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Torment: Tides of Numenera.

Initially, I was afraid it would be excessively short and rushed; if the latter might be true, the former certainly is not. Please forgive me in advance.

I'll start from a distance—a very great one. In years long past, I no longer remember which, Obsidian Entertainment—a studio for which I felt immense love and trust at the time—went to Kickstarter with an outstretched hand, solemnly promising that if they raised enough money, they would release a cool old-school RPG, just mind-blowing. Since I trusted the studio and their promises, while ambitious, were still within reasonable bounds, I had little doubt that they would succeed. Shortly after them, another project was launched on Kickstarter—this time by some nobodies (to me), who promised to recreate such a masterpiece (in my eyes) as Planescape: Torment. Given the strange goalposts on Kickstarter (their own stronghold? Why does a successor to Torment need one?), a somewhat odd setting (what tides? What are they even talking about?), and the fact that nobodies had taken on the spiritual sequel to a masterpiece of a game, I felt not just skepticism, but absolute certainty that they would produce a bad game.
A few years passed. Obsidian released their old-school RPG, Pillars of Eternity; I even played it. And while at first I decided its overall rating was "not so bad," over time, apparently, I stopped looking for excuses for the time I wasted and changed my assessment to "complete disappointment." Tides of Numenera hadn't been released yet, but a number of scammers on Kickstarter had already managed to discredit themselves. If my skepticism could have dropped any further, it undoubtedly did.
I forgot about this game and only remembered it when I read reviews on other gaming sites, where it was described as same old garbage. "Nothing surprising," I thought, "but maybe someday I'll play it for introductory purposes." And again, I successfully forgot about it for a couple of years.
And then, a couple of weeks ago, by some twist of fate during a chat, the notorious Planescape: Torment came up. I felt a surge of nostalgia, and with it, a perfectly natural desire to replay that game. However, since I had already played through it many times, I simultaneously realized it would be rather boring to read dialogues I had already memorized. While searching for a few facts about the original Torment, Google also gave me information about its "sequel," which I had successfully forgotten. I thought, "what the hell—at least there will be something new here; maybe the impossible will happen and they'll manage to reproduce at least some of the original's features." Downloaded, installed, launched. Oh miracle, am I finally going to write about the game?
I approached the game with my hackles practically raised to the maximum. Of course, I tried not to be a fool who intentionally looks for flaws, but at the same time, I took the hardest possible position in the sense that I expected nothing good. However, literally from the first few minutes, the game began to reproduce the atmosphere of the original—we wake up as a man without a name, who remembers nothing of his past, but who is recognized by people on the streets, in a bizarre world whose laws are unknown to us, but which can be mastered very easily and quickly. Nevertheless, I kept my skepticism almost until the very end of the game, and only in the last third did I abandon it completely. "Well, people hated it," I constantly thought, "which means it's ready to turn into garbage at any moment." Nonetheless, in my opinion, that never happened. So, now I'll try to be more specific about the game itself.
General impressions of Gameplay:
What is the original Planescape: Torment? If I tried to answer this question, I would probably say—running around an unusual setting and talking to unusual characters who tell their amazing stories and views on the world, as well as attempts to complete one's own personal quest, which is not linked to saving the world. And if we stick to this definition, it immediately turns out that Torment: Tides of Numenera is indeed a sequel to the original game. Perhaps I am trying to fit two games into one standard, but I had never encountered this thought anywhere before—it came to me specifically during my Walkthrough of Numenera.
What else distinguished the original Planescape from RPGs of that time? The fact that the playstyle consisting of chatting was encouraged by the game itself—at that time, it was the only RPG where the player gained more experience from solving quests and communicating than from killing monsters (and yes, this includes the first two Fallouts—if you're wondering, calculations have already been made). Numenera continues this concept but takes a step further—combat as such brings no experience at all, much like in another good game—Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines. The bulk of our experience comes from completing quests; a much smaller but still solid amount comes from studying additional dialogue options, finding connections in dialogues, and sometimes even asking the same question a second time. Yes, yes, this is one of the few games where the "ask again" option serves not only to refresh memory but can also bring a new result although undoubtedly, if taken to a munchkin extreme and clicking through all dialogues twice, some might find it frustrating. You can also recall fragments of your past life in the game, which also brings experience or provides new options. Sound familiar? Recognize it?
