Tags: Cinemax; Inquisitor
2009 saw the release of Czech RPG Inquisitor, which had been in development for about ten years. In 2012, the game received an English translation and is now available at GOG.com. But is it any good? We asked our own hack'n'slash expert Mrowak to investigate. Have a taste:
So has Inquisitor managed to blend water with fire? The answer to this is a resounding… no. Inquisitor is a game of many contrasts and baffling design decisions, and its problems sadly take away from enjoying what could otherwise have been a decent and unique experience.
[...] For many, the way the game is divided in two gameplay “modes” may come across as artificial. Nonetheless, in case of Inquisitor this segregation is justified. The two layers of the game are completely separate - they do not have anything at all to do with each other. The sheer fact that Inquisitor can be so easily divided in two distinct gameplay parts signifies a profound game design flaw which persists throughout the experience.
Setting consistency is the first victim of the division. The game sometimes contradicts itself. For instance, the adventure mode makes a big fuss about the Pagan, Heretical and Infernal magics being forbidden arts, but not only can you use them without any constraints in combat, you can also buy scrolls with those "forbidden spells" in almost every church you come across. Another example is when the player slaughters a large group of knights serving a noble family without a second thought, followed by a conversation with their master who tells you you were misinformed and wrong in what you did, but it is fine, you can still be best pals - nevermind that his knights continue attacking you. Occasions like these are common in Inquisitor and will often leave you scratching your head.
There is also the issue of location design. There exists a clear separation between town hubs, where the biggest part of the adventure mode takes place, and all other areas, where you engage in combat. In all fairness, this is a rather common hack and slash design, but here it also serves to highlight the disparity between the two aspects of gameplay. When out of town, you enter a kind of twilight zone which completely suspends all the logic and nuance present in the investigations; all you are left to face are the enormous empty overland maps and dungeons filled with mobs to be disposed of in the most lackluster way imaginable. At times you will stumble on a riddle or a simple puzzle of the “find the hidden passage to a location” variety, but nothing really ambitious or worthwhile.
The disproportion between the two gameplay modes is Inquisitor's biggest balance flaw. The adventure mode, in spite of its many problems, is the one that features the most interesting events and generally pushes the game forward. In contrast, the combat mode is boring, repetitive, and devoid of any genuinely exciting elements. Indeed, Inquisitor is the first game I have played which had me dread to even think of exploring new dungeons for the fear of spending long gameplay hours soldiering through the tedious combat. I would have rather focused on investigating murder cases and unraveling mysteries, which were at least better presented and had more dynamics to them, however broken the underlying gameplay mechanics were. It is therefore most baffling that the adventure mode constitutes at most 30% of the gameplay, whereas the combat mode will unavoidably be accountable for at least 70% of your entire play time. In the face of such a strong contrast between the quality and the quantity of each segment, it is difficult not to question the developers’ priorities.
[...] Bluntly put, Inquisitor is a bad game. There is not a single gameplay aspect it excels at. Far from that - it actually manages to implement many of the common hack and slash mechanics in such a haphazard manner that the end result is naught but an unplayable mess. It is evident that the developers lacked focus and did not know what it was they were trying to convey and what the strongest aspects of their project could and should be. It is as if they had picked the wrong medium for their goal. With its excellent art direction and the decent story it tells, Inquisitor could have been a good illustrated novel or comic book. As an interactive medium, however, Inquisitor fails miserably simply because its creators did not know what makes a good game. I appreciate the developers’ effort and wish them good luck in the hope that their next endeavor will be better thought through design-wise, but I cannot in good faith recommend this game to anyone.
Read the full article: RPG Codex Review: Inquisitor
