Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Thread

[Lurker King]

Yep!! But some portraits were already made and they looked 100 times better like in that 2015 video.

They didn't want these portraits to be obfuscated by brilliant art such as this

or this

 

[TT1]

TTON is actually a point and click adventure, not a RPG. IF this game were good, it would be a spiritual successor to the LucasArts games, not PST.

Inxile never understood PST. TTON is a fucking disgrace.

 

[Kem0sabe]

Pirated it, finished it yesterday... Summary of experience, its shit.

Some thoughts:

• Way too short, the game has only Sagus Cliffs (initial area, circus, government, slums, port, underbelly), Tombs area, Bloom (about the same number of zones as Sagus). You can't return to any of the previous hubs, so once you are done with Sagus, thats it, once you finish the tombs area, thats it, same for the Bloom.
• All of the maps are extremely small and full of clicky points of interest, so be prepared to play with the tab always pressed, its a terrible design decision and the game devolves into running between clicky things like a fucking adventure game.
• No portraits except for PC (not selectable, only one male or female portrait) and the companions.
• Only companions available are the ones that you find in the first city, thats it.
• Very very few voice overs, and those that exist are utterly forgettable, no Irenicus here.
• Crashes, crashes everywhere. Multiple crash to desktop on area transitions.
• Combat was terrible, but thankfully avoidable for the most part. But even those encounters that are unavoidable, like one huge fight before the very end area of the game, are utterly retarded and badly designed.
• The UI was clearly designed for consoles, and even then its terrible and laggy.
• The movement is clearly designed for consoles.

Now the writing. Who the fuck thought it was a good idea to have so many writers working on a single project? It seems they tried to outcompete each other for who could write the biggest and most pointless walls of text.

None of the sidequests tied to the main story, none of the sidequests are important for the outcome of the main story, everything is self contained in little bubbles of text.

The main story is so simple and so predictable that it's mindboggling that this is the best these writers could come up with:

Spoiler

You are the last cast off of the changing god, you talk to spirits in your head, theres a shadow that chases cast offs and kills them, you find out that the only thing that can stop the shadow is a McGuffin that you broke at the start of the game, rest of game is you trying to fix magic crystal, in the end you fix it but are them pulled into your head where you get to fight some ridiculously bad combat encounters, and be faced with a deus ex HR ending, where you choose from a list the ending you want, which is self contained and not affected by any of your choices inside the game.

This is by far a worse and more incoherent overall experience than Wasteland 2.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

Sometimes, I'm not sure what most of you even want. Take that old UI for example. Huge portraits, lots of wasted space, takes up more than half of the screen. The positive aspect is the adjusting text window, but otherwise, I already criticized that old UI when I first saw it.

Yup. The UI in old trailers is god damn woeful, the amount of visible space is just hilariously not adequate. It's not 1975, people. I much prefer the new one, thank you very much, even if it is a bit unpolished and consolized.

 

[hexer]

TTON simply has one of the most boring ending locations in the history of game industry.

Spoiler

That black void can't even be called a location

I fail to understand the reason behind not showing the portraits of the people you are having a conversation with (on the UI), instead, they always show the shitty MC portrait.

Portraits cost money, yo.

They could have used a secondary camera inside Unity engine to track the NPCs face.
And they could have applied an artistic shader to that camera to achieve instant portrait effect without drawing anything.

 

[Florian Gheorghe]

wonder if Angry Joes will do a review now :D

 

[GloomFrost]

wonder if Angry Joes will do a review now :D

He will and he will give it 8 or 9. I mean there was a reason why McComb visited him. Also AJ is not exactly the best RPG expert around.

 

[FeelTheRads]

OK, done. Verdict: meh. 6/10 if judged by itself, 4/10 if judged in comparison to PST.

For other who finished it, some questions:

Spoiler

Is there any point in not taking back your party members from the fathoms at the end and just freeing them instead? Do they get better ending slides or some shit like that?

 

[Prime Junta]

^
Yes. Much better ending slides.

 

[vivec]

Is the game even salvageable though? Band-aid fixes won't cut it.

It totally is. But requires a crucial change in the story.

Also, requires harder encounters, more timed quests and less resources overall.

Really? Why have you suddenly pulled timed quests out your ass as if that's actually an important thing?

...

No need to be offensive. What was that I said which triggered you so much?

There are already timed quests in the game and they actually should be in every game. This one especially suffers from rest abuse that makes efforts almost useless. Timed quests can be used to put a stop to that.

 

[Prime Junta]

There are already timed quests in the game

Spoiler requested, which ones? I didn't notice anything. (But then I didn't rest all that much, it's not like you have to.)

(I do know about one very early in Sagus Cliffs, but other than that...?)

 

[vivec]

A general note.

Criticizing TTON is too easy because of its many faults. So any review of this game is going to be an agonizingly boring exercise of spot all the faults type. I would rather suggest someone compiling a list of things that are still fixable.

For me, I feel the implementation is quite good. The efforts system is a gamey device which I would personally rename with Stamina and mana-like pools to indicate how physically tired or mentally exhausted the character is. This one change also makes rest a meaningful way of regenerating effort. This automatically combines the agility and strength pools into one pool, which I see no problem with. Also, I would increase the depth of the skills from 2 levels to more and put in a lot of hard checks instead of rolls there. A depth of maybe 7 or so should suffice thus allowing for specialization. I would also treat exploration skills differently from other skills and surgically scalpel out the knowledge skills into a new category.

