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Czech game "Inquisitor" - ever heard of it?

Morkar Left

Guest
If the devs had bothered with a rebalance patch the game would be really good. And yes, i'm convinced that some number crunching would be enough to fix it.
 

pippin

Guest
It was certainly a bad idea to throw bats at you so you could discover how awfully broken the combat system is. But I liked keeping notes from the dialogues I had with the npcs.
 

getter77

Augur
Joined
Oct 12, 2008
Messages
861
Location
GA, USA
I'm somewhat surprised one or more enterprisingly crazy folks haven't ripped the music/lore/dialog/art and such from the game and bludgeoned them into something of a novel adventure of sorts given their unfathomable though process on the combat system's final implementation is what has largely sunk the rest of it---I know it was an enormously troubled road to get the game out and about in English and whatnot compared to most, but it was a shame to see it just left to weather away all these many months after the fact when the sales had to have at least got some money flowing.
 

GJIG

Novice
Joined
Jun 13, 2015
Messages
21
Come to think of it, you're right. I think I would've enjoyed Inquisitor to a much greater extent had it been a visual novel. No gameplay is better than boring gameplay. Would've prepared me for the massive walls-of-text, too, which are prevalent to the point of being the very point of the game. You play it for the atmosphere, dialogue and the choices you make based on that dialogue. Strip it of the gameplay and you'd paradoxically have a more enjoyable product.
 

iqzulk

Augur
Joined
Apr 24, 2012
Messages
294
The story itself is not that good, actually. The structure of Act1 is blatantly copypasted upon Acts 2&3 (first half of Act3, that is - I think they even somewhat consciously played upon this copypasting theme and its partial subversion in that first half of Act3), the "detective simulator" is very primitive and kind of retarded at times (judges simply take your word on way too much, regarding evidence and testimonies, even when you hold your case against the superior in your very organization, it's, like, Agatha Christie level of "depth" concerning all parts detective - if not worse - which goes in sharp contrast with the highly formal style of the game's own "Codex Inquisitorum", revealing it as being nothing more than simple flavor text - even though the game tests your knowledge of it a couple of times), the entire clash of actual theological/heretical discourses also doesn't seem to be exposed in any "depth", all the heretics are either retarded raving lunatics or MetalGear-esque "PLAN WITHIN A PLAN" clowns (I think, what the entire game's actual theme boils down to, is the interplay of all the various numerous ways the things faith-related and apparently selfless can be misinterpreted and distorted and used for egotistical purposes, or more like "In what conceivable ways can one feel like the hottest shit around, when it concerns all things religious?", as well as some inclusion of how seemingly egotistical and transgressive things could be evoked for completely selfless - selfless? - purposes, "OMG DELICIOUS MORAL GRAY!" - but, again all of this is explicated on the most evident and surface level only, and doesn't ever go beyond that level of "now this guy is obviously retarded, uh-huh" and "uh-oh, that's now a baaad thing you're doing!"; in some ways, the implicit structure of Inquisitor's narrative is somewhat similar to that of Xenogears and the first Deus Ex, if I remember the latter's narrative precisely enough), there are some unbelievably retarded (from the standpoint of internal consistency of ingame world) story-related moments, when you, like, slaughter hundreds of inquisitors/knights just because story - and not even once it gets mentioned anywhere in the dialogues at all. And the ending is, like, a complete and utter pile of pretentious dogshit. Also, the prequel story has nothing (nothing whatsoever) to do with the in-game plot, and is, again, simply flavor text.

What's even worse, is that this game doesn't have all that much of really good, artistry-wise, stuff. Actually, for all of its ~100hour longevity, only four moments - in the entire game - managed to really "get" me personally. All four of them situated in Act3.
Spirit invocation, the tavern, pagan's God, Pandemonium.

What else... The way quests were interconnected in Act1, was really cool, but the acts 2 and 3, not so much as didn't preserve this theme, but more like distorted it into something else. Like, because the scale of events gets upped from the Act1 to Act2, and, again, upped from Act2 to Act3, the stories of the quests themselves become less and less linked in their actual content, and substitute that "it's all actually a single Big Story" for simply invoking the same NPCs again and again for completely unrelated, disjointed, purposes and stories (again, it's most apparent in Act3, and least apparent in Act1, which pulls off "One Big Story" pretty good, actually), thus boiling down simply to needless sentimentality.

