I think from a design perspective (environment/gameplay) that's true, but from a narrative/text perspective it's definitely different.
Inquisitor - Isometric RPG Steam sale gem I just played for 14 hours straight.
- Thread starter Toma
- Start date
SpaceShark
Member
Heads up, Inquisitor is $2.24 on GOG.com, for the next ~2 hours.
Drake
Member
I've played it for 6.5 hours today. It's fun, but the beginning was very very frustrating. Honestly, if your reading this and you are just starting the game, cheat for like the 1st 6 levels until you can use Discipline level weapons. The game becomes much less frustrating after that. I gave myself unlimited gold so I could buy all the health and stamina potions I needed in the beginning. Once I hit level 6 I played normally. This is assuming you are playing as a Paladin.
Dre_G_Writer
Member
Yea, this is in my wishlist, i missed it in the flash sale, will pick it up on the last day though.
For other EU dwellers: the GoG price translates to 1.65e, and the GoG version is the deluxe version with the soundtrack, artbooks and all!
The price of the deluxe version at Steam with -66% offer is 4.41 euros, non-deluxe goes for 3 euros.
This game doesn't seem like something I'll ever be able to play (only partially because I still have classics like both Baldur's Gate games, both Icewind Dales, Arcanum and Planescape: Troment in my backlog), but I'll gladly read all your impressions, people!
I especially hope that toma actually plays it to the end and keeps posting his impressions
I especially hope that toma actually plays it to the end and keeps posting his impressions
This game doesn't seem like something I'll ever be able to play (only partially because I still have classics like both Baldur's Gate games, both Icewind Dales, Arcanum and Planescape: Troment in my backlog), but I'll gladly read all your impressions, people!
I especially hope that toma actually plays it to the end and keeps posting his impressions
I definitely want to, but I need a short break after a 24-hours-in-two-days binge gaming session.
Played some Eador, and currently a very interesting Beta of a turn based squad tactical game.
Minsc
Gold Member
Interesting impressions, I had sorta written it off a bit from reading the negatives around release (bugs, falls apart, etc) / lack of word of mouth, but it is nice seeing a new set of impressions on it.
Curious to how you (Toma or anyone else) feels it compares to another game it reminds me of (being Original Sin is releasing next week), that is of course Divine Divinity (I see it was actually mentioned a few times in this thread, but no one drew any comparisons)... similar style graphics, text heavy, but generally seems to have more favorable impressions than this did... if you haven't played Divine Divinity yet, you should probably bump it up on your short list and give it a chance when you feel like another similar game!
I also find Icewind Dale 1 to be a really strong infinity engine game (great balance of story/combat/towns), curious if you've played it recently at all, if not, you may find your impressions of it as being a lower-tier game to be surprisingly out of place if you re-visit it.
Curious to how you (Toma or anyone else) feels it compares to another game it reminds me of (being Original Sin is releasing next week), that is of course Divine Divinity (I see it was actually mentioned a few times in this thread, but no one drew any comparisons)... similar style graphics, text heavy, but generally seems to have more favorable impressions than this did... if you haven't played Divine Divinity yet, you should probably bump it up on your short list and give it a chance when you feel like another similar game!
I also find Icewind Dale 1 to be a really strong infinity engine game (great balance of story/combat/towns), curious if you've played it recently at all, if not, you may find your impressions of it as being a lower-tier game to be surprisingly out of place if you re-visit it.
I played Divine Divinity way back when, but to be honest I don't remember enough about it to draw direct comparisons to Inquisitor. Still, I played it over 10 years ago and about the only games I can really draw specifics on that are that old are games like Chrono Trigger and Earthbound. Guess I'm getting old.
The problem with Inquisitor is that there is a nice game here buried in a variety of many different issues, which makes it really hard to compare to other games.
Divine Divinity is an overall classic in the genre, as are all the black isle games, and Inquisitor feels like it doesnt have quite the same amount of polishing and balancing. The weird thing is, that the more I play, the more it seems that some of that design even seems deliberate. Planescape Torment had lots of text, especially with Morte in the beginning, but you can easily spend 6 hours of reading in Inquisitor without a single fight. That really makes it feel badly paced and puts off a huge chunk of the playerbase, even though I'd still argue that the text is pretty well written considering the amount. Other than the pacing, you get the incredibly hard balancing of the game and certain sub systems (the often mentioned Stamina issue) that might feel downright broken or unfair at first, even though there are ways to deal with it. If players feel like they need to cheat to be able to play a game, then something went wrong in the development/design, and the infinity engine games never had that issue as they were expertly crafted. Inquisitor is nowhere near these genre greats, due to these faults and the enjoyment you get out of this is based purely on how much you can put up with those issues (or to consider those issues a "challenge" to rise up to) to enjoy the good parts, mainly the lore & story (which I liked), the visuals and the amount of challenge found here and considering I always found a way to put up with anything (like the stamina), even that seems deliberate as a task for players to figure out.
