Torment: Tides of Numenera is breaking my brain: When I'm not playing it I want to, and when I am playing it I want to do something else...

I can't figure out how I feel about this game. It's somehow deeply compelling and tediously overwrought. The world is wonderful and the characters complex. The more I learn about it's intricacies the more compelled I am, and yet I'm several hours in and haven't completed the first notch on the main quest because almost every character comes with 5-10 minutes of reading.

I spent over two hours in a one room bar. Outside of the tutorial I've never engaged in combat. My sidequest log is 10 items long. I am both excited for a good chunk of dialog and yet loathe when I enter a new section of the only town I have been in to find a dozen named characters (which means an hour of being in the same spot).

I read a lot books so the game being mostly reading isn't a challenge in and of itself, but each time I meet someone new it's like a tax on my "brain space", dragging me down into tedium because I am starting from scratch with yet another character's (richly detailed) backstory. Then I take a break and do something else and I cant stop thinking about the game and where I want to go and what I want to do next. The characters, every one of them, are compelling in a way few games I have played have ever pulled off.

• Is that boy in the market with the weird parents safe?
• Did I do the right thing when I weaponized that meme on that ancient species?
• Do I actually want to risk this companion following me around?

It's maddeningly infectious, and the only relevant thing I can compare it to is watching The Wire. The process of gathering the information has moments of real tedium, yet it bores into the back of my mind and pulls me to it like a moth to a flame.

This is one of the oddest gaming experiences I've ever had. I'm not even sure what the point of this post is. It's not a recommendation or a warning. Just a way of trying to process my thoughts, I suppose, and see how others have taken to the game.

You can grab it for $20 in the flash sale. I don't know if I actually like playing it, yet I know I'll be thinking about it for years and one day call it a classic. Fucking weird, right?