The world is unimaginatively lifted from history-as-the-game's-authors-imagined-it, so it has its own Romans, its own "Celts mixed with ancient Greeks" (and Ultherst itself is concatened from all the European countries out there in an attempt to make it a "generic Medieval European country"), its own Muslims, its own Mongols, etc. - some of those entities not explored via the game's narrative, like, at all, and being there just basically for the sake of being there. Because teh history.

Well, that basically about covers all the things non-gameplay-related. Oh yeah, I completed the game as a priest (although I didn't complete promotional inquisitorial quests in acts 2 and 3 for the simple reason I botched the Act2's one, I pushed the main story far enough, so that the crucial witness for that optional quest wasn't around anymore, and when summoned from console, thought he was already in Act3, so it was impossible to get the testimony from him even that way), and on the hard difficulty as well, so as far as I'm concerned, I saw almost all the content there was to this game.

Oh, and by the way, that God-forsaken orkish dungeon in the end of Act1? The one with 10 floors to it (6 in the main sequence, 4 offshoots)? It's the worst - and hardest - dungeon in the game. All the dungeons after that, except two dungeons near the end of the game (and I was literally running and oneshotting everything by that point via the use of Exile and Transsubstation), do not contain more than 4 floors (4th - when present - always consisting of only a couple of rooms). So, if you complete those orkish mines, you are pretty much okay for all intents and purposes connected to the matter of finishing the game (well, in case you play as a priest anyway, I've heard a lot of whining concerning Werewolf Lords from those who didn't).
 
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flabbyjack

Arcane
Joined
Jul 15, 2004
Messages
2,592
Location
the area around my keyboard
I actually finished the damn thing with cheats to hit max level. Regardless of what you do, it's still gonna be damned hard.

Play as a Priest class.
Load up with potions.
Save-scum around good magic item drops until you get the stuff you want.
 

iqzulk

Augur
Joined
Apr 24, 2012
Messages
294
Priest has three checkpoints to hit. Level 29, when he gains Master Alchemy. Level, what, 36 or something? - when he gains access to 3rd level spells (including Exile, which would allow him to oneshot undeads and demons - use of Bless is mandatory with it; also, Divine Mercy + Holy Ground, which cuts the backtracking in half). And level 45 or something - when he gains access to 4th level spells (including Transsubstation, which allows him to oneshot anyone, although at a cost of a longer cooldown - the use of Bless and Archangel's Word buffs is mandatory with it).

The hardest thing is to get to 29th level alive (actually, if you don't intend to grind like mad, you'll hit it after Act1, so that the entire orkish dungeon needs to be completed without it). The best bet there, I think, is to use Azrael-prefix bow (double the damage; farm the blacksmith in the first town until you get at least two of those - with any suffixes whatsoever; you won't need a lot of money for that, 1500 ought to be enough for both combined, but you do need a lot of time - it's advisable to target Azrael's War Bows, because those are the best bows priest can use, but actually any Azrael's Bow period - except composite ones - would be good) with some +12 arrows (no reason to use the ordinary ones, the price on +12 is only very slightly higher) and that fire damage buff from the Miracle Magic, Blade of Fire. Plus the Open Wounds spell from Inquisitorial Magic (and Crucifixion from there as well, for those monsters which are Just Too Quick for you, for now). Oh, yes, when playing as an archer, use keyboard ONLY for moving, remap the controls from cursor keys to WASD using Auto-Hotkey tool, and remap what WAS on WASD to somewhere else (since you won't be using mouse for navigation, when in dungeons and not in combat, use it to check the walls, while going down the corridors, the "hand" cursor will appear even on a "non-colored" - not noticed by the character - secret, also use Sixth Sense and that other spell from Miracle magic, something connected to eye or vision, to buff the Intuition, and always check all the stones and stumps even if they are not "colored"). Collect and sell everything. Use genie boxes for skill points only (after destroying the box, choose "I don't need anything", then see in log, whether "+1 skill points" appeared, if not, reload dialogue autosave). Use extra money (after repairing and restocking on arrows and potions) on genie boxes only. All the items in Inquisitor are generated in terms of their stats, even unique ones. Their stats are either generated when you first enter the location they are in, or when you receive them over the course of a dialogue (which happens rarely). The latter case can obviously be exploited.

