Torment: Tides of Numenera

Very very good rpg👍

Like so many others, I played Planescape: Torment back in the day and loved every minute of it. So I was one of the original backers for this game's Kickstarter, but I never did get around to playing it for one reason or another. I was in grad school when it finally came out and, though I tried to play it, I was just too busy with school, work and personal life, so I just played it for a couple of hours and set it aside for "later" and now it's been 15 years and I'm only just now getting around to finally sitting down and playing it for real. As expected, it's a very unique game with its own weird game mechanics and ruleset, that attempts to retain the spirit of the original Torment by touching upon similarly crazy ideas about identity, mortality and morality by telling the story of one of the discarded-and-now-sentient former bodies of a being known as The Changing God, and set in a world easily as weird as Sigil the City of Doors from Planescape. And, as expected from PS:T's spiritual sequel, not everything can or needs to be fixed through combat. I've seen a fair amount of criticism about how the game fails to live up to expectations as a spiritual sequel to Planescape: Torment, and though I certainly agree that the writing is not on the same level as PS:T and the gameplay has somewhat weird systems that take some time to start making real sense, I don't agree that it's as bad as people argue. I had a lot of fun with the game and, much to my surprise, I got invested in the companions' stories, and I was genuinely torn about having to make choices that would dictate their respective endings. For instance, I had Rhin in my active party for most of the game despite the fact that she's a child and her stats mostly suck and she's fairly useless. Why? Because I chose to have her tag along with me after convincing the slave trader to leave her in my care and, when I tried to bench her to bring someone else along in my active party, she reacted by getting really scared and begging me not to leave her and telling me I promised to take care of her. So I kept my promise and dealt with the fact that one of my companion spots was occupied by a character I liked but was mostly a liability until I got her to a level where she could be a fairly competent ranged fighter, even though she remained really squishy in comparison to the rest of my party, having about half their HP despite being the same level. She also kept me heroic, because I didn't want to do stuff that would disappoint her or maker her sad. And then in the latter part of the game when you find a way to send her home through a portal and she started telling me all about how she wanted to go home but she also wanted to stay with me because she loved me, I honestly struggled to decide what to suggest she did until I ultimately opted to send her home for her own good, but I was genuinely sad about it and when I noticed that my new companion I could bring along in Rhin's spot was severely under-leveled I was certain I had made the wrong call and shot myself in the foot but I ultimately made my peace with it. But then at the final sequence in the Labyrinth a new portal opens and a grown woman steps in and it's Rhin, who came back in time to help me beat the final boss and now her stats don't suck and she says she grew up to be a hero following my example, I couldn't help but smile at my little girl who could now go toe-to-toe with me. All in all, a solid CRPG with a high weirdness quotient but interesting ideas. Having said that, if you don't like reading, you'll probably hate this one. It's very text-heavy.