Torment:ToN - Review Roundup

[PegasusOrgans]

I'm an old gamer. More than old enough to remember the negative reviews of Planescape:Torment. If any of you think reviews give you the right story, you are too young or too naive for this genre. Fuck reviewers, Planescape: Torment was the best game I ever played for years, with only a few coming anywhere close. I backed this and have yet to play it. Imma start it up soon, tho. I'm afraid I might disappear for a week in a fog called Torment yet again.

 

[Aerth]

I'm an old gamer. More than old enough to remember the negative reviews of Planescape:Torment. If any of you think reviews give you the right story, you are too young or too naive for this genre. Fuck reviewers, Planescape: Torment was the best game I ever played for years, with only a few coming anywhere close. I backed this and have yet to play it. Imma start it up soon, tho. I'm afraid I might disappear for a week in a fog called Torment yet again.

I am in your category of age and experience, I hope than you will enjoy it as much as I do. I am also reinstalling the old one with the new patches for bugs and widescreen to play it again.

 

[SSIGuy]

I'm an old gamer. More than old enough to remember the negative reviews of Planescape:Torment. If any of you think reviews give you the right story, you are too young or too naive for this genre. Fuck reviewers, Planescape: Torment was the best game I ever played for years, with only a few coming anywhere close. I backed this and have yet to play it. Imma start it up soon, tho. I'm afraid I might disappear for a week in a fog called Torment yet again.

Well, I'm kind of the opposite on this. I thought Planetscape was just ok. The writing and story that people rave about, for me, that praise always felt like it was relative to just video games. While I want great stories and writing in my games, they're never as good as a great piece of literature. Maybe its unfair to make that comparison but that's how I see it... if I'm going to spend a lot of time reading, then whatever the medium I want the best writing I can get - and even great writing in video games doesn't stack up to great novels (or even some of my favourite poetry).

That said, I'm glad Planetscape exists and I'm glad they made Torment (I played Planetscape when it came out and I'll play Torment). And in both cases I'm glad they're ambitious enough to focus so much on writing and story in these in order to move the bar higher.

 

[pibbur who]

Hmmm. According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape:_Torment): "Planescape: Torment received widespread critical acclaim upon its release, but only made a small profit.".

Finding reviews from back then is a bit difficult, lots of 404's, but here are two reviews from 1999 and 2000

IGN: http://www.ign.com/articles/1999/12/18/planescape-torment
Eurogamer: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/torment (somewhat negative, but scored it 7/10 and 8/10 after fixing bugs).

As for reviews - I often disagree with them (and all the 9-10 scores we see now is suspicious). But who to trust? Watchers? You'll get 2 strikingly different views here. I consider it the best game of all time, and it's the only game that made lasting impression on me, beyond the fun of playing it.

pibbur who at 62 is an old gamer, and naturally can't remember any reviews himself. And really looks forward to playing the new PST wannabe. If he can remember where he installed it.

 

[Archangel]

I think No Truce with the Furies will be bigger PST wannabe than this game.

 

[Aerth]

End of 2017 right? Plenty of time to play Torment and try that one too. Who will complain if you are right? We need good games

 

[forgottenlor]

Hmmm. According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planescape:_Torment): "Planescape: Torment received widespread critical acclaim upon its release, but only made a small profit.".

Finding reviews from back then is a bit difficult, lots of 404's, but here are two reviews from 1999 and 2000

IGN: http://www.ign.com/articles/1999/12/18/planescape-torment
Eurogamer: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/torment (somewhat negative, but scored it 7/10 and 8/10 after fixing bugs).

As for reviews - I often disagree with them (and all the 9-10 scores we see now is suspicious). But who to trust? Watchers? You'll get 2 strikingly different views here. I consider it the best game of all time, and it's the only game that made lasting impression on me, beyond the fun of playing it.

pibbur who at 62 is an old gamer, and naturally can't remember any reviews himself. And really looks forward to playing the new PST wannabe. If he can remember where he installed it.