When you hit 29th level, everything needs to be in place (stats, skills) so that you'll immediately gain Master Alchemy (also, the items that "increase skills" don't count towards gaining access to "perks"/skill_levels, so you NEED to have 16 alchemy fair and square by that point, not counting any items). Having Master Alchemy allows you to do mutator elixirs (+1 to chosen stat) without devil's root and without paying - how much? 1000 or something? - to healer; from 4 miraculous potions (which cost only 100+ for all 4 needed for a single elixir), put it this way, you can buy a single genie box, or you can make 35 elixirs. Anyway, from that point on, every single gold piece should go into the making of the elixirs. Stats are not capped, so that the only criterion to stop increasing them would be "eh, can't be bothered anymore". I recommend increasing speed until you definitely stop noticing any visual difference in the actual speed of movement of your character (so that the monsters can't overrun you), then increasing Dexterity and Intellect as high as you care about. Dexterity is connected to the armor rating - and it's directly connected to your bow damage. Every 10 points of dexterity give you +1 to bow damage, Azrael's bows make that +2, on 1000 dexterity you would have +200 to bow damage. Spells do NOT have this kind of direct influence of stats on their damage, so, until you get to oneshotters (Exile and Transsubstation) it's imperative to make as much use of the direct damage as possible. And yes, even with 1000 dexterity and the corresponding armor rating, you will still get hit, surprisingly frequently so, actually. Intelligence has direct proportional link to magic resistance, but it's actually possible to complete the game without overclocking it (I didn't overclock it, and completed the game). Oh, by the way, the Locust Swarm spell goes past all the resistances (just like spikes from Divine Divinity), and one can spam it like mad, so, it'll have its occasional uses even near the end of the game. From this point onwards, the game becomes as piss easy, as you put your back into the "overclocking". Or rather, it becomes _just_easy, the piss easy part is after you get oneshotters.

When you are content with the stats, start, again, spending all the extra money on genie boxes, and get Divine (because Bless and Transsubstation), True Faith (Exile) and Miracle magic (Locust Swarm, Archangel's Word), as well as Wisdom to 20 as fast as possible. With that, you'll oneshot literally everyone, without any grinding, just as you encounter them, save for, like, 5 monsters in the entire game (and that's when you'll need Locust Swarm), you'll also start to seriously like all the undead and demons because Exiling them is thrice quicker than Transsubstating everyone else. And yes, now it's officially piss easy.

Also, you can totally empty all the private chests even if you do not play as a thief. You need to place every single item from your inventory on the ground (nothing will happen to them) and spend all your money on whatever, leave only one bow and a couple of quivers with you (you can also use Shatter spell; I didn't, because Pagan Magic; hypocritical - seeing that I'm talking about thieving right now - I know). For each act, you need to do all the chests at once. Go to the chosen chest, break it, immediately (before the spawned warder gets to you) throw the bow and the quivers away (it IS possible, experiment on that, also, the game can be paused), choose "I surrender everything I carry" (which is nothing), do not take anything from the chest, pick up your bow and quivers from the ground, go to another chest, rinse and repeat until every guarded chest is opened. Go back to your stuff and collect it, revisit every chest you've broken into and grab everything inside of it, sell everything you don't need, use money for more elixirs and genie boxes.

P.S. In Act3, it's advisable to first clear the locations with the undead (using, naturally, Exile) and finish whatever quests you can, so that when once you begin working on werewolves, you'll already have 4th level spells, Transsubstation included. Come to think of it, the same applies to the undead in Act2. Clear everything (using your overclocked bow damage and armor rating) non-undead until you gain access to 3rd level spells, Exile included, then do the undead.
 
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Arkast

Novice
Joined
Jun 25, 2015
Messages
22
:necro:

If anyone is feeling particularly masochistic Steam has this on sale again for $1.99 (80% off) until September 5th.
 
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iqzulk

Augur
Joined
Apr 24, 2012
Messages
294
By the way, come to think of it.

I'll just leave them here (made them as I was playing through this... artifact of ye olden times). My intention was to, ahem, perfectly convey the, ahem, mood and, ahem, excuse me, the artistry of this game to those who didn't yet have the, ahem, indescribable delight of playing it personally.

 
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Baron Dupek

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2013
Messages
1,870,840
I started the game today (bought for leftovers on PP acc on GOG store), started the game with intention of going melee+spell support.
There are 4 levels of spell mastery - Novice, Student, Initiate and Magister. Now here is something I don't get.
Why 3rd level (Initiate) can be learned by Thief but not Paladin??
I though he's more into magic than these scoundels? I might choose Thief but don't like ponytails. That's something omega turbodweeb fedora wearing level for me...
 

