Back in the heyday of Kickstarter game releases I backed many a title, often without much consideration to what I was actually backing. The resulting games, as you’d expect, have been a mixed affair with all of them coming in a year or two behind their optimistic schedules. Thinking back now I’m not sure what drew me to backing Torment: Tides of Numenera as I never got into Planescape Torment or Baldur’s Gate games, favouring instead RPGs that tended towards more action than anything else. Still after seeing it wasn’t some 40+ hour epic I finally decided to give Tides of Numenera a go, figuring it’d be a nice change from the massive, open world RPGs I’d been playing of late.
Set in the distant future Tides of Numenera puts you in control of the Last Castoff, a vessel of an ancient man who has the ability to migrate his consciousness between bodies. Your journey starts as you plummet towards earth in a ball of fire, burning a path across the sky. Instead of meeting your doom at the short stop at the end you’re instead transported into a strange world, one which is filled with memories that are yours but don’t belong to you. It is then that you’re confronted with an unspeakable evil, The Sorrow, which follows you everywhere you travel. What’s clear to you however is this: you have the power to shape the world and the events that take place in it, even those that have already happened.
Tides of Numenera’s styling is a throwback to simpler times, making use of pre-rendered backgrounds, an isometric viewport and simplistic graphics. The Unity engine is more than up to the task of this and I wouldn’t be surprised to see future versions of it running on iOS or Android. It’s probably a generation behind in terms of visuals when compared to similar titles although I believe that’s deliberate as the game most certainly had its focus elsewhere. All that being said there are some cool visual concepts in there, like the first memory room where you make choices about what kind of character you want to play. Overall I’d rate the visuals as competent but nothing to write home about.
When nearly any game incorporates some RPG element the definition of what constitutes a game in this genre can be a little hard to pin down. Tides of Numenera is a RPG in the truest sense of the word, setting up vast and complex systems that you can use to craft the game’s experience to your every whim. There’s a deep character, skill and talent system which has a myriad of choices that will drastically change how you interact with the world. Nearly all of the NPCs have massive sets of dialogue attached to them, some of it quest related but a lot of it dedicated to fleshing out the greater world. The encounter system blends together elements of turn-based combat and puzzle solving which, if played right, can ensure you never have to land a blow on anyone if you don’t want or need to. Couple this with a bunch of ancillary systems, all of which are done in aid of giving you choice in how the story unfolds, and you have a game that stays very true to the roots of its genre.
The encounter system is an interesting break from the now traditional RPG combat systems. Whenever you enter a “crisis” you’re presented with a bunch of options which you can either take heed of or completely ignore and lay waste to anyone or thing that stands in your way. The way other options are integrated is very interesting, like being able to talk to enemies and use a skill check to say, demoralise them thereby reducing their effectiveness in combat. In actual combat mechanic terms I’m somewhat less impressed as I’ve never really been a fan of turn-based systems. That being said, if you’d prefer to blow everything up there’s certainly more than enough choices available to you.
Progression comes to you steadily as you complete quests, defeat enemies, interact with NPCs or simply explore the world around you. If I’m honest the number of options available to you is quite overwhelming as you can never be quite sure what you might need to complete your objective. This is by design, of course, and those who’ve spent many more hours in true RPGs will likely have a better judge of what’s required than I did. Indeed as I pushed further into the game it became apparent that there was never any real hard blocks to progression, even if my preferred option was unavailable to me. If you were so inclined there was always ways to get what you wanted, it may just mean a lot more exploring and interaction than simply clicking through the right dialogue options. Some of the progression systems, like the loot, seemed almost completely unnecessary however given how much power was lent to the other systems in the game. Overall I never felt like I was struggling to progress my character further but I did find a lack of drive to go to the next objective.
Coming into this game several friends warned me that the beginning of the game was heavily loaded with world building, all care of globs of text. They were not wrong either and the vast majority of the early game is spent reading through dialogue, making choices and generally just getting to know the world and the players around you. Whilst I’m not against this per-se, indeed I’ve chided other games for neglecting world-building before, it does start to wear on you. After playing for about 4 hours I still felt like I was at the very start of the story with progress in the main campaign mission coming slowly and fitfully. By comparison the self contained side quests which much better overall but weren’t enough to draw me in.
So whilst I can appreciate the effort put into ensuring that the world you play in is a vast and deep one I felt that wasn’t tempered with enough progression early on to keep my interest beyond 4 hours. To be sure a lot of things happened in that time and I could start to see the tendrils of the story beginning to unfold. But there just wasn’t enough to make me want to keep going. That, coupled with the other middling progression systems, had me feeling more frustrated than anything else. I could have soldiered on but I felt I’d be doing the game a grave disservice as I’d simply stopped enjoying myself at that point. I can still see the value in it however and I’m sure for the true RPG fans out there this is one of the better experiences that have come our way recently.
It just failed to capture me, that’s all.
Torment: Tides of Numenera is a return to the beginnings of the RPG genre, one that focused on the world and the place you have it rather than points in a talent tree. It’s visuals are basic and competent, seeking to evoke the same feelings that it’s spiritual predecessors would have all those years ago. The various game mechanics are deep and complex, giving you all the options you could want to craft a character and story to your exacting specifications. The story however, due mostly to its construction within the game, failed to grab this writer, spending too much time on building the world rather than pushing forward the narrative I was a part of. That being said whilst I may have realised that Tides of Numenera isn’t so much for me that doesn’t mean it’s not for you, dear reader.
Rating: 6.5/10
Torment: Tides of Numenera is available on PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4 right now for $44.99. Game was played on the PC with 4 hours of total play time and 10% of the achievements unlocked.
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