Torment Tides of Numenera

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You wake up with heavy eyes that seem to want to resist your will and keep closing them despite all your efforts to open them. You can feel a strong wind blowing across your ears, through your neck and limbs. You realize that you are in free fall – a shapeless, black void surrounding you, making you sense that the wind is going against your body. You open your eyes wide and suddenly realize that the winds in the opposite direction seem to be trying to tear your eyeballs apart – “TERMINAL VELOCITY.” You plunge your head into the light in front of you like a rocket in the hope that The faster I fall, the faster I’ll get out of here. You land, and that’s the last time we hear the name of Last Castoff, who foolishly accepted a tragic death while his identity and cause were still incomplete. You open your eyes wide and suddenly realize that the winds in the opposite direction seem to be trying to tear your eyeballs apart – “TERMINAL VELOCITY.” You plunge your head into the light in front of you like a rocket in the hope that The faster I fall, the faster I’ll get out of here. You land, and that’s the last time we hear the name of Last Castoff, who foolishly accepted a tragic death while his identity and cause were still incomplete.

It’s one of the many endings players can pick up very early in the opening moments of Torment: Tides of Numenera. It’s been 17 years since the greatest CRPG of all time – Planescape: Torment, launched and was so loved that it earned the title of “cult-classic” by fans of the genre almost two decades later. Of course, no one wants that the name Torment will sink into oblivion and “die prematurely” over time.

However, the writer personally thinks that if what Torment: Tides of Numenera shows as the “spiritual successor” of Planescape: Torment can be considered acceptable, then perhaps There is no need for the Torment name to return, at least for the time being.

When we hear the name Torment, surely we all expect something – not big, majestic, but it must be memorable, must be “special,” must be worthy of the wait. Nearly 20 years, with the title of the successor of Planescape: Torment. We expect Torment, which is the line of humanity, to answer questions like “what can change human nature?”, everything does not have to be resolved with fists, and Of course, words decide everything: it is power, it is anger, it is a weapon. We want Torment: Tides of Numenera to have it all.

So, “what is the meaning of the life of a soul?”. First, before getting into the game, can we talk a little bit about Torment’s question: Tides of Numenera posed?

“What can change human nature?” is a purposefully ambiguous question, and it is asked not to receive an answer in return, and if you keep trying to find the answer to it, it will raise other questions. What would you change who you are? Death or life? Love or hate? Satisfaction or regret? Authoritarian or altruistic? Everything or incomplete numbers? And if you choose any of them, where is man “located” in that essence? Think of a tree branch with millions of branches growing from its trunk. Each branch represents signs of human nature because no one possesses only one characteristic that makes up the human body their nature. Still, anyone can change that nature, change who they are.

“What is the meaning of the life of a soul? Of Torment: Tides of Numenera is an odd question because it only causes respondents to recall anything or anyone closest to them suddenly. Who does it make sense? Is this a question asked to justify unethical or unethical actions?

That’s not the only question Torment: Tides of Numenera poses throughout its length, and it’s also got to be the only one that doesn’t have a satisfactory answer. The world of Numenera is set billions of years in the future. A self-proclaimed “Changing God” finds a way to make himself immortal by “entering spirits” and swapping bodies of enemies flesh-eyed people. When these bodies were left behind, they created a new subconscious and began to find their purpose in existing in this world. Changing God’s final body, Last Castoff, fell from the sky like a shooting star with questions mixed in his mind.

At first glance, the premise of Torment: Tides of Numenera is not bad at all, but the main narrative of the game is opposite to that premise. Torment: Tides of Numenera is very passionate about storytelling with “exaggerative” words, considering all the characters in the game as if they possess the brain and vocabulary of Mark Twain but lack his humor, and tries to distract readers with a lengthy, and sometimes confusing writing style, which may lead many to consider it “deep” because of its use of strange and impersonal words philosophy. Torment: Tides of Numenera has many adjectives, everything is unnecessarily detailed, and there’s one thing the inXile screenwriters don’t understand; it’s a tedious thing despite being described. One hundred times doesn’t make it any more interesting than expressing it once. I know that the two people standing in front of me are in love; I don’t need descriptions like “they stand next to each other, eyes staring into the distance. No words coming out of them, but instead – they share a quiet, tender language, then they turn towards each other, the man stretches his arm, the woman grabs the arm creating synchronicity between the two souls together.” Since when did the narrative in CRPG become the work of Dr. Seuss? Those poetic lines may be interesting for the first 5 or 6 hours, but then who has the patience to read all those lengthy descriptions 20 hours later?

