I went with middling expectations and they were easily surpassed.

I thought the Sagus Cliffs section was alright but it was following it that the game really picked up steam, and whereas I expected to dislike the Bloom based on initial art and concept, I found myself quite enthralled with it. I went into it hearing about how it didn't stand up to Torment and how it fell off after a decent first half after Sagus Cliffs, yet my experience was actually the opposite.

I found it to be quite a pleasant surprise myself. Other than that, I actually really like the Numenera world and the ideas behind it. Pillars of Eternity did exactly the same mistake, PoE2 made it better. After a couple dialogs you will automatically start skimming the text and then just outright skip the lines that aren't marked as essential. All these super detailed descriptive texts, etc. There's so much crap that could be cut and nothing of value would be lost. I mean, Fallout 1 didn't have that much text either, but it feels great and to the point. It took me till Numenera to learn that it's really about the quality. and of course that meant lots of text (the mods all failed btw). At least in the Fallout modding community, everyone wanted to make the next Planescape. I remember very well how we all back in the days were super hyped for 'lots of text', because the original Planescape had 'lots of text' as well. The game is the perfect example that players didn't want 'lots of text'.

Torment tides of numenera forum