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It also could have value as a learning tool for up and coming RPG developers by showing them how NOT to make their games.
Beyond that, its okay if you treat it as more of a novella than a game, but even then $45 is too much for a novella. Wait for a massive discount, and hopefully by then you can play it with Oom and the other cut content they're bringing back, and maybe that will make things better? Maybe?
I dunno. Seeing as how inXile is unable to understand what went wrong, I doubt that outsiders looking in are going to be any better. They'll probably just write the whole thing off and assume that it was unpopular because misogyny and complexity or something. As in, "why even try to make these kinds of games?".
The worst thing is that I get the feeling that they tried to take a turn-based queue from Shadowrun and Divinity, and oh god I've never seen a worse failure. There's tons of people out there that genuinely think that the combat in Numenera is bad because it's turn-based. They think that this is a high-profile project with the best turn-based games can do. It's insane.
The worst thing is that I get the feeling that they tried to take a turn-based queue from Shadowrun and Divinity, and oh god I've never seen a worse failure. There's tons of people out there that genuinely think that the combat in Numenera is bad because it's turn-based. They think that this is a high-profile project with the best turn-based games can do. It's insane.
The combat system in Numenera is bad, but it comes into use so rarely that it is almost completely irrelevant. Unless you play as a psycho that attacks everyone for no reason, the moments of combat in this game are very few and far between. The most satisfying moment for me was slaughtering the Murdens because this was an enemy which very much deserved to be destroyed, but in this 20 or more hour game there was this 5 minutes of joy and that was it. It's funny how you can build your character with so many combat options, and there's lots of weapons and resources to use in combat, but you rarely ever get to put any of that to use.
InXile boasts that you can be a hippie pacifist and play the game without any violence whatsoever (I don't believe that's technically true though, because you do have to fight the Sorrow Fragments at the start at the very least), but this is not something that should be boasted about, because a pacifist playstyle is dull and boring.
Yes, you are right that in those few rare moments when you do get to have conflict the combat system is complete rubbish and always easily winnable with cypher spam. You can avoid combat entirely (so they say) but then how exactly does this even count as a game? Aside from a very easy puzzle with the clock, all you do is walk around and talk to people and read huge walls of text the entire time. That's fine for a novella, but is this fine for a game? Does Numenera even count as a game at all? If it does, its a very poor one with very minimal gameplay.
I dunno, discarding a game just because it doesn't have combat doesn't sound good to me. I mean, you could Planescape Torment as a pacifist; and even then - especially then - the game made more sense, it was more fulfilling and complete than running it as a murderhobo. You could even play Age of Decadence as a technical pacifist, and it's very satisfing to do so. If we have to define TToN failing, we don't have to look at the wooden combat, but more at the fact that while a poet uses the words like a rapier and a good writer as a sword, they made a mallet out of it. Also, to be honest, i don't think that the setting was good enough, and, last but not least, being hailed as a Torment spiritual heir made the hype and the expectation way too high for its own good.
If a lot of those dialogs were to be shaved off the chaff, and the whole torment thing was dropped, it would have been a excellent game.
Mainstream player 1: "Man, I played this game, Torment: Tides of Numenera and I don't know, it is high antecipated and all but I think it is really crappy."
Mainstream player 2: "Yeah man, I heard the original is considerated a classic and I dunno what happened, the people that made this made it pretty similar with the original game."
Mainstream player 3: "It is nostalgia, many people tend to see things with those rose tinted glasses but those games had all sorts of issues. It isn't fault of the developers that much, they made the game exactly as the older one. I didn't play it but many people I know claim they did, so I trust them."
Smug ignorant assumptions about nostalgia and they won't play other TB games any time soon.
Judging turn-based (or anything) based on one game, and especially this one it retarded and nobody needs this kind of players, the kind who'd say "yeah, man, this TB is quite interesting, but I really think real-time would make the game much more visceral, you know what I mean?".
Realistically, if this is one of the only or even the first turn-based game that someone has ever played, then they were almost certainly a lost cause to begin with. They were probably also born no earlier than 1997, but that's neither here nor there.
I haven't actually played this game yet aside from a few scenes in closed/open beta, despite having donated $1,000 to its development. Is there any point? For one thing, game developers are chock-full of the SJW taint nowadays and shoehorn the rhetoric into every aspect of their writing; for another, inXile and Obsidian both strive to write what they believe will be good, impressive writing in order to live up to the good ol' days, rather than simply striving to write good characters and a good story. There's an important difference. Writing to show off your super-cool walls of impeccably copy-edited and thoroughly thesaurused text produces shittier results than the honest and pure task of weaving a living world and engaging characters. Don't get me wrong: They strive for both, but the element of hubris ruins the whole endeavor. Even idiots on Steam can plainly see how tryhard inXile's writing is.
