Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[Turjan]

I hope that Castoff's sanctuary will be better.

ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Heh. I guess he's in for a disappointment.

The way the fog of war works in this game (unlike in PoE), you won't even see that the purely decorative edge of the thing at least looks nice.

Then again, the Necropolis was quite nice. I'm sure some people may have missed the whole Severed Child sequence and all those merecasters.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

- Hmm what was I supposed to do? Maybe I should check the journal.
- Hey I'm your journal, you were supposed to find...
- STOP HAND-HOLDING ME OR I'LL TELL THE CODEX!

Fuck, how can you be so fucking stupid. It's unbelievable.

A journal is supposed to give you the objective, so you don't forget what you have to do..

Oh, I'm so sorry, you forgot what you had to do? I can understand that, it's such a massive, complex game. All those hundreds of quest NPCs, constantly traveling through majestically enormous maps. Intense combat encounters pushing your every limit. Tough moral decisions shaking your very core. Sometimes the man just forgets what he was supposed to do.

Would you like a quest compass? Perhaps a quest tracker on the HUD?

 

[hello friend]

Also close your eyes while playing the game for maximum hardcoreness

I always play games this way

 

[Prime Junta]

I'm trying to write this up. Am failing. So far I've got "This game is bad."

Then I think of all the ways it is bad, and can't face up to writing it all up because it would be more words than the Bible and I don't have that kind of time and you don't have that kind of time and WHAAAAA

What does one review matter?

Spoiler

send help

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[GloomFrost]

For people who completed this game. The main question was suppose to be "What does one life matter?" Is there any single dialogue where you get asked this question or is this refereed to at any point??? Or was it not included at all just like the actual "torment" part of the game?

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

I'm trying to write this up. Am failing. So far I've got "This game is bad."

Then I think of all the ways it is bad, and can't face up to writing it all up because it would be more words than the Bible and I don't have that kind of time and you don't have that kind of time and WHAAAAA

Just close your eyes and think of a Roxor review

 

[Prime Junta]

For people who completed this game. The main question was suppose to be "What does one life matter?" Is there any single dialogue where you get asked this question or is this refereed to at any point??? Or was it not included at all just like the actual "torment" part of the game?

Oh god.

It gets asked ALL THE FUCKING TIME. By EVERYONE. And their dead grandmother. They don't stop talking about it. It's the only thing anyone in the Ninth World ever talks about. It's HORRIBLE

 

[undecaf]

I'm trying to write this up. Am failing. So far I've got "This game is bad."

Isn't that enough?

 

[rado907]

I am 10 hours in. This game is not bad but pretty bland. I understand why so many are disappointed.

Sounds about right. I started last night and got the same vibe. Game's ok but not quite there. The intro is all right but has too much text. (Computer games are a graphical medium, please show don't tell, Loom did this right back in 1990.) The environments are all right but don't feel entirely coherent. The city is OK but doesn't feel as awesome as the cities in the old Torment and BG2. I hated how Wasteland 2 was basically a dungeon crawler; but in Numenera so far I have only had one encounter, which I bypassed with a conversation.

Unless the game completely tanks further on, it looks like it will be another reasonably enjoyable near-miss. Which, from what I have read, is the consensus anyway.

 

[an Administrator]

For people who completed this game. The main question was suppose to be "What does one life matter?" Is there any single dialogue where you get asked this question or is this refereed to at any point??? Or was it not included at all just like the actual "torment" part of the game?

Spoiler

At the sanctuary, someone asks you this question and in the ending, The Sorrow mentions which option you picked

 

[IncendiaryDevice]

You could always do it in reverse.

ie: "Because this game bares so little resemblance to PS:T I'll review this game by comparing all the similarities between this game and PS:T and concentrate on just criticising these aspects.

*2 paragraphs later*

Other than that I have no idea what the point of this game was.

*proceed to list everything that seemed additionally shit*

*12 paragraphs later*

So, to conclude, it's a bit shit really."

 

[Darth Roxor]

Or you could just write a haiku.

 

[Lacrymas]

It's just a shitty game really, only made "remarkable" by the title. Comparing it to PS:T makes it look even worse.

 

[Quillon]

Numanuma vs Tranny, which is better?

 

[Chris Avelltwo]

The entire game you're handholded by either the NPCs, or the narrator or (mainly) the journal. Everywhere, including side-quests. Everyone is just "go there and do that, stupid".

Here's a solution for you - don't use a journal for quest hints like some casual pleb.

The journal is just a record of what your character knows or has been told. It is only revealed information that you could write down yourself in a real piece of paper, but the game does it for you automatically for convenience. What you call "hints" that you would get from this is just common sense that you should know anyway.

 

[an Administrator]

It's just a shitty game really, only made "remarkable" by the title. Comparing it to PS:T makes it look even worse.