Combat and battles:
At first glance, the combat seemed extremely flawed, inconvenient, and stupid to me—and I wasn't alone in this opinion. However, does that say much if most people shat on the game across all fronts anyway? Over time, however, my opinion changed—and I decided that the combat in the game is quite normal and performs its functions, even if it doesn't reach for the stars. Though, the change in my opinion coincided with the fact that my character and companions leveled up and began taking out enemies much more effectively. Coincidence? Perhaps.
About battles in general. Here they are called "crises." At first, I thought this was an attempt to stand out somehow to give a greater sense of elitism to their game. But in reality, crises are indeed far from always boiling down to fights. There are quite few of them in the game, and all plot crises can be completed without killing anyone like Fallout 4, though, so that doesn't say much either. In some crises, there will be an opportunity to talk to the opposing side; in others—to use interactive objects. In the very first crisis, of course, all these opportunities will be present just to show off to the player, but in subsequent ones—far from always, especially in side quests, where often there is only one option—kill the enemy with a sword.
Stat checks:
In the original Planescape, certain characteristics either opened new options in dialogue (wisdom and intelligence) or gave the possibility of getting a good result when using an option (charisma, occasionally dexterity and strength). Modern RPGs practice a slightly different approach—you see the option immediately, and you immediately see that it is tied specifically to having a certain skill. Essentially, the only difference is that if in the original Planescape you could only assume that a certain option was the best choice, then in new RPGs you know for sure. Numenera is closer to new games—in it, you immediately see that some option is tied to a specific skill. Moreover, even without this skill, most options can be brute-forced—simply because absolutely all checks in the game are based on percentages. I believe this is a controversial and rather unsuccessful decision, but the game sometimes fights against it by placing several stat checks in a row and thereby (sometimes) preventing the ability to abuse save-scumming. The problem is that it works both ways—it's frustrating to fail a stat check with a 90% success rate.
Despite the fact that objectively this is perhaps a flaw, I cannot say that it caused me dissatisfaction. The system is fully functional; personally, I almost never had to save-scum—and I am a very convinced save-scummer, so keep that in mind.
Plot:
As I already said—here it's not tied to saving the world. Interesting, only now did I realize a curious point—in the original Planescape our hero sought a way to die; in this game, the hero seeks a way to escape inevitable death. However, as in the original, during the plot it becomes clear that the hero's quest will have consequences not only for him—but still, you won't have to save the entire world.
General impressions of the plot—it's not bad, it doesn't sag, and the end and resolution don't cause frustration or disappointment. But still, it is weaker than the original—this especially applies to the ending.
Companions:
Objectively—it's clear that effort was put into their writing. They have quests, they periodically insert their own lines into dialogues, new topics for conversation appear, and if you take some of them into the last section of the game, it opens additional options for them. Nevertheless, the vast majority of them did not evoke strong emotions or attachment in me. It's even kind of a shame, considering that effort was clearly spent on their development. There is only one companion who stands out among the rest in her poor development—that's the woman who exists in multiple dimensions simultaneously and joins us at the beginning of the game.
By the way, romances or even hints of them were not included—but specifically, the plot of this game is constructed such that the absence of romances seems almost natural.
Alignments:
Only a lazy person hasn't criticized the D&D alignment system; that's true. So why do people continue to use it? I intentionally created a thread with a test on moral principles to show that even for people living in the same country (CIS for some), in a fairly similar socio-cultural environment, opinions on what is good and what is bad can differ greatly. D&D, however, takes entire worlds (!), various countries and nations where societies are at different cultural, social, and technological stages of development and tries to fit them into a single axis of "this is good, and this is evil." Forgive me, but is it the year 1000 AD? Nietzsche and Stirner haven't existed yet? What kind of caveman concepts are these?
Numenera uses a different system—Tides. They can be various colors and represent motivations and aspirations behind certain words and actions. In total, the system offers 5 Tides:
1) Blue - aspiration for knowledge.
2) Red - aspiration for emotions or "the desire to act as your heart tells you"—meaning an emphasis on emotional actions.
3) Indigo - aspiration for justice, fairness, fulfillment of social norms.
4) Silver - aspiration for fame and recognition.
5) Gold - aspiration for altruism and helping others
When I first saw this system on paper—personally, it seemed very weak to me; I decided it was an excessive simplification and that in reality, there are far more motivations. Nevertheless, specifically in the game, the implementation is, in my opinion, simply brilliant and this system looks extremely organic in it, aside from a few strange "silver" options near the beginning. In any case, everything is better than D&D alignments.