Aothan

Magister
Joined
Mar 16, 2008
Messages
1,742
it has been too long since I played to really answer this question and vaguely recall a related observation, but I think the main difference is the Paladin's melee capacities supposedly allowing for this difference, however as you will find out melee can prove very difficult and enduring..
 

flabbyjack

Arcane
Joined
Jul 15, 2004
Messages
2,592
Location
the area around my keyboard
Hi guys I actually finished this game.

Inquisitor is like an old coin that is shiny and one side and totally rusted on the other side.

Ignore paladin and thief classes. Go priest. If you didn't go priest... restart. The potion chugging is REAL. You will fill your inventory with potions several times over the course of the game (Even right from the beginning!). Also I strongly encourage you to cheat your level right up in the beginning.

The first dungeon (the mines) has a tricky required hidden passage, and the pixel hunt is also real throughout the game. Read a guide or the GoG forums for a better walkthrough.
 
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flabbyjack

Arcane
Joined
Jul 15, 2004
Messages
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It's a different kind of aRPG I guess.

More like a murder-mystery RPG than Divine Divinity. Inquisitor is less polished with much poorer pacing.

You spend most of your time in grindy combat chugging potions.

Each Chapter opens up an entirely new town, and they just keep getting bigger and bigger. If you can get through the first act, you are rewarded with a sizeable town to explore.

Completely different from the wilderness maps full of enemies are the towns full of NPCs and tons of dialogue, some of which your investigations lead you to arrest and interrogate/torture.

The action part of aRPG is fairly poor and to some its unbearable... but it's not so bad if you choose the priest class and cheat until you get the 'one-hit-kill' and other top-tier spells (You still have to spam spells and chug mana potions through most of the game). I'd say that the action part is filled with more trash mobs than DD.

The reason I say 'Priest' instead of the other classes is directly related to the number of potions you need to chug... as a Paladin I would have to go back to town several times and FULLY fill my inventory with health potions before I could finish a dungeon. As a Priest you only need to stock up in town once per delve... usually.

Inquisitor has a nice little 'randomized quest reward/magic equipment' mechanism that you can save-scum to get actually useful equipment. Its unpleasant to get swords for your paladin quest reward but its stats aren't hard-coded so its a piece of junk with crap damage that raises your luck by 0.5 or something.
 
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Commissar Draco

Codexia Comrade Colonel Commissar
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Insert Title Here Strap Yourselves In Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Divinity: Original Sin 2
What Comrade above has said... got into third town and rage quited cause my Paladin got crappy gear as reward and had chug those health potions to defeat trash mobs even when I finally gave up and cheated his stats... there is hard and there is hore and Inquisitor despite very original premises and interesting dialogues/setting is firmly in latter camp. This and quest where I was forced to slaughter fortress monastery full of not corrupted bro Paladins... to what end you may ask Comrades and Trannies? To deliver a fracking letter. No option to pull your rank and order to be taken to fellow Paladin Master... just two hours of senseless murder to do fed ex quest. :negative:
 

SausageInYourFace

Angelic Reinforcement
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In your face
Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Bubbles In Memoria A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit. Pathfinder: Wrath
Is it more bareable on lower difficulties? Or perhaps with a re-balance patch or something?

Got this game for like 1.50 bucks or so and now its sitting in my playlist, staring at me, taunting me.
 

Baron Dupek

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2013
Messages
1,870,840
I would be surprised if people played it on other setting than Easy. Why making chore more painful when can it be lesser pain with Easy?
I only play games on harder difficulty setting when they have interesting mechanics and options to use, not unavoidable 1hitkill on player, hp bloats and else...
 

Haba

Harbinger of Decline
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Codex 2012 MCA Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2
So, finally got around to completing the game.

What a ride.

- Art is great, even though some dungeons reuse assets, there are plenty of unique artwork even in the late game.
- The concept is awesome and will never be recreated in any future game (actual torture? torture as a good thing? torturing women? burning heretics?)
- With some editing, the story could be great.

From this point on I'll probably spoil everything to those who've not played the game. Because not like you're going to do it anyway, are you? Pussies.

The bad things obviously have been hammered in this thread so no point repeating them. Yeah, they are there. I mean we're talking about a diablo-like where your spells can target yourself and your companions. Isometric game in cramped dungeons.