Same here Pibbur. I remember finishing PST and just sitting there in front of my monitor thinking WOW! I only had one other moment like that and that was 2/3 of the way through Knights of the Old Republic. Its probably partly an age thing. I've played and read so much now, that I'm rarely surprised. But I don't think I've ever played a game since, (and certainly not before) where I identified with my main character of a game as I did with the Nameless One.

I'm halfway through my second playthrough of Pillars, going through the Winter March for the first time. I'm enjoying that so much, I'll wait a month or two to start TTON. It will probably profit from a few patches by then. I know I was grateful that I waited a couple of months on Wasteland 2.

 

[pibbur who]

PST is also the only game that made me sad when finishing it, because I could never play it for the first time again. I had the same feeling after finishing LOTR (the books).

pibbur

 

[wolfgrimdark]

PST is also the only game that made me sad when finishing it, because I could never play it for the first time again. I had the same feeling after finishing LOTR (the books).

pibbur

I know that feeling although I got it with a few games ... which actually I think is a good thing. I felt the same way, to different degrees, with all my favorite games (which is why they are my favorites) but especially Baldurs Gate, DAO, and Skyrim. I think some of that had to do with companions and just overall enjoyment of the game and story. I have felt sad at many games ending I liked although those three are among my top ones. Too many books I was sad to reach the end of to list here.

Back on topic a little - I played for about an hour last night and had a lot of fun. I had no bugs or glitches myself thankfully. Not much I can write up on just an hour of playing though - did the opening, had one crisis (Battle) and met the two companions. Still some quick gut reactions:

• Like the look and feel of the GUI and game itself although the SF feel was unexpected, expected more a mix of fantasy and SF.
• Enjoyed the story up to the point where you leave the chamber with the first two companions. It was a lot of lore to be thrown your way but thought it was overall well done. Plenty of story hooks to keep you interested with a balance of revealing stuff but keeping a lot of mystery.
• The way the screen area kept jumping around was jarring and didn't like that. Maybe it had to do with the tutorial though. Basically if zoomed back the "stage" would shift to the right and then left when the GUI reappared. Could be my large resolution and how far back I was zoomed. Or again just the tutorial taking control of the camera and GUI (most likely).
• Going to take some time to figure out how to build a character. While the three main stats and types are understandable there is a lot of new terminology to learn (like "fettles") and even with the help pop-ups I was quickly over-whelmed with new lingo and language that didn't make a lot of sense. So building a character isn't practical at this point till I know a bit more about the mechanics. I mean I know who the warrior, rogue, wizard is but not how the abilities play out. I want to see if I can make the charming and persuassive rogue with some magic (nano-tech ability).
• I may not be far enough into the game yet (and haven't had time to google it yet) but wasn't happy I had no ability to customize my character as far as appearence and such. I mean it is an old style game so I know its limited but basically I was told - this is who you are. But at least character development on stats and skills/abilities looks involved and interesting.
• Overall intrigued a lot with the story idea and looking forward to playing more.

 

[joxer]

Before I purchase this I am interested in seeing comments not only about the game overall but about its length.

If it is only 20-40 hours to complete including side quests, then either that does not include reading the apparently huge amount of text, the game is super-short other than reading the text, or reviewers are super-speedy readers (or skip reading much of it most likely).

Sorry about this link:
http://kotaku.com/torment-tides-of-numenera-the-kotaku-review-1792832242

40 hours needed to do the main quest, heaps of sidequests (not specified if all or at least 90%) and reloading to check some alternate routes. Also not specified if dialogues were skipped whenever possible.

 

[Ripper]

Now that the first alpha is released, I look forward to some early reviews.

 

[luj1]

40 hours needed to do the main quest, heaps of sidequests (not specified if all or at least 90%) and reloading to check some alternate routes.

That sounds as advertised previously, good, good.