2012-2017 has been quite a period. Here at the end of it, I've realized that the publishers and corporate suits who breathe down the necks of head-in-the-clouds dweeby developers were never the enemy. They were in fact a vital and noble component of creating good games; the removal of their stabilizing presence and the involvement of retarded, opinionated fans in the creative process was a huge mistake.
I'm about to leave Sagus Cliffs, and I think the game's been alright so far. There's some good stuff here and there, unique quests with multiple solutions and all that, but it surely is disappointing how much stuff was cut out of the final game or never implemented in the first place. There's at least one quest that was clearly built around a day/night cycle, but since the game doesn't have one, it's easy to lock yourself out of the one course of action that I wanted to take, which is
talking to the nychthemeron. I'm guessing the only way to do it is to somehow screw up the clock quest? That's a pretty big oversight right there, especially considering it's one of the first quests you'll run into.
So far the only individual area that has stood out in some way has been the Underbelly. There are a number of different factions in there, and the people you meet there feel like they belong there instead of being too wacky or gimmicky for their own good. Too bad that the whole area feels like a large basement at best, way too small and compressed. It really should've been at least two or three separate areas with some thematic differences, but nope, it's just a single cave with too much stuff in it. PS:T had buildings that felt bigger than this: the Godsmen had a big foundry, and the Sensates had the Civic Festhall, but the Dendra O'Hur apparently consist of five guys standing in a single room, and the Manufactory isn't much bigger either. The problem with the other areas of Sagus Cliffs is that not one of them really has a personality of its own, as they're all really small, visually quite similar and filled with freak show characters that don't really seem to belong anywhere. When everything is super diverse, everything starts to feel the same.
Another thing that I don't like is that there have been several situations where none of the dialogue options have felt right. For example, there's a conversation with a fellow castoff who doesn't like the Cult of the Changing God all that much, and you can point out to her that it's actually pretty nice to have a bunch of people that are willing to follow your example. When she asks you to elaborate, you only get a couple of dialogue options about your followers making you become a better person or some bullshit like that, when I really wanted to say that those fools could potentially make for useful tools if the need arises. This happens regularly in the game .
The standout character of the game has to be Rhin, who is an unusual RPG companion and partly because of that a very good fit for a Torment game. Her writing also seems to be a notch or two above everyone else, and she forms a bond with the player character that hasn't really happened with any of the other companions so far.
76% now, but the overall reviews are still at 67%.
This reminds me of No Man's Sky which I recall was down to as low as single digit positive reviews right after it launched, but since then, and with a lot of updates, it is now up to 32% which is still really bad, but a clear improvement nonetheless. No Man's Sky is still $60 and getting frequent patches, so it will be interesting to see where it will be at in a year or two. All the people who were pissed off just needed to have more patience. In the pre-digital days a bad game was bad forever, but now it is possible for bad games to be brought up to a decent state via patches.
I'm not sure that will be the case with Torment, however, because it took them so damn long for the 1.02 patch and who knows if there will be a 1.03 or anything other than the director's cut deal that is probably months off. The problems with Torment are such that it would take a huge overhaul of the game to fix, and I don't see that happening.
They really aren't the sort of games that can be compared, are they now... NMS is completely gameplay driven and its gameplay is all modular. Devs can polish, tweak and implement new features and content into it far easier, and they can do so ad infinitum.
I finally got some time to play this. 4 hours in. Not reading anything substantial about it save from some reviews and lots of flak the game's getting.
A technical question: can you zoom out? I used the mousewheel to do so, but can only see a small fraction of the map. I wanted to enjoy the nice environments but it's really hard to do so.
Up to now it seems to me that, while it is a waste of huge potential, the game may become a cult classic due to the number of interesting stories it contains. I have to say that it feels really static and the city of Sagus Cliffs does not seem to have that defining feature which you'd always associate with it, like Sigil's 'the city of doors'.
The 'scan thoughts' mechanic is rewarding
I hate that the game is slowed so much by the fact that whenever you start a conversation or an interection, a special sound has to play and the menu needs to slowly slide in to the screen. Why can't this be instantaneous?