By the way, within the same run—it's easy to notice that indigo and gold colors perform the same functions as lawful-good and good options in D&D, but their "opposites" were not included. And this, in my opinion, is quite logical—rarely does anyone do "evil" or "chaotic" actions just to be evil and chaotic. Even teenage rebels rebel not just because (at least from their own point of view), but within the desire to bring more good to other people or become famous. In general, a good system, in my opinion.
What else I liked:
In many quests, there is sometimes an obvious and sometimes non-obvious connection to each other. For example, we have a quest with options A, B, and C for its solution. If we choose option B, then in another quest that also had options A, B, and C, an additional option D appears. There are quite a few such interconnections (more than two!), which, considering the fact that in most modern games absolutely every quest exists in a vacuum relative to others, caused me great delight. In general, I can't recall many moments in the game where there was a feeling of "but wait, I learned information X in another quest/dialogue, why can't I now make decision Y based on it in this quest/dialogue?". In my opinion, this is a fairly strong statement and I wouldn't be surprised if more critical players find counterexamples to my words, but personally, I can't remember any, so I am under a good impression.
The presence of certain items in the inventory adds new dialogue options and descriptions, as does the presence of some skills. This is always a plus in my eyes.
I liked how they introduce the setting: they don't dump a pile of information like in Pillars, where you easily start to struggle and get lost, but simply give you info in pieces that you need to know at the moment to understand the situation—again, very similar to the original.
What I didn't like:
At first, I wanted to write "there are no bad moments in this game!!!1", but then I decided to take a few breaths and force myself to find moments that I didn't like—and suddenly realized they exist, even if they are purely subjective.
I don't like consumables in games. I always keep all potions, ammo, and grenades waiting for a truly difficult fight, and as a result, they gather dust in the inventory until the end of the game. And here Numenera played a truly foul trick against my psychology. It introduced special consumables called "cyphers"—various items, relatively powerful, which can give a tangible advantage during a crisis, and more rarely, outside of one. At the same time, if you have too many cyphers in your inventory—you start receiving debuffs. "But Cypher," you might object, "this is actually a brilliant idea that should stimulate you not to hoard everything but to use it actively." On paper—yes, but in practice, I got my usual pattern, only complicated—constantly running to shops, spending half an hour thinking which cypher was better and which was worse, selling the worst one, then not using it in a crisis because "there isn't another one!!!!!", then finding an even better one, running to the shop, selling the old one... However, perhaps thanks to this warning, it won't become as much of a problem for you as it did for me.
The second point is merecasters. These are things that, upon activation, lead you to read an interactive story, like a text quest. Depending on your decisions, they will have more or less different endings. They cannot be used again (excluding save-load). At the same time, in most of them, the ending will always have either a gloomy tone or be slightly unfinished. As a result, every time I experienced internal frustration that can be described as:

And then what?! Where is the moral of this fable?! The chapter and verse?! The message?!..

Meanwhile, for the rest of the game, your choices in merecasters have no effect on anything, with very rare exceptions.
Why did the game fail?
Personally, I believe that people who didn't like the game can be divided into three types:
1) Ducklings. People who will always and in everything be dissatisfied because their potency, both sexual and gaming, is no longer as strong as in former times. Everything was better before, and now everything is worse. I spit in their faces.
2) Those who actively followed the campaign on Kickstarter. The thing is, the developers didn't fulfill some promises, and others they fulfilled in such a way that it's completely unclear why they asked for such huge amounts of money. I can understand the frustration of these people, but I want to ask them a counter-question—were those things they promised really necessary? Is a personal stronghold actually needed in this game? And if it had been implemented "half-heartedly," as in Pillars of Eternity—would it have been much better? However, I feel a certain sympathy for these people because betrayed expectations are unpleasant, regardless of the game.
3) Those who don't fit into the target audience of this game. The game was initially positioned as the spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, which, although recognized by many as a masterpiece, if we're being honest—is still a fairly niche product. Therefore, it wasn't made for them. I wave my hand at them to keep moving past.
VERY BRIEF SUMMARY:
This game is weaker than the original Planescape: Torment, but at the same time is its spiritual successor, so it's perfectly suited for that specific situation when you want to experience similar emotions but don't want to replay Planescape yet again. All of this is my personal opinion, which does not coincide with the opinion of most other people, so I may be wrong.