I've recently been going through my backlog during the summer lull and finished Tides of Numenera a couple of weeks ago. But was too lazy to make it's own blog or review or impressions thread about it, so ef it this is as good a place as any to clear my mind, here goes.
The game's biggest problem imo is basically that: when everything is crazy and fantastical, nothing is. The game tries so hard to present the player with what in a more classical CRPG would be the most bizarre, weird, grandiose and fantastical things, people and happenings. But it all very quickly starts to run together and you stop being impressed at yet another time/space traveling mega entity with a midlife crisis or something. I've lost count of various AI intelligences you encounter. When your fairly basic grenade that does 20 dmg is in it's description a piece of an exploding supernova it kind of doesn't have the intended impact anymore, especially when there's a dozen similar items. There is no normal baseline in that game for the crazy to play off of. There is no regular old bar; every person in the games primary bar in town is some type of psychic hero, simulacrum illusion, mind conquering alien, AI robot, world's main expert on numenera or a cosmic civilization killer by way of oops; it's like some hyper nerds fanfic gone wild; now extend that to the entire game. A government clerk can't just be a paper pusher he has to be a multi eyed, paper teleporting super multitasking machine, that is somehow connected to your past too and so on ad nauseum. Even until the very end of the main storyline the game is not satisfied with a simple quite reasonable flow of events and has to throw in some extra time bending bullshit to explain some plot point that didn't even need explaining in the first place, just because. Your protagonist has so many grandiose abilities thrown one on top of another like some sick layer cake, like someone was afraid it was never enough to just let him be weird in one way or even two. Hey man I like ice cubes in my drink they keep it cool, but don't give me a glass full of ice cubes and forget the drink itself. There is a place for the fantastical in video games (its a large part of what I enjoy about them) but this game feels like it's trying way too hard, too frequently.
That said the game is not devoid of cool narrative bits, there were one or two quest lines in the game that I genuinely found interesting or fun.
The second thing is that combat is so incredibly rare. The lack of good combat in the original Planescape was not some feature, the game is beloved despite that based on it's narrative merits, not because of it. And it would not even be that much of an issue if there wasn't such a significant leveling up system and so much gear/items in the game. You never really get to stretch your legs or get into it. I've leveled my party like 10 times and changed two sets of gear before ever seeing my second combat encounter.
There are a few other minor tidbits, like the awful character models and armor/gear designs. It's clear that they still have the same modelers that worked on Wasteland 2. Where Obsidian used the Pillars of Eternity engine easily managed to make it's characters look just fine; inXlie using the same engine still managed to make god awfully ugly character models despite moving to new tech. I've seen better 3d bodywork in free porn games 5-10 years ago, the female protagonist's boobs look like two triangular pyramids magnetized away from each other and pointing to the sides, even in armor. And the retractable claws you can surgically implant in yourself (because of course you can) look like really bad wolverine cosplay.
Finally I just don't like the games central premise question very much: "What does one life matter?" It's just such a navel gazey and philosophical question, the game in it's narrative might as well be asking "What's the meaning of life?" just worded a bit differently (trust me the gist of it in the game itself is the same). Like, really? Fuck you game it's 42. At the very least the game had the grace to present you with a wide enough list to answer it where I was able to find something relatively close to what the answer would be for me personally, even if it also had like half a dozen of completely trivial shallow answer options. Anyway. By contrast og Planescape's question: "What can change the nature of a man?" at the time felt much more grounded, reasonable and yet more serious and applicable. It was significant enough in life and yet difficult enough to really answer for different people, especially now where I am almost 20 years later and having seen my own father try to change his mindset and behavior towards others very late in life with various degrees of success and failure.
It's not like I hate the game either. I know my criticism comes off like it's all shit and no gravy but critiquing negative things in games I find is easy and praising the good parts is what's hard (at least for me) in the same long ranty way. I've definitely enjoyed a few quests here and there. The writing is still miles better then most things in say the Bethesda Fallouts. There are one or two companions that I liked, like Rhin by Patrick Rothfuss for example. I really liked some of the inter party banter between some your companions, tho none of their actual quests were that interesinng. And there is some interesting elements to the combat system even if you don't get to do much of it. It's just a super flawed game for me that is a bit of a missed opportunity and entirely too much misguided overdoing of stuff. If I wasn't a nerdy ass CRPG caveman I would have probably told it to get a hike, but I am so I still got some of that crpg goodness dose out of it. Personally, if people are looking for one of these types of games, I'd rather recommend Pillars of Eternity; even if it is a bit dry in places it is still a much better crpg imo (or even Tyranny). This game is fine -ish, maybe, eh.
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@arbitrarywater: I've missed your blog on Tides way back then, but I've gone back and read it now after posting this and agree with a lot of what you wrote.
The last last ending choice I found a bit lacking too especially when the "optimal" choice of that I would have wanted ie to tell the Sorrow to go fuck itself was like well you must choose these vague statements to coincide with your tide to succeed and then a few thousand people went insane for a while and that's bad, I was like: "cool? I feel like I've put in motion much more significant events during the course of the game multiple times also in this world of constant upheaval and fuckery by our siblings it still seems like a net positive" also before that Sorrow was like well if you do that (not accept my choices) I'll oppose you and if you destroy me while opposing you you'll fuck up the tides and a lot of people, my thought: so like don't oppose me maybe because now that consequence is entirely on you not me, for not just accepting me and mines deaths; anyway it was quite muddily handled in places like you mentioned.
We both were alienated from the setting, do you think that my reasoning for it has some merit for you too? I didn't think about it as much but the mostly much less interesting (or rather humanly fleshed out) NPC companions do indeed contribute to the problem, they're almost all bizarre in their own ways, but are lacking a lot of that humanity groundwork that is necessary for an emphatic connection to latch on to, making them feel more like fun weird gimmicks instead. In a way I feel they, much like the world around them, are so focused on being unique they forget being grimy, there is a distinct lack of that 'lived in" feeling you get with good rpgs where you feel bits of reality permeating.
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