Combat

Being the dumb fuck that I am, I rolled a paladin on hard. Don't be that guy. The only negative from playing easy is that you can't get good gear drops. And poor paladin... he gets no fucking high level spells, can't max bows and gets useless skills. If you play a paladin through, on hard and w/o cheating, you should be crowned as the autist supergod. And locked up, because most probably you are some kind of deviant.

I played with three party members in act III. While my own supermaxed Paladin gets KO'd by one tough mob, the party members get whooped by every low level mob. Somewhere around act II I finally realized that it wasn't going to get better, so I froze my own XP by memhacking and pumped 30-40 levels worth of XP into my party members.

Now the thing with Inquisitor is that eventually your damage output caps out. And the same thing happens to your NPCs too. So even if they are at level 100, they'll still pump out the same measly 30-40 points of damage. While you have enemies that have what, a pool of 1000 hitpoints with tons of resistances on the top? Oh well. But at least this way they could survive a few more hits before wasting a potion. And I wouldn't have to go through this hell alone.

It was somewhat calming to have the thief kind of NPC with you, the one who asks for money every 100 kills. So in late game dungeons he'd ask for payment every second room. Which is a good thing, since the game autosaves during discussions.

But yeah, don't be that guy. Don't roll paladin. You don't want to be the dumb meat shield at the front, getting your gear smashed into pieces every few minutes. You'll want to be the guy behind the meat shields. End game options: smack enemy for 80 dmg on melee critical OR hit them for 1000 dmg spell from a safe distance. That is balance for you.

This game is O.K. when you can one-shot trash mobs. If you can't do that, I'd just cheat the character to that level. Trust me, you won't regret it. You'll still meet shitters that will one shot your entire party in a few seconds if you are not careful.

Oh, and you will want to have that speed maxed out as soon as possible. Again, there is no point in wasting your life away.

But anyway, enough about the combat. This game shouldn't have Diablo combat. Just look at the spells. They'd work much better in a turn-based combat system. They have the framework right there - but when you are knee deep in corpses all the time, that kind of complexity is not welcome.


Story

It is not very original, but definitely is interesting. It gets "a bit" repetitive and formulaic in the end. The game could be shorter. By the time Act III map unlocked and I saw the number of new locations, I died a little. Usually games front-load content and the endgame is filler. Not in this case. Last act has the biggest city and the most complex quests.

The story could use some editing. It has a good core, but it fails to properly utilize it. The sudden traitors are not relevant to the player, since they are always characters introduced late in the game. They should have introduced some of those in the first act to make them more meaningful.

The game is kinda odd in the sense that it doesn't question the inquisition itself. As long as the player does the correct research, the torture itself is the correct thing to do. You can torture innocents, but you almost have to do it intentionally. It would be better if there was a greater amount of uncertainty, so that you'd occasionally make mistakes.

I was expecting the whole game for someone to at least try to interrupt our bonfire activities, but it never came.

But then the game has reactivity in the oddest of places. Like when you arrest and torture the wife of one of the many dukes, you can act like a complete autist and go back to him and try to complete a quest. Surprisingly the game calls you out for that and the duke proceed to tell you to shove it and get the hell out before he has you arrested.

Some of the writing for the heretic confessions is definitely juicy, whoever wrote them gets my official seal of approval. I like how the game doesn't hold its punches there.

It is a shame that none of that writing is utilized in any of the dungeons. They are occasionally very graphic, but none of that horror gets really fully utilized. Could've spent a few moments just describing the scene before getting into the combat, at the least.

The ending is clever, but definitely not something that a lot of people can swallow. And it kind of contradicts the setting: why crusade against the humans when you have literal demons in every forest?

The biggest C&C doesn't even come from the end. In one side quest you can choose to do the right thing (for the country) but that will mean you'll miss your final promotion. Unfortunately that doesn't really change anything in the way that the game plays out. An interesting moment, easily lost in the grind. Kinda like Inquisitor itself.
 

Morkar Left

Guest
I think the game could have been salvaged to a pretty good game IF they had bothered to do a Directors Cut / Definitive Edition / Royal Edition / Master Edition or however they call that shit nowadays with the Steam release. I'm still confident that you could easily make the game 50% better with some number and stat revisions. Just tweaking the numbers would go along way.
And yeah, they should have skipped the two other classes and just go with the Inquisitor class. I mean the game s called Inquisitor anyway...
 

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