It's just sad that inXile has officially stopped supporting Torment since March. Knowing that no further updates or post-release content will get patched in for this game really made me disappointed. Deep down I had hopes to still see the remaining stretch goals at some point... sigh...
I tried and I agreed with the reviews that said the storytelling is convoluted. I don't mind lots of story in fact I love it. But it has to have meaning, not just sound interesting.
It's a fun game, and definitely worth finishing, but a chatty nano can pretty much see all the game has to offer in a single playthrough. It does lack replayability.
I played it for an hour and half (okay, an hour of actually "playing"), just to get out of the broken chamber. Because mostly I was reading descriptive wall of text after descriptive wall of text. And then I was told it was pretty much what the game was all about, a visual novel of sorts. Well, I do read visual novels, but usually they're written in normal language that easily sticks in memory, and have somewhat bigger fonts that are easier to read.
Well, the actual RPG part of the game doesn't seem too bad - I liked the STR/DEX/INT effort pools, and character development systtem is also sufficiently refreshing.
But the writing... is simply cringeworthy. I understand the game had some good narrative designers, but what they clearly forgot is to hire people who can actually *write*, as in compose from letters easily readable fluent sentences.
The game has had a "Mixed" rating on Steam for ages, mostly due to diehards whose expectations were unreasonably high after such a long, drawn-out wait for the game. Lo and behold, and new group of people have reviewed the game just in the past week (and likely had no clue about the game on release) and gave it almost universally positive reviews, many saying they were going to purchase it after the free trial. Point being, if you go into this game expecting it to be as good as "Planescape: Torment", you were always going to leave disappointed. The chances of matching one of the greatest video games of all-time are beyond remote. But this game is perfectly good on it's own merits. inExile as a company is another matter (I really didn't like Wasteland 2 at all and am wondering if Bard's Tale IV will come out before 2020 at this point). No doubt they really messed up with the timeline on the production of this thing. I wouldn't Kickstart any of their future projects. People seem to get really caught up on who MADE the game (inExile, Obsidian, Bethesda) as if that plays some inherent role in what the end result of the actual game is. And this one stands on it's own well enough as long as you are able to filter all the delays and missed stretch goals and other crap out of the equation.
People have to strong feelings and rate games, movies and whatever in a way to make their mark. The only way they can cause as high impact as possible on the rates are by using the lowest or highest scores. This makes the ratings suck and I find that ratings have very little truth behind them nowadays. In order to get an actual decent rating on a game I have to read a proper review that isn't written by a hatemonger or a fan boi.
I agree with @jjstraka34, the game is better than a lot of the earlier critique made it appear. It's well worth a playthrough and if you think the game has a wall of text, then you are obviously not part of the intended player base and should put it aside and go play something else instead. Personally I found the world, the lore and the writing itself good enough to keep me interested. My personal grief with the game was the NPCs who I've found to be rather dull and not very interesting. I pushed through their story arcs just for completion, but few of them appealed to me and I never did play it more than once just to try another set of NPCs.
themazingness
Member, Mobile Tester Posts: 691
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Because mostly I was reading descriptive wall of text after descriptive wall of text. And then I was told it was pretty much what the game was all about, a visual novel of sorts. Well, I do read visual novels, but usually they're written in normal language that easily sticks in memory, and have somewhat bigger fonts that are easier to read.
Well, the actual RPG part of the game doesn't seem too bad - I liked the STR/DEX/INT effort pools, and character development systtem is also sufficiently refreshing.
But the writing... is simply cringeworthy. I understand the game had some good narrative designers, but what they clearly forgot is to hire people who can actually *write*, as in compose from letters easily readable fluent sentences.
I agree with @jjstraka34, the game is better than a lot of the earlier critique made it appear. It's well worth a playthrough and if you think the game has a wall of text, then you are obviously not part of the intended player base and should put it aside and go play something else instead. Personally I found the world, the lore and the writing itself good enough to keep me interested. My personal grief with the game was the NPCs who I've found to be rather dull and not very interesting. I pushed through their story arcs just for completion, but few of them appealed to me and I never did play it more than once just to try another set of NPCs.