TLDR: If you’re a fan of text-heavy, narrative-based games with rich worldbuilding and extensive lore, you’ll likely enjoy this. Tides’ strength is its writing and world design; its main weakness is its clunky combat system (which thankfully can be bypassed for the most part). Exciting and unique setting, well-written story, flawed gameplay mechanics. 7.5/10.
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Review: Tides is an isometric 2.5D CRPG based on the world and mechanics of the Numenera tabletop game. The setting is somewhere between early-modern era low fantasy and science fiction. The central conceit is of a world built on the ruins of past civilisations, the technologies of which are both an object of fear and fascination for current inhabitants. Without going into too much detail, you play as an amnesiac, immortal protagonist who wakes up in this strange world, hunted by a malevolent entity. The main narrative revolves around the protagonist (a) figuring out who and where they are, and (b) avoiding permadeath at the hands of the entity.
Tides is well-written, a necessity given that ~80% of the game revolves around reading and dialogue checks. The setting feels dynamic and alive, its lore unfolding through exploration, companion and NPC interactions, and a decent set of (often interrelated) side quests. There are occasional lore dumps, but nothing too immersion breaking. World-building is complemented by the game’s tightly designed areas - the emphasis is clearly on quality over quantity, so expect smaller and fewer maps with densely packed content. Companions are a mixed bag. Some have satisfying and original storylines/personalities attached to them, others feel a little rushed. I was hooked on the main narrative from the start, though. Overall, very impressive.
Character customization follows from its source material. At creation, you decide between three classes – Glaive, Nano and Jack. These classes pretty much correspond to the three main skill (‘Effort’) pools: Might, Intellect and Speed. There is room to build hybrid characters, but unless you’re doing a solo run, any deficiencies in your character can be compensated for by companions (who you can borrow Effort points from during most skill checks). Traditional levelling is replaced with unlockable ‘Tiers’, which grant new skills/abilities and deepen Effort pools. Alignment is implemented through the colour-coded ‘tides’ system, and only pertains to the player character (not companions). This is not chosen at creation but rather emerges based on dialogue and decisions during the game.
Combat is where Tides runs into some problems. It doesn’t feel very deep or coherent. Abilities are governed by Effort points, with positive/negative effect multipliers applied based on the usual factors (gear, skill training, etc.). When combat (a ‘Crisis’) is initiated, it can usually be handled either through direct fighting or by activating some contextual mechanism to resolve the situation (e.g., by luring enemies to an area of the map and trapping them, etc.). The problem is that combat feels tacked on – outside of these limited mechanisms, environments have no impact on combat, and often feel very clunky/frustrating to navigate during it. That would be fine (not everything has to be Divinity!), except that the game vaguely pushes you towards tactical play without many dedicated mechanisms for it (no team abilities, limiting party cooperation to a simple flanking bonus, etc.). Battles were often won before any challenge had time to present itself, and I found myself rushing them because frankly there was very little payoff (or need) to think much about it at all. Luckily then, combat is not at all difficult, and you can avoid it in almost every situation.
Fans of Planescape: Torment might want to temper expectations a bit when approaching this game. Tides was advertised as a spiritual successor, and there’s been a lot of discussion over how well it succeeds at that. IMO it’s simply a more enjoyable experience to take it as an independent entity, others will disagree and for valid reasons. There are of course significant thematic overlaps (existentialism, (im)mortality, the nature of personal identity and responsibility, etc.).
Ultimately, I’d recommend this game to any fan of cerebral CRPGs for the setting and writing alone. Deficiencies in combat are far offset by the rewarding dialogue/skill check system and engaging narrative. Flawed, but a good time.
Finally, if it’s useful to anyone, Tides is tagged as unverified but runs smoothly on my Steam Deck.
