Game is awesome!

[Enron Risk Manager]

Just finished it and wow what a ride.

A lot of reading but the philosophical concepts they tackled was incredible. Tons of impressive side stories and a gripping main story. The writers were ON POINT.

The bloom was the best area but the ending was a great tie-in.

Combat was poor but that's because this is really just an interactive book.

All in all 9/10 game.

Anyway recommend this to your friends to help support similar projects! I know I'd back another project by these guys.

[psychotron666]

If you like the writing check out Patrick rothfuss book series (he's one of the writers for torment) the kingkiller chronicles, starting with name of the wind. It is fantasy but very unique book series. They hired him on this being the first game he's worked on.
I've been waiting for the final book on his trilogy for like 6 years now though.

Also the Chris avellone the head writer has been a video game writer for years now, from fallout 2 to star wars knights of the old republic 2, fallout new Vegas, pillars of eternity, and so on.

[oldrocker99]

Uh, you have played Planescape:Torment, I presume.

[psychotron666]

^ yes. This game was made as a successor to planescape torment which is regarded as the best story in any rpg game ever. Again it doesn't focus on combat but dialogue and choices like this game

[Sleeper]

PS:T had plenty of reading as well as combat, I enjoyed both. This one seem to have gone to the extreme of one end only.

[[__h.stickeye_]]

seems like an epic fail to me. The reviews say it all. Also at the end of the day this game did not deliver on their promises. You can only jerk people around so much before they retaliate. This game will go down as forgotten and definitely not a gem.

[Mandrake42]

I like it too. I had heard of the Numenara setting before this, but Tides is my first actual experience with it. The setting certianly has the same otherworldy oddity of the Planescape setting, so I can see why the devs chose it for the location of what is effectively a spiritual sequel to the original Torment. Digging through the background of the world to get a feel for what makes it tick has been pretty compelling so far, much the same way picking apart the city of Sigil in PS:T was so many years ago.

[CHI LONG QUA]

The writing in this game is fairly good, but it ends up being LESS than the sum of its parts because the setting is an ultra-random jumble with very little cohesion.

[Mandrake42]

Originally posted by Saying Nothing:

The writing in this game is fairly good, but it ends up being LESS than the sum of its parts because the setting is an ultra-random jumble with very little cohesion.

I think the main plot is pretty cohesive so far, though I guess that might change as I go through. Last cast-off looking for a way to stop being devoured by the Sorrow while trying to learn more about his sire.

If you mean all the disparate history from the other 8 worlds that existed prior to the 9th world, that is part of what reminds me of Planescape. After all, the entire point of Planescape and Sigil the City of Doors was to link together all the DnD campaign settings with a location that would allow players to travel between them. So the game was saturated with the wieght of all those worlds and all their 1000's of years worth of lore and history. It gave you the feeling of the ancient past of dozens of worlds, of which the player was only gaining glimpses.

Tides 9th world setting, with it's numenara and other strange remnants of the prior 8 worlds give me the same vibe. So much weird and alien stuff from vastly different worlds. In Torment they had been dragged in fromt the different DnD campaign settings. In Tides, everything is actually built upon the ruins of the previous worlds. Its makes for an interesting place to literally dig around in.

As I said eat the beginning, maybe the main plot does lose cohesion later on but it seems pretty straightforward at the moment. It's 9 worlds worth history and the weird stories it allows the game to tell about the forgotten past that are the draw for me though. I'll definitely admit that so far the games central story is not as compelling as The Nameless ones journey, but I'm definitely having fun rumaging about the games setting.

[Zloth]

I'm not quite done with the game but I'm getting there and I agree with Saying Nothing.

I think it's mostly a matter of balance between the main plot, companion plots, and small side-quests. The main plot and companion plots are fine, if a bit small. However, there's a HUGE number of little side quests. A few of those side quests have some relation to the whole game (be sure to get the quest the ghost in the bar gives!) but most just seem like little quests in there to spice up the game. To stick with the meal metaphor, it seems like a couple of pieces of chicken, a spoon full of corn, a couple of string beans, and an entire bag of pepper. Good quality pepper, mind you, but still.

I wonder... do folks who really like the game also like to read collections of short stories?

[Mandrake42]

Originally posted by Zloth:

I wonder... do folks who really like the game also like to read collections of short stories?

Yeah, I do.

I also like generally odd fiction like Lord Dunsany, China Mieville, Niel Gaiman etc so the odd bits and pieces in this game all work really well for me. I find it an interesting world.

[Ossipago]

Glad to see someone else appreciating it still. This game got so much hate on release (I think bitter backers, largely - there seemed to be a pack of them dedicated to immediately downvoting any positive review). I loved it, too. I agree with other comments in this thread - the setting is above all eclectic. I think that's a strength, and strongly in keeping with the Dying Earth-style setting. Dying Earth settings are FOUNDED on deep time histories of mankind, where everything that can happen has happened, more or less, and the lines between magic and science have been totally broken. Some people think that makes these kind of settings incoherent, but to me they're just rich milieus with something new to tickle my imagination around every corner.

For those who like this kind of setting, I STRONGLY recommend all of Jack Vance's Dying Earth stuff - collected in Tales of the Dying Earth. It has some precursors (Clark Ashton Smith's Zothique stories and William Hope Hodgeson's Night Lands, for example) but it is the genre-defining work. Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun and M John Harrison's Viriconium books are more literary descendants (not that Vance is not a literary writer - he is, just perhaps not as virtuoso in terms of technical writing ability); John C Wright has a lot of it in his writing DNA, too - see in particular Count to a Trillion, which jumps deep into the time well such that we get to see Earth transitioning to the Dying Earth through the protagonist's eyes.

[Zloth]

I've learned not to trust that "most helpful review" stat in Steam at all. People don't rate by whether a review is helpful or not, they rate by whether they agree with the verdict or not. Go look at Middle Earth: Shadow of War right now. All 10 of the "most helpful" reviews are negative. However, the game currently hast 81% positive reviews!

[Enron Risk Manager]

"I wonder... do folks who really like the game also like to read collections of short stories?"
I have ADHD so I loved having the numerous side quests and merecasters to break up the main questline.

[Memnarch]

The game has so many design flaws and luckluster elements.

Its not anexcuse to be a small company in 2017 and release a game with SO bad non existant combat.

Story is 9/10, abut overall the game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ slob and a drag and its a tyical thing from inexile and I dont really feel like buying anything from them before they prove it themselves.

[Mandrake42]

Originally posted by IxiFoori:

The game has so many design flaws and luckluster elements.

Its not anexcuse to be a small company in 2017 and release a game with SO bad non existant combat.

Story is 9/10, abut overall the game is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ slob and a drag and its a tyical thing from inexile and I dont really feel like buying anything from them before they prove it themselves.

I actually didn't mind the combat once I got used to it. So long as you match your equipped weapon and upgrade your skills and abilities in a way that works with your characters strenghts, its actually not so bad. If I have a complaint with it, it's that positioning can be fiddly as you really need to be able to rotate the camera. Also enemy turns can take a little long when there are more than five or so. While it's not the best combat Ive seen in an RPG by any stretch, its not actually as bad as a lot of reports led me to believe.

That said I avoided combat at every opportunity simply because my character was built around bluff and persuation.