Even the main story of Torment: Tides of Numenera also entered the rut right from the first minute with a motif and plot arrangement that was too predictable. It didn’t take long for the player to realize Last Castoff’s true identity; Changing God’s appearance in the middle of the game is an odd twist. If not bullshit, Last Castoff’s journey rotates the player like a “pinwheel” as every main quest in the game forces the player to find a certain character. From Matkina to Mazzof, to Inefere, and then to First Castoff, instead of rotating, switch the objective of the task. The story of Torment: Tides of Numenera presents a lot through narratives of “The Mere” memories, through information arranged by NPCs, but the game fails to create a purpose with enough weight to be enthralling the player so that the player continues to follow the journey.

The heavy emphasis on NPCs’ memories affects the storyline and also the protagonist’s role:

• You repair a clock at the Sagus Cliffs center by recalling memories.
• You learn the language of the species Stichus by recalling memories.
• You decide the life or death of a companion of Matkina also through memory.

The Anamnesis ability that was supposed to be the highlight of Last Castoff has become an overused function. Almost anything can be solved by looking into the past. If in Planescape: Torment, the memories obtained by The Nameless One are only reinforcing factors for the decisions made for the character in the present (a typical example is Deionarra’s memories at Sensate HQ), then in Torment: Tides of Numenera, memories act as key-prizes that are used for a moment and then thrown away. It’s a scripted problem-solving in the cheapest way possible, and inXile overdoses both Anamnesis and The Mere and delivers a structured story with very few changes and workarounds from beginning to end game.

If it has a writing style that makes anyone who reads it can pat themselves on the chest and say, “this game has a strange vocabulary. I feel smarter now; the shallow plot and poor leadership further highlight another huge flaw of Torment: Tides of Numenera – it’s not memorable. Quests have many ways to do and have multiple results, but most of them are not worth the player’s attention because nothing remains once the player completes them. Fortunately, we only get to see a few quests that have a strong influence on the main storyline (“What the Winds Took” takes players on a journey… mortification to regain Skoura’s eye is one of the many. rare bright spot in the game’s mission design).

The companion characters are superficially built, unattractive, one-sided, and all possess the motif of humans capable of using Cypher. Meanwhile, when looking at the main characters of Planescape: Torment, we have Morte – a witty flying skull, Ignus – a slightly “crazy” match-player or Vhailor – a possessed armor subconscious and of course capable of fighting and much more; no need to talk about abilities or personalities, just looking at their looks is enough to realize that the Nordoms, Fall-from-grace or Annah are much more unique than any of the companion characters in Torment: Tides of Numenera. Perhaps only little Rhin is the only glimmer of the whole cast of companions in the game because of her ability to store extremely “unique” Cypher and side quests with a rather unexpected twist.

It’s hard to imagine that Tyranny, a side project of Obsidian Entertainment, lacks a philosophical narrative but possesses more memorable moments than Planescape’s spiritual successor: Torment.

The essence of the RPG game genre is the more complex it is, the easier it is to be “exploited,” and Torment: Tides of Numenera, for some reason, possesses as many mechanics, as minimal as possible, operate unbelievably absurd and also confusingly vulnerable to exploitation. First, Tides is an energy flow that connects a person’s xinxing with reality, which is expanded into five colors expressing the character’s personality and morality that ordinary people can’t see. In short, it is a fairly simple “karma” system. Indeed for more than 30 hours, the writer has not encountered any dialogue choices that greatly affect the later consequences and seems to only a few small missions that use this mechanism to make it a bit more convenient for the player to handle the situation. Tidal Surge – Last, Castoff’s ability to change Tides and control the opposite person at will is only encapsulated in snowy conversations. Players do not need to spend Effort points to activate them.

Labyrinth is a “special” area in Last Castoff’s head that the player will set foot in when encountering a disaster in the Ninth World (for example, being eaten by… for example) or when… the scenario wants. What role does this place play besides owning the character The Specter with the number of lines that do not change every time the player arrives? The writer does not understand why Labyrinth exists in Torment: Tides of Numenera. There are many ways to “realize” the subconscious with a specific area, but the way inXile designed Labyrinth is half-baked.

The core gameplay of Torment: Tides of Numenera revolves around the Effort system divided into three extremes: Might, Speed ​​, and Intellect, which plays the role of responding to the corresponding stat checking dialogues for players to solve problems by increasing the success percentage based on the number of points the player wants to use. This system also applies in combat, with Might affecting the damage dealt with enemies and the character’s health, Speed ​​involving Evasion, and actions that require quick hands or dexterity. In contrast, Intellect affects anything related to subconscious power.

where can you get a Torment Tides of Numenera online

Techland Torment: Tides Of Numenera – PlayStation 4: Buy it now

Torment: Tides of Numenera (Xbox One): Buy it now

Torment: Tides of Numenera – Day One Edition (PC DVD) UK IMPORT REGION FREE: Buy it now

The biggest problem with this system is that if you choose the “peaceful” route and avoid combat as much as you can, there’s no reason not to put all your upgrade points into it. Intellect for Last Castoff and the other two extremes for companion characters, for two main reasons: First, the amount of dialogue with Intellect stat checks is overwhelming and accounts for more than 50% of the choices that the player can This is done throughout the game, and second, you can choose an allied character to perform the Effort phase in the middle of the dialogue even though the Last Castoff is the one who talks – a design that is quite illogical and wasteful balance. Without a companion character, the number of points the player can gain to drop into the Intellect extreme is quite generous, as the Edge upgrade allows to reduce the amount of Effort used in dialogue as much as possible, making this system too predictable too easy to exploit.