 

[joxer]

Now that the first alpha is released on consoles, I look forward to some early reviews.

You forgot some words...

 

[Kobu]

I'm a few hours in and quite underwhelmed. The prose is very purple, and rather awkward even ignoring that. The game system stinks of Monte Cook. I've ignored everything he's done since D&D 3E, but I can tell he hasn't matured beyond his notion of "gotcha" crappy rule pitfalls being delightful. I'm not too enthused about the world either. It sounded intriguing in concept, but this isn't really what I pictured. Closest I can come to describing it is that nothing feels organic--it feels like design by committee.

I'll keep playing, but this feels like PoE all over again. PS:T was one of my favorite games. I played it for years without bringing myself to finishing it. I don't see myself doing that here. Hopefully my first impression is wrong.

 

[sakichop]

Sorry about this link:
http://kotaku.com/torment-tides-of-numenera-the-kotaku-review-1792832242

40 hours needed to do the main quest, heaps of sidequests (not specified if all or at least 90%) and reloading to check some alternate routes. Also not specified if dialogues were skipped whenever possible.

This is a bit misleading Joxer, at least they way it reads to me is. Sounds like 40 for the main quest then you have heaps of side quests.

When actually it's 40 hours total for main quest + side quest + lots of saving and reloading to explore alternate routes ( no telling how long that took). So the 20-30 hours as reported in other reviews sound probably right if your not saving and reloading to check alternate routes. I'm also sure that it greatly depends on the players reading speed.

 

[Kordanor]

I just tested around a bit. The choices sometimes are quite nice. For example if you are honest in the encounter with Qorro right at the start and don't fight.

But I also tried to fail at some of the very first checks:
There is one drop thingy with this mud stone. I think if you succeed you get a heal item. If you fail you get a temporary buff. The buff is about equally as good I quess.
So I don't really see a point why you'd want to succeed.

Next up I tried these rank things in the southeast.
If you succeed, you receive a weapon if I remember correctly. A good one compared to what the other npcs have I think.
But: If you fail you get stung and get a permanent increase of Hitpoints by 1.
So the negative result is actually better than the positive one.

So in the end, I don't really feel like it actually matters if you succeed or not. Which also makes me ask myself: Why should I care enough to invest resource points into it?

On the other hand what would happen if succeeding is always the best choice? It might lead to reloading always until you succeed.
But I am not sure if the approach they did, is actually the better choice. Especially if you might invest resources to receive a worse outcome.

So in the end you might just want to do every event without any extra investment as a failure is probably just as good as a succeess.

The way the screen area kept jumping around was jarring and didn't like that. Maybe it had to do with the tutorial though. Basically if zoomed back the "stage" would shift to the right and then left when the GUI reappared. Could be my large resolution and how far back I was zoomed. Or again just the tutorial taking control of the camera and GUI (most likely).

You can disable the "jumping" in the settings, change the camera mode from hybrid to mouse scrolling. One of the first things I did.
You can also scroll via WASD and arrow keys.

 

[Kobu]

I feel the same way on the checks. Beyond that, it's just not fun gameplay, and doesn't really make a lot of sense of why I'm using up resources to do piddly things. I would just rather have a flat check, pass if you have x score, and move on. Wondering if I'd be better off failing for every check is kind of obnoxious and promotes save scumming. I'm trying to avoid that and just play...but man is it annoying.

 

[Aerth]

Because it gives you the possibility to force a result instead of just relying on an obviously very fun but random result coming from nowhere?

 

[Kordanor]

No the point is:
There is Option A and Option B.
Both options equally give you a bonus (which you don't know beforehand)
Why should you ever try to get Option A instead of Option B and invest your resources for it?

 

[Tomato]

No the point is:
There is Option A and Option B.
Both options equally give you a bonus (which you don't know beforehand)
Why should you ever try to get Option A instead of Option B and invest your resources for it?

Because that's not a universal rule in the game.
Sometimes failure is just failure.