Its really a weirdly designed game, but that also makes it sort of... unique? As weird as that might sound, I definitely will remember playing through this game. I really cant remember any other RPG that felt so.... out of place regarding expectations and genre staples, especially because some of those issues could be so easily fixed to make the game more approachable. Maybe Torment which did a ton of things other RPGs didnt do, but the design Torment has was universally loved, while the design of Inquisitor is quite a bit more divisive.
Same as what I said above. Its not comparable. The spiderweb games are well well crafted in balancing and pacing, which Inquisitor isnt. I can only say that the spiderweb games and Infinity engine games are among my favourite games ever and I like Inquisitor *shrug*. If your favourite part of these other games is how they have been crafted as an almost 100% perfect package, then you might end up disappointed with Inquisitor if you expect the same thing. It flew by under the radar for very specific and very understandable reason and I think its in everybodies best interest to be aware of the fact that Inquisitor warrants some lower expectations, but keeping that in mind the game still might turn out to be a very nice surprise.
As a comment to that Toma, I appreciate how intentionally obtuse it is. The game is challenging the player to figure out how the game works. I genuinely dislike hand-holding and I feel like modern games have spoiled players a lot with regards to what a game is "supposed" to be like. Everyone wants this to be Baldur's Gate or Planescape or Arcanum or whatever, but have a hard time realizing that despite it having a similar system of play, that it also is entirely unique from those in that its balance requires a much closer examination of the game's systems than any of the previous games I mentioned. Challenging the player to figure out a game's systems is something I greatly appreciate.
I bought the game several months ago, and tried playing it a couple of times. Now, I didn't get far in any play through, but the initial 40 minutes are just... horrible.It was not just clunky gameplay-wise - the dialogue, story and design were all also somewhat iffy to me.
I am contemplating giving it yet another try, but a game that makes me chase bats around does not seem like it cares much about my time with it. Is it just a slow start?
I am contemplating giving it yet another try, but a game that makes me chase bats around does not seem like it cares much about my time with it. Is it just a slow start?
Bypass the bats by threatening the guard.
Thats exactly what I am getting at, even though I dont understand why. I love figuring out stuff on my own and considering the game always has solutions to these issues and rarely forces you to solve things in a particular way (see the bat example), makes it very rewarding to figure out. I really like that a lot about the game.
However, there are other games which have the same mindset of "figure out the game yourself" which didnt have any clear negatives for me, while I do understand the issues with Inquisitor.
Take Fjords for example:
A game no one knows and people will complain about because they dont know what to do. Not knowing what to do and a game that requires you to figure out the mechanics is pretty awesome and I would never agree on that being a negative (awesome game btw), but Inquisitor isnt clear about that. Inquisitor seems like every other game in the genre, so I can definitely understand how some of the more obvious issues feel incredibly annoying. Its very much a matter of sitting down with the game and making it work, finding a solution to how to deal with things but other games know better how to achieve that feeling without making the player feel like he is trying to play a buggy game.
There is also a balance between lack of handholding and plain old unintuitiveness, though. Its basically the difference between good and bad game design.
I'm not making any judgements about this game specifically cuz I haven't played it, but lack of handholding shouldn't inherently be a positive.
Yeah, this basically. I think those parts of the game were not very well designed, at least not how its presented to the player. Same with how the journal doesnt include all the information needed all the time. There was one part where I was looking for a certain character and my journal didnt tell me where to find that character. Sure, old school game design and all, but if you have a journal, there is no practical reason not to write that down.
Yeah, but does the quality of the quests get better? does single response dialogues continue to be prominent? I mean, "threatening a guard or chasing bats around" didn't exactly leave the impression of a thought out quest.
I think if I had to define it, I would call it as being the Demon's Souls of the genre. It's a really obtuse game and isn't terribly forgiving, but digging in a little deeper allows for some rewarding and memorable play. Granted, this is rougher around the edges, and it's in a genre that is far more niche than third-person action games, but it provides a similar feeling of accomplishment while playing. It also approaches the genre quite differently, as Demon's Souls did.
I pretty much feel that it's an inherent positive. Part of the enjoyment of games is derived from figuring out how to play them. (Chess, Go, etc.)
Also, most games are unintuitive to the uninitiated. Just a result of game design requiring some amount of foreknowledge. With regards to how much is too much, well... ymmv.
Well it wasnt the best quest in the world, but its basically the equivalent of those "kill all those rats in my cellar" quests which I did a million times already. Considering there actually is a way to bypass it, recruit some companions and then easily rushing through those bats later is actually a rather smart solution for a beginning quest. Quests do become a bit more diverse though, reaching from killing bosses, finding evidence for crimes (for which you usually need to find items or find the right people to talk to, some fetch quests and quests in which you do something which other NPCs or bosses might not like, which will need you to decide who to side with.
