My unstructured impressions,
heavy spoilers (for both PT and TToN):
To start off, I really disliked the character creation sequence; falling from a moon is definitely quite the enterance, but sifting through memories of people we do not yet care about in the slightest was very tedious, particulary due to the lack of context - yes, it was meant to be confusing, but it didn't really work for me.
Shortly after most of the mysteries are reavealed - you are the Last Castoff and there's a supernatural force hounding your every step. This was handled very poorly, as this could have been an interesting mystery to slowly uncover during the course of the game - which is something that the original Torment excelled in. The game borrows heavily from its distinguished predecessor, to a point of plagiarism - several story elements are lifted from it verbatim - such as the Endless Battle (Blood War), immortal hero, revisiting memories of other incarnations, portals opened through various means (maws), even the Sorrow (shadows), not to mention several rather ill-fiting tributes such as O and Adahn. There's spiritual succesors and then there's creative bankruptcy, not to mention that all of these elements were handled much better in PT.
Which is a shame, because there are some really intruguing concepts buried underneath - the Bloom being the most obvious, Meres (some were really atmospheric; they reminded me of King of the Dragon Pass, one my favourite games), Levies, The Adversaries and Lascars, to name a few.
The biggest disappointments are the Changing God and Sorrow - both begged to be something more other than underdeveloped concepts, which they unfortunately turned out to be. The entire game you're left wondering about who/what they really are, hoping to find some hidden layers to each of them, but alas. The ending's likewise undercooked - you're presented with three choices and CC does not matter at all from what I've gathered.
As for the writing itself - it's generally good, though a lack of an editor on the team is apparent. There are frequent cases of expository or adjective overload which lead to instant feeling of tiredness and boredom; the very beginning of the game as well as the ending part suffer most heavily from this. It's obviously a cardinal sin for a storytelling game.
Companions are just "there", most of them aren't that interesting.
Aligern - grumpy, with a tragic past; there isn't much else. His story is somewhat intriguing, but it doesn't go anywhere.
Matkina - generic assassin with a past #54, that's about it. Could fit a traditional fantasy game.
Erritis - most interesting of the bunch, definitely rises above the others. The concept and story both fit the setting nicely. That does not mean he's an exceptional character, however.
About the setting itself - it leaves me rather ambivalent. I liked the sci-fi elements, but the whole affair does feel a bit tacked on (which is perhaps what they were going for, but it doesn't convince me entirely).
Character advancement and gameplay - the mechanics aren't particularly interesting and advancement feels very barebones (which, I suppose, shouldn't be a big surprise considering the fact that Numenera's a storytelling system). I like the effort system, at least in principle. In practice however, I can count the amount of failed skillchecks on one hand. Effort pool depletion is also a non-factor, particularly since you can use companions' pools (the idea in itself is fine, but some checks should be made solely by player character and the overabundance of points should've been curtailed in beta). Cyphers seemed like a very interesting concept, but they can be pretty much ignored as most of them aren't really necessary to advance.
Crises are a noble effort to try to do something new with cRPG combat, but I've only found one to be truly intresting - one aboard the Lascar ship. The idea itself, I must say, does hold potential.
The graphics are decent, but rather uneven; I've been more impressed by PoE's backgrounds and the character models are rather atrocious. The soundtrack does provide some nice ambient tracks, but isn't very memorable and probably not worth listening to outside the game.
In conclusion it's evident that the game had a troubled development - interesting ideas and concepts are dragged down by glaring issues.
Final verdict (one troll just for the Bloom):
