Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr review

Recommended

by Dan

Inquisitor provides an engaging (if a bit repetitive) gameplay loop, plenty of options for character growth, and a satisfying look into the 40k universe.

Disclaimer: I played the entire game as a crusader. Your experience may vary depending on class, but, from what I’ve heard, the game is balanced pretty well across each class.

When it comes to gameplay, Inquisitor doesn’t reinvent the wheel. It uses the tried and true kill-loot-upgrade loop pulled straight from the other greats of the genre (Diablo, Torchlight, Path of Exile, Grim Dawn). You select missions located on different worlds/star systems/spaceships from a central hub (your Inquisitorial ship). There’s plenty of other interesting mission options as well (crusades, special assignments, survival missions, ordos missions, etc.) The combat is a bit on the shallow side, but the itemization makes up for it. Every affix feels powerful, and it’s extremely easy to modify gear to work better for your character. Your skills are dependent on your equipment: 4 weapon skills (2 per weapon if you use 1-handed weapons, 4 per weapon for 2-handed), an armor skill, and a belt skill (grenades, shields, etc) that has limited uses. You also have your dedicated “potion” (innoculator) slot for healing with limited uses. You can switch weapon sets on the fly for even more variety.
 
The options for character growth are plentiful, if a bit straightforward. Some builds make themselves (you put points into the physical damage tree if you deal physical damage, for example), but there’s ~15 different trees for you to mix and match to make your character feel really unique. It’s also very easy to respec if something isn’t working out well or if you want to try something completely different. In addition to that, there’s an attribute point system with three categories for each class. For Crusader, there are Warfare (increases attack power), Toughness (increases health and suppression), and Virtue (increases your resources). There’s additional bonuses for every 10 points your invest in these attributes, and you can reapply them at any time. Finally, there’s the morality system. You can gain “Radical” or “Puritan” points based on your choices throughout the game’s story (and some optional missions). In practice, you have to focus on one or the other to get any decent benefits. Every 100 or so points gives you a bonus, which ranges from extra perks you can unlock to powerful Angelic and Daemonic enchantments. This feels a bit tacked on, and you could probably ignore it altogether if it’s not your cup of tea.

The Warhammer 40k universe, as always, is the highlight of the game. The visceral, hardcore, metal-as-fuck world is portrayed through cut-scenes, a fully-voiced story, fantastic visuals, and lore snippets. Don’t worry about missing parts of the story because you don’t want to read the lore snippets; all the important bits are captured through the voice lines and cut-scenes. Inquisitor does a great job exploring the many different races and locations of reality and the Immaterium. I wish we’d seen some more orcs, but you can’t have everything. I’ll refrain from mentioning too much about the story. It’s pretty basic, but serves as a great platform to getting you immersed and invested in the 40k universe.

Overall, would recommend for both fans of Diablo-like ARPG’s and fans of the 40k universe. It delivers pretty well on both fronts.

Review overhaul after Patch 1.0.6c and introducing the new ENDGAME called Warzones. Thumbs down nonetheless. Yes, but let me explain in detail. I somehow like the game, but there are so many negative things. But I want to get it better, to be the game it could have been and I really hope the Dev’s just do not make many meaningless promises. Good thing first: The Dev’s really listening to the players at the forum and try to change things the majority do not like. BUT most time the fixes are fixes for really bad design decisions or shouldn't be necessary at the first place. On the other hand things that are broken from the beginning of the game are not fixed because of “lore” or just because the Dev’s do not want to. I don't know. Plus many fixes introduce a bunch of new or old bugs. What is very sad. The game can be fun, if you can ignore the extreme grind and timeconsuming design which is normally only for FTP-games. But there is a progression to mention in a positive way and there where only few things on the positive side at the past. But now there are some more, so I will do the rest as a list, because there is already enough to read and I will summarize as follows: Negative: - The Open World is not there, many with loadingscreens seperatet single, tubelike and small missions - Too little and meaningles s loot / rewards sometimes with new “features” or nerfing of to “good” rewards - Translation extremely grotesque - Many mistakes in original English, too (spelling, pronouncing and so on) - Many not functional skills/perks and mechanics like heroic deeds - Balancing between characters virtually non-existent - Really strong NERF-Hammer! They nerf everything what could be fun to the overall meaningless same low things instead of buffing the not viable things - Balancing of abilities, skills, maps, opponents also not exactly well implemented - Multiplayer playable but really annoying due to bugs and server load, rubber-banding - Extremely badly optimized - stutter and lag spikes even on high-end computers without seeing much (even on PoE, when the whole screen explodes in a party of 4, I get 60 fps) - The game-engine itself can not handle to many visuals and things … so no mass-battles at all or crashes - no real Engame available, the “Warzones” are a one tileset – one mission-type thing with no new loot and no influenace in the regular game (new skills/peks there are not useable in the rest of the game) - Timers and limits for missions - in a full-price ARPG - 50€ simply too much for the delivered product - Limited abilities at Crusader and Assasin, only by weapons/armor - Meaningless Passive Skilltree ... 1% + XY. No real features that change or adapt the game feel to a build. Only the few “big” passives have some overall impact - Extreme high costs for optical adjustments of the character - Extreme high costs for forging (needed to optimize items) - Doesn't feel like you're being rewarded for playing time. Everything is slow ... hours and you don't feel stronger... - Only some few random events on the normal maps and investigation charts. - Many empty dead ends in the "randomly generated" maps without meaning, which makes the maps repetective after all - sometimes graphic distortions in some maps (active objects, like enemies, become incomprehensible wandering distorted objects) - Particles and persistent corpses can cause crashes or blue screen (Win 10 / 7) - Low build variety, because: - Debuffs (Heat, Venom, Shock, Bleed etc.) only on single items and below single skills, which are not available for every character. Instead of coupling it to the damage type and making it available for each character, entire skill trees are dropped for individual chars. Many perks or skills are flawed and don't work together - Execution mechanism only melee and for "Elite" creatures (Helbrutes etc.) - a completely useless tree for all 3 Chars - A lot of the passives for a play stile are only reachable over opposite play stile passives what is forcing you to invest in useless passives and stop you from focusing at a specific type for your style. CAUTION SPOILER - Important NPC's are simply "removed" without any video or in-game animation on certain decisions although these were previously decisive for the story without real consequence. - The promised "difficult decisions", which have a decisive influence on the game world unfortunately have no profound influence (I had to determine after the 2nd char) Positive: - Beautiful graphics - some skilleffects really look nice - Lore is really well done - Destructible environment - Cool NPC's - The funny 2 vehicle missions - Nice videos - The one well implemented execution of Helbrutes - The Dev’s are fast and active at listening - The game continuously get new content for free - ... I wish it were more positive things, really!