To be sure,
Torment: Tides of Numenera is a role-playing game. But it's truer to the definition of the genre than are many contemporary RPGs. You have a role to play, and most of this role-playing is focused around storytelling. Your character, referred to as "The Last Castoff" for very specific and spoilerific reasons, is a big deal in this world, and your choices carry very heavy consequences that impact the story in mindblowing ways, much like in
Planescape: Torment. Without giving anything away, the imagination on display is of a very high order -- the writing even more so. Which brings me to a crucial point: there's a lot of reading. My impressions are extremely positive on this aspect, however: not a single word appears to have been wasted.
I won't delve into Torment: Tides of Numenera's combat system until the full review, but based on my experience with the game as a whole, it isn't the focus. Nor was it in Planescape: Torment, and for good reason: it wasn't very good. I would definitely say this game's combat system is an improvement, but I can't speak to the degree of improvement just yet. What I can praise so far is the use of attribute pools to exert more effort in all of your pursuits -- not just in strength, but in traits like speed and intelligence.
