Torment: Tides of Numenera (Early Access)

You are a blank slate – The latest of many “vessels” that a chaotic deity has chosen to empower. Some of your brethren have long since passed on from this world; others are very much alive. You had a former life – several, in fact – and bits and pieces of them come back to you as the game progresses and events happen around you. Whoever you were before you were “lucky” enough to be chosen, they’re gone now.

Story and Flow

You start out within your own freshly-minted mindscape. You perform a few simple tasks, and how you choose to resolve them determines how many points you’re able to spend in each of three stat “pools” (Might, Speed, Intelligence) once you begin the game proper. You also get to decide which of several past lives will influence your skill loadout – but just before things get serious, the game gives you the opportunity to choose a new loadout, improve one or two of your stat pools, and figure out just what you want to be: A Glaive, well-versed in the use of arms and armor? A Jack, nimble and silver-tongued? Or a Nano, who proves that sufficiently advanced tech really is indistinguishable from magic?

The minimalist stat “pool” system is really interesting when compared to the usual suspects; this is based on a wholly separate paper-and-pencil RPG system than D&D, and it shows – in a good way.

Once you've decided who and what you are (no physical character customization just yet – you just choose male or female), you face your first great struggle: A combat tutorial that has you defend your mind against the first incursion of The Sorrow, a mind-raping entity that really has it in for your sire's vessels. As in, with murderous intent.

Once you've dealt with that, you are able to emerge into the real world, where you find that your body heals miraculously quickly (well, in the story; not during normal gameplay), and that death is really more of a temporary inconvenience than anything else. Sometimes, death will bring you back to your mindscape, which has since been altered in some way. Other times, you'll end up in a gradually expanding, grey void. You could also wind up in the company of some friendly cannibal cultists who really just wanna have a nibble of your juicy flesh...in exchange for proper compensation, of course.

Controls and Gameplay

The controls in Torment are fully mouse-driven, with optional keyboard commands and shortcuts. Click to move (no hold-to-move, though), move mouse to the edge to scroll, etc. During both dialogues and in combat (“crises,” as this game calls them), you choose to “invest” points from your pools to improve your odds of success. Your base chances are based on your skills, and having points in Edge can reduce the costs, even down to zero. The pools replenish only when you take a rest, and upon the occasional critical success (in which case, you only get back what you spent on that action), so you have to choose carefully. Currently, doing anything useful as a Nano (mage) requires a massive Intelligence pool, unless you've also put several skill points into weaponry in order to give yourself a realistic chance to actually hit something.

Interacting with the plethora of devices, statuary, pools of detritus, et al, throughout the areas will grant you new toys to play with (Cyphers), and occasionally, even a shiny new weapon or suit of armor. Just be careful – Each character can only hold so many Cyphers before beginning to take stat penalties (aka “Fetters”) simply due to overload.

One issue with the gameplay is that battles glitch out sometimes, but this is a known bug. Also, the interface will suddenly disappear at certain quest milestones. Torment also still suffers from the “linear warriors, quadratic wizards” issue that all RPGs ultimately face. Physical combatants improve at a steady, predictable pace, while Nanos start out with maybe 2-3 spells per rest, tops, and even that assumes that they don't use their Intelligence pool on smooth talking an NPC or delving into their knowledge of ancient history, for example. “Magic” ability use (and some others, as well) during combat requires you to burn off points from the relevant ability pool, and is not reduced by Edge.

Graphics and Sound

The game looks like a world with elements of both fantasy and advanced tech (mostly the former), set up to mesh together. While the setting has a definite Steampunk vibe to it, you won't see any people running around in brown & brass overalls with goggles on their heads, wielding wrenches as they chase down their lazy assistants. What you will find are merchants and hidebound officials; public executions and slavers (who, of course, are just making sure that those poor folks have a place to live and food to eat...or so they say); sentient machines and rock-encrusted giant bugs who eat electricity; airship captains, war veterans, and that one guy whose body is covered in toes.

Torment features some pretty good music. Also, the ambient sounds in the city suit the area, and the combat audio works is decent enough. There’s not much voice acting, but what little there is is pretty well done.