What does one life really matter? That is the main question you will know the answer to when you finish this epic old school RPG game in a brand new setting inspired by the great Planescape Torment. Torment: Tides of Numenera is a Kickstarter project by InXile Entertainment and after 4 years of development it is finally out. This game takes place 1 billion years into the amazing and at times grotesque future filled with strange machines, creatures and magic. Everything about this game is strange and you will be intrigued by every new location, quest and person you will meet.
Story and Gameplay
Player wakes up falling into his death as one of the "Castoffs" from the Changing God, an immortal creature that can change bodies and when he leaves those bodies they are left without memories and become virtually immortal Castoffs. World of Numenera and it's denizens don't like the Castoffs for their immense power and constant threat to their existence for their curse of being hunted by the Sorrow. Sorrow is another God or entity who finds the Castoffs and Changing God unnatural and he seeks to destroy them and he's been doing so for many hundreds of years. Castoffs use Tides, psychic projections of many different emotions that can shape the reality.
This is not an adventure game with a lot of combat, it is about finding who you are and you will learn that by reading so many story lines, just like in Planescape Torment. It is all about the writing and imagination of this world we are presented with.
There are only few combat encounters and even those can be completed without fighting. In my 20h of playing with my Nano class whose main focus is intelligence, with skills like persuasion and deception I got out of hairy situations pretty easy. If it comes to combat it is quite easy to win with the help of your companions.
There are many ways of approaching the quests and there are multiple outcomes how you can solve them. This where this game shines the most, in my 1st playthrough I've noticed that many quests can have up to 5 different endings. Yes, that can increase the longevity of Tides of Numenera by big margin for those who are interested.
Character creation is fairly simple, we can only chose a gender and three classes. Nano is something of a magic user and technology class, Glaive is your typical fighter class, Jack is something like jack of all trades and the class that can use larger amount of cyphers. Cyphers are one time use strong spells that can change the course of the battle quite easy, they are hard to find and expensive but very powerful. In addition to cyphers there are many other powerful items and by the end of the game your team will become a bunch of badasses with all sorts of Numenera at their belts. Edge is a new mechanic where our heroes can use their stat pools to increase the chances of success for dialogue and combat options. However that pool will be drained fast and you will need to rest to recover.
Some of the locations in this game are visually stunning as you can notice on the screenshots I've taken, don't worry the best ones I will leave you to discover. The artists really outdid themselves in this game. Game runs smooth on older PC's so have no fear if you think you computer won't run this.
Conclusion
Torment: Tides of Numenera is not a game for everyone, it is not a game for those who don't like to read and skip every line of dialogue, this game is more for the fans of old school RPG's with a lot of text and interesting story in a brand new and strange setting. You never know what Numenera you will find next. My few issues about the game are that it seems kinda short considering it took 4 years to make it, some side quests are not interesting enough and some dialogues are unnecessarily long. Other than that everything else is great and worth the wait. I will replay the game again to see some other outcomes of this epic story. I'd recommend this game for any fan of old school isometric RPG's.