Torment: Tides of Numenera has a pretty cool premise: allowing players to do several things outside of fighting during encounters with enemies known as Crisis (or “Crises” in the plural). You can talk to NPCs or even enemies, collect items or pave the way with dialogues to check stats. However, most of the Crisis probably do not balance the difficulty, so they often have an overwhelming number of enemies. Sometimes even “playing pranks” by putting in opponents with the ability to revive, against opponents players usually go for a walk and accidentally wake up other “herds” nearby. The combat in the game is not complicated enough for the player to develop a strategy for himself and only makes the player falter due to the number of opponents he encounters in a battle. A crisis is also easy to make players “crazy” because of its silly slowness, movement, and character speed comparable to turtles; some segments are “dotted” by intermittent moments when the character does a certain job that is arranged by the script. The encounter with The Sorrow at Miel Avest is probably one of the worst combat sequences I’ve ever enjoyed in any turn-based CRPG.

The writer can’t find any reason to discuss equipment and tools in Torment: Tides of Numenera. Why do you need a weapon when the ability to “hide and seek” allows the character to do what he does and then get out of there right under the enemy’s nose? Most Crisis have the clear goal of “trying to survive before doing the main job to complete the clash.” Cyphers also destroy this basic turn-based battle system. Items left by the remnants (numenera) of the rear worlds, which essentially function as disposable items (consumable) through normal, but still try to “compensate” for the Cypher Sickness effect to reduce extreme points if the player carries too many Cyphers on him. They are too powerful, sometimes completely rendering the character’s combat skills worthless (if the player doesn’t encounter too many Crisis); even their effects become too ridiculous once the player unlocks Rhin’s ability to “reset” Cypher.

At this point, the writer wonders: What happened? 5 years in development, 4 million USD from the Kickstarter community, the first images of Torment: Tides of Numenera reveal a beautiful, multi-dimensional game with dynamic lighting, hand-drawn textures full of depth, and The portraits of real characters cannot be faulted. All of these elements are completely lost in the official version: poor lighting effects, depth in each frame obscured by smoke, most of the locations are monotonously designed, without any Any place that makes players “open their eyes” and admire like any sketches that inXile has launched on Kickstarter, if any, they are all thrown into The Mere. The NPC has no portrait, no voiceover, only three movements of standing, walking, and running, while the pictures of Last Castoff and his companions are unbelievably lousy. Mark Morgan took charge of the game’s 50-track soundtrack, but it’s unbelievable that there isn’t a single memorable tune out of all 50 tracks.

Where are the features and content promised in Kickstarter? The Focus system that should have played an important role in character formation turned into a few bonus points added directly to the character’s stats. The whereabouts of the third-largest area – the oasis M’ra Jolios is still a big question mark; the Foci system was limited, and the factions that the player could have joined were completely cut out; The game doesn’t even have a Codex! The game that should have been the spiritual successor of Planescape: Torment has become an amateur product from design, image, sound to the user interface. Two characters written by Chris Avellone and Pat Rothfuss could not “carry” the weak experience that Torment: Tides of Numenera brought, but fortunately…

“Fortunately,” the writer has to say because Torment: Tides of Numenera is not bad in every way. The game becomes a lot more interesting when Last Castoff sets foot in Bloom – a city with a shape characterized by organic life, especially in the structural design with bold art style from the surreal horror painter HR Giger. The idea of ​​a city “swallowing” souls literally and figuratively doesn’t just stop at rumors, in which doors with huge jaws – The “Maws,” the main specification confirm this concept when it can point the way to unpredictable mysteries, or even to death.

Nearly every Maws-related quest has bizarre but equally interesting requirements, and Bloom’s whole crazy “surprise” creates a truly unique style for the game Torment: Tides of Numenera.

Not only that, but Bloom also owns the best-described quest lines in the entire game. “Dracogen’s Price” started purely with the desire to win the Merecaster device quickly to bring Last Castoff through Maws’ first challenge, and the point is that players can completely complete this task with one line. Go elsewhere that the quest doesn’t specifically instruct by finding the Navigational Cortex item. The storyline then involves the intriguing Memovira until The Sorrow comes along. It’s no exaggeration to say that the third chapter at Bloom “burdened” all of the Torment: Tides of Numenera’s opening and weak development in the previous two chapters. It’s also disappointing that it wasn’t until the end that the game started shows the bright spot in his mission and story.