Even for kickstarter standards this game is light on content. Hong Kong, Dragonfall, Divinity, PoE and even Inxile previous game, Wasteland 2 had more content than this and if you think about it, most of the time you will spend reading, meaning that the amount of actual content beyond reading lore dumps is pretty small. Fuck, even the characters on both shadowrun games were more expressive and you had more extensive dialog with them including whole personal quests.
You had more interactions with the NPCs on Hong Kong than you will ever get on every single NPC on NumaNuma. Your storyfag game has more limited character interactions and barely developed characters than even a game about shooting dudes in the face on missions? Wow, I would be fascinated to see a post mortem and get to know the kind of BS that destroyed this game.
Even for kickstarter standards this game is light on content. Hong Kong, Dragonfall, Divinity, PoE and even Inxile previous game, Wasteland 2 had more content than this and if you think about it, most of the time you will spend reading, meaning that the amount of actual content beyond reading lore dumps is pretty small. Fuck, even the characters on both shadowrun games were more expressive and you had more extensive dialog with them including whole personal quests.
You had more interactions with the NPCs on Hong Kong than you will ever get on every single NPC on NumaNuma. Your storyfag game has more limited character interactions and barely developed characters than even a game about shooting dudes in the face on missions? Wow, I would be fascinated to see a post mortem and get to know the kind of BS that destroyed this game.
Even for kickstarter standards this game is light on content. Hong Kong, Dragonfall, Divinity, PoE and even Inxile previous game, Wasteland 2 had more content than this and if you think about it, most of the time you will spend reading, meaning that the amount of actual content beyond reading lore dumps is pretty small. Fuck, even the characters on both shadowrun games were more expressive and you had more extensive dialog with them including whole personal quests.
You had more interactions with the NPCs on Hong Kong than you will ever get on every single NPC on NumaNuma. Your storyfag game has more limited character interactions and barely developed characters than even a game about shooting dudes in the face on missions? Wow, I would be fascinated to see a post mortem and get to know the kind of BS that destroyed this game.
Yep, people can criticize SR characters for their writing as much as they want and they aren't indeed super profound characters but still... compare the start of Hong Kong and the introduction those characters have right on the first mission with the bizarre way NumaNuma starts. There is more character and expression on them than a game that is supposedly focused on storyfagottry through and through.
Yep, people can criticize SR characters for their writing as much as they want and they aren't indeed super profound characters but still... compare the start of Hong Kong and the introduction those characters have right on the first mission with the bizarre way NumaNuma starts. There is more character and expression on them than a game that is supposedly focused on storyfagottry through and through.
People characterise story vs. gameplay as an opposition, but in most of the best RPGs they work together, not work against each other. A good story can compensate for gameplay inadequacies and vice versa; this is part of the reason why T:ToN was received as crap, as its gameplay was so insufferable, the story was dragged down by it and all its flaws were left in the open. (the story still seems like shit though)
Even for kickstarter standards this game is light on content. Hong Kong, Dragonfall, Divinity, PoE and even Inxile previous game, Wasteland 2 had more content than this and if you think about it, most of the time you will spend reading, meaning that the amount of actual content beyond reading lore dumps is pretty small.
So far I'd say T:ToN is more or less comparable to Dragonfall with its "RPG lite" feel. PoE and WL2 had more content for sure, but I think both of those games would've been better off if half of that content was cut and the rest was improved — PoE was long but incredibly shallow, while almost the entire first half of WL2 came off as filler. D:OS probably could've used some trimming as well.
I'd be completely fine with a 20-hour Kickstarter RPG if those 20 hours were put to good use. I don't think the Shadowrun games were great, but Dragonfall was a solid little game that knew what its strengths were and what it wanted to be, and because of that it was fun for one playthrough despite being so limited in many ways. T:ToN, on the other hand, doesn't really seem to have a consistent tone, and big parts of the game are filled with what I suppose is backer content, the bane of Kickstarter RPGs. The balance is wrong for the type of game it's trying to be. It should've been a tighter, more focused effort built around its main story, but instead you spend most of your time "exploring" areas the size of a closet and talking to random people, so that the main quest almost comes off as an afterthought. It doesn't work as an exploration game because it doesn't have the content to support it, and it doesn't work as a story because you feel disconnected from most of the things that happen in it.
You had more interactions with the NPCs on Hong Kong than you will ever get on every single NPC on NumaNuma. Your storyfag game has more limited character interactions and barely developed characters than even a game about shooting dudes in the face on missions? Wow, I would be fascinated to see a post mortem and get to know the kind of BS that destroyed this game.