I wish it was just a shit game. The sad thing is that you can clearly see the waste of potential. It could have been a very good game if every other location were designed as good as the Bloom, if maps were bigger and there was more content in the game.

 

[Prime Junta]

Numanuma vs Tranny, which is better?

Tranny, no question. Turn the difficulty down to storymode so you can ignore the combat, and it's a rather enjoyable CYOA. Decent visuals, interesting worldbuilding, writing that's minimally competent at worst, pretty good at best, and lots of different ways to go through it.

 

[Sratopotator]

Spoiler

For example, when you're told you need to find Matkina, you immediately find a guy who tells he knows where she lives and will tell you if you find another location for him which nobody's found. In the next room stands a guy who will take you there if you solve a problem for him. Completely coinicidentally of course.

And it's like this all the time. Much later, in the Bloom, you need to find a deadly hunter-killer to feed to a Maw. Guess what? In the next room stands, you guessed it, a deadly hunter-killer whose purpose in life is ... wait for it ... to be fed to a Maw.

It's almost as if the entire world had been set up so you could accomplish your miraculous, near-impossible quest objectives with the minimum of fuss, by talking to a couple of people standing within thirty feet of each other.

When talking about a city hub, it all depends on the order you explore given areas. You learn about Matkina in Circus minor (or gov't), and the cartographer is in the middle of Underbelly. That distance can easily take >8 hours when you start dealing with other stuff first. PS:T had a few very similar quests.

Also, i think that undemanding fetch/find quests can only be good when placed behind gated content(or hard to reach areas). And that can't always be implemented, especially in self-contained areas - like Bloom.
Every IE game is guilty of this (as fuck), including original Torment. (Of course fetch/find quests can be better if the premise is good)

 

[rado907]

BTW the three recruitable NPC's I have found so far have all been unlikable. The first two were really whiny and eventually demanded that I choose between the two of them. So I told them both to fuck off. Then I met this merc who is pretty disgusting and whom I will dump the moment I finish his quest.
The Tyranny NPC's also sucked. Mostly they are all too edgy and whiny.

 

[Prime Junta]

I wish it was just a shit game. The sad thing is that you can clearly see the waste of potential. It could have been a very good game if every other location were designed as good as the Bloom, if maps were bigger and there was more content in the game.

That's... optimistic.

I'd go as far as to say that there are some good ideas deep down in there. The idea of the Bloom is a really good one, but the way it was actually executed was a major disappointment. They could've made a really scary, creepy soundscape in there, with organic shrieks and gurgles, a slow, thunderous drumbeat of a cathedral-sized heart, and what have you, but all they managed was a few half-hearted hisses and a regular heartbeat. And they could, like, not have installed fluorescent lighting everywhere, so it wouldn't be evenly lit in 6500K light. I wouldn't have thought it was possible to make the guts of an interdimensional city-sized alien predator look boring, but somehow they managed.

I.e. the ideas that they pitched in the Kickstarter are still pretty cool ideas. Most of them anyway. They just utterly failed to execute them.

 

[hexer]

There's only one way to make myself feel better right now.

 

[Hellion]

It would have been a lot better even if they simply didn't spell out half the storyline in the first 5 minutes, kept some of the mystery surrounding the player and the Castoffs alive, and provided a better incentive to kickstart the story other than "oh noes you broke the thingy you need to defeat the Transcendent Two, better fix it lol". Not to mention the interest that would be injected into the game if they actually implemented the Cults they promised in the Kickstarter.

It's painful to see the wasted potential. It's just mind-numbingly painful.

 

[Quillon]

Numanuma vs Tranny, which is better?

Tranny, no question. Turn the difficulty down to storymode so you can ignore the combat, and it's a rather enjoyable CYOA. Decent visuals, interesting worldbuilding, writing that's minimally competent at worst, pretty good at best, and lots of different ways to go through it.

I'm still 4-5 hours in Torment, haven't played it in 2 days cos I can't force myself to

To compare the first acts, Tyranny was much more fluid & enjoyable, its best part is the first act anyway. Torment's visuals are better. For the combat I had 1 or 2 encounters in Torment, can't say much cos I hate TB anyway but here its even worse I guess & Tyranny's combat was a step down from PoE.

 

[Lacrymas]

I wish it was just a shit game. The sad thing is that you can clearly see the waste of potential. It could have been a very good game if every other location were designed as good as the Bloom, if maps were bigger and there was more content in the game.

It could've been, but it's not. So, so much for that. I'll be the first one to say that I despise wasted potential, but what are you going to do about it? Mismanagement was what caused this game to implode on itself, so, if nothing else, we've learned not to trust Fargo anymore.

 

[Lurker King]

Tranny, no question. Turn the difficulty down to storymode so you can ignore the combat, and it's a rather enjoyable CYOA. Decent visuals, interesting worldbuilding, writing that's minimally competent at worst, pretty good at best, and lots of different ways to go through it.