 hours of playtime. It would be interesting to analyze what they did, where they succeeded and where they failed, mainly because inXile attempted to do something different and deviate from the formula.

Btw, does anyone know why they decided to keep combat to a minimum? It seems a very odd decision, considering they had WL2's combat system.

I'm running into combat all the time...