 

[Zetor]

^
Yes. Much better ending slides.

Fun fact: I didn't have Aligern in my party at all except for the intro, and I got the best ending slides for him + the achievement. (I did have some possibly related quest item in my inventory that I just picked up randomly at some point in the bloom)

e: regarding timed quests, there's a quest in the bloom that only shows up after you rest - I rested before the final confrontation and it popped up. In retrospect I wouldn't have needed to rest, so I could've just missed it entirely...

 

[Cyberarmy]

There are already timed quests in the game

Spoiler requested, which ones? I didn't notice anything. (But then I didn't rest all that much, it's not like you have to.)

(I do know about one very early in Sagus Cliffs, but other than that...?)

3 in Sagus I know of.

Spoiler

Murder, suspect runs.
electric eating bugs levels some buildings on top of them.
Tybl (spelling : D ) s friend dies because of execution.

Edit : Not sure if Bloom had any, though I arrived there with at least tier 3 party members and didn't need any rest till end.

 

[vivec]

There are already timed quests in the game

Spoiler requested, which ones? I didn't notice anything. (But then I didn't rest all that much, it's not like you have to.)

(I do know about one very early in Sagus Cliffs, but other than that...?)

Spoiler

The murder mystery in the underbelly. A shitty quest with the only consolation of a timed effect that the murders grow if you sleep.

 

[TT1]

A general note.

Criticizing TTON is too easy because of its many faults. So any review of this game is going to be an agonizingly boring exercise of spot all the faults type. I would rather suggest someone compiling a list of things that are still fixable.

For me, I feel the implementation is quite good. The efforts system is a gamey device which I would personally rename with Stamina and mana-like pools to indicate how physically tired or mentally exhausted the character is. This one change also makes rest a meaningful way of regenerating effort. This automatically combines the agility and strength pools into one pool, which I see no problem with. Also, I would increase the depth of the skills from 2 levels to more and put in a lot of hard checks instead of rolls there. A depth of maybe 7 or so should suffice thus allowing for specialization. I would also treat exploration skills differently from other skills and surgically scalpel out the knowledge skills into a new category.

Maniac Mansion has a better implementation than TTON and its 30 years old (better party skills and party banter too)

 

[vivec]

There is a lot of potentials to add timed progression:

Sorrow is chasing you.
The endless war is coming to and end due to one of the two sides gaining a powerful numenera.
Erritis is dying.
Rhin is going insane due to her wound/s.
Sagus cliff is collapsing.
The maws are all closing off.
Endless gate (?) is open and the things inside are about to escape.
etc

 

[Prime Junta]

vivec Yeah I knew about that one, were there others?

 

[vivec]

vivec Yeah I knew about that one, were there others?

For the same reason as you I did not notice any more. I never needed to rest.

 

[Lurker King]

So any review of this game is going to be an agonizingly boring exercise of spot all the faults type. I would rather suggest someone compiling a list of things that are still fixable.

Right, because they are so open to feedback.

Maniac Mansion has a better implementation than TTON and its 30 years old (better party skills and party banter too)

But Maniac Mansion is a adventure ga... oh wait.

 

[Habbonovio]

...

No need to be offensive. What was that I said which triggered you so much?

There are already timed quests in the game and they actually should be in every game. This one especially suffers from rest abuse that makes efforts almost useless. Timed quests can be used to put a stop to that.

Rest abuse? Resting is almost a waste of time imo, you have plenty of consumables that refill your pools. Been playing for ten hours and I only had to use one of them, still no need for rest.

Also, timed quests are an archaic chore and a pain in the ass. I want to explore the game at my own pace.

 

[TT1]

I did not finished the game yet, so can you tell me if this scenario has been implemented? I did not see it in sagus cliffs.

And lets talk about strech goals. I'm crazy? I cant find 2/3 of these goals!

+++expanded reactivity, stronghold, crafting, expanded reactivity, another major city, more Morgan music (the game is shorter, so how is that?), companion depth...

Ok, this is much worse than I was thinking.

From these goals, what was actually implemented?

 

[vivec]

...

No need to be offensive. What was that I said which triggered you so much?

There are already timed quests in the game and they actually should be in every game. This one especially suffers from rest abuse that makes efforts almost useless. Timed quests can be used to put a stop to that.

Rest abuse? Resting is almost a waste of time imo, you have plenty of consumables that refill your pools. Been playing for ten hours and I only had to use one of them, still no need for rest.

Also, timed quests are an archaic chore and a pain in the ass. I want to explore the game at my own pace.

It makes no sense in this kind of a game. A good RPG should allow meaningful choices. You can choose between A or B and not A and B. Time is a good way to separate A & B, although arguably not the only one. Also, I am not sure if you got what I meant. I do not mean a real ticking clock, just the way you play the game and while the time away while resting or doing A instead of B.

TT1

yep. Not there.

 

[TT1]

Maniac Mansion has a better implementation than TTON and its 30 years old (better party skills and party banter too)

But Maniac Mansion is a adventure ga... oh wait.

Yep. I know. It HURTS.

 

[mastroego]

Achieved indeed, it would seem.