I do agree with you generally, but what Inquisitor sometimes ends up feeling is like needing to click a button with the right mouse button instead of the left one. Sure, its a puzzle to figure out, but I can definitely see why people would complain about needlessly changing something like that and its more leaning towards unintuitive than a challenge. I dont want every dev to need to adhere to all rules that other games set before it, but even I, someone who really loves the game, can understand those issues and I am 100% sure there would have been ways to keep the challenge and avoid handholding, while still making the game a tad more intuitive.
And seriously, if you love games that lets you figure out mechanics/goals and everything yourself, try Fjords:
https://gumroad.com/l/FJORDS
Its short but was among my favourite games last year.
That's fair enough. Still, I always kind of question what people say is needless or unnecessary in a videogame. Certainly I agree that the UI design isn't great, but that's actually a complaint I have with most games. Dragon's Dogma is extraordinarily frustrating as a result of poor UI design. The Souls series are actually pretty similar, and it was one of the biggest complaints about Demon's Souls before it became a phenomenon. That is one of the more interesting eccentricities of genres, is that once something reaches a certain threshold, players seem quite ready to forgive pretty apparent design flaws... (and typically, once those flaws are removed it becomes obvious, but it takes a design that works with that flaw and overcomes it to really illustrate the issue).
Please note that I'm not saying Inquisitor doesn't have flaws, it definitely does, but some of its systems are brilliant, despite their roughness in execution. I actually really like the stamina idea as a concept as being quite a bit more intuitive than the D&D style round-based system that was used by Infinity Engine games and their like.
As a final note, I also find I'm very willing to forgive games I really like, and I really like Inquisitor. I'm not free from bias here. I'm willing to forgive Chrono Trigger of a lot due to it being my favorite game of the forever (for various reasons I won't get into here), but even I can see the flaws; it's mostly just that... to some extent, I guess I don't care? I mean, I would admit that a game like Earthbound is a better game in a heartbeat, but that doesn't change my love of Chrono Trigger for a lot of reasons that are difficult to explain.
RPG_Fanatic
Member
Don't do this to me. I have this game in my steam backlog. Divinity: Original Sin is about to release. I don't want this kind of distraction right now.
timetokill
Banned
I told my wife about this game because she's a big fan of Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Planescape, etc. So she purchased it. Now she's mad at me.
She picks her character, walks into town, and this guy comes out of a building and says "I'm here to kill you, Inquisitor!" She uses her health and stamina potions when they get low, but it pretty much always ends like this:
Falchion is broken.
You died.
I don't know if she's missing something but that's literally in the first couple minutes of the game.
She picks her character, walks into town, and this guy comes out of a building and says "I'm here to kill you, Inquisitor!" She uses her health and stamina potions when they get low, but it pretty much always ends like this:
Falchion is broken.
You died.
I don't know if she's missing something but that's literally in the first couple minutes of the game.
She can
avoid the area where that guy pops up, he is in/near a certain building. You can pick up 2 team members right at the start and you can kite that enemy to the church soldiers which a) heal you and b) help you killing him.
The game revolves a lot around using such tactics and finding ways to deal with scenarios that seem impossible. It is VERY hard, way harder than baldur/icewind etc.
timetokill
Banned
interesting, thanks for the tip. I'll let her know and see if she's willing to give it another shot!
Just as some advice, think about fights like puzzles rather than... well, you know, fights, is a good tip. Frequently the solution is not to fight but to draw enemies somewhere or make them vulnerable to something that allows them to be killed easily, or find an item that destroys them, etc.
Agent Icebeezy
Welcome beautful toddler, Madison Elizabeth, to the horde!
I need to stop reading pleas like this. I just bought it. I'll play it in two to three years now.
Compared to what? Might be linked to the damage enemies do:
bats = low damage, small degradation
orcs = high damage, high degradation
The game has 3 equipment slots for 3 different weapons, you definitely should make use of that. In 24 hours I only had armor break once, so that doesnt seem like a big issue, but I definitely have at least 3-4 decent weapons in my inventory to switch around. Annoying at first, but on the plus side, it had me experiment more with different type and effects of weapons.
Alright, 2 AM. Starting up Chapter 2 in a new city thats bigger than the first with even more reading. Worst time ever to start up a new chapter, but here I go.
And while I am at it, the fact that so many posters in here keep mentioning the text quality of the game makes me think we played 2 totally different versions. Here is a screenshot from the second NPC I just met:
That sounds...perfectly fine to me? Sure, might not be nobel price worthy, but I'd say its more than just serviceable for the amount of text found here.
And while I am at it, the fact that so many posters in here keep mentioning the text quality of the game makes me think we played 2 totally different versions. Here is a screenshot from the second NPC I just met:
That sounds...perfectly fine to me? Sure, might not be nobel price worthy, but I'd say its more than just serviceable for the amount of text found here.
The others seemed less to comment on undertones or topics as more of the quality of the writing itself, and I am trying to wrap my head around why some might consider this unreadable or full of grammar mistakes and what not. The only explanation I can come up with is more or less that the game had a patch in between maybe and its not as bad anymore as it was on release? Otherwise I have no clue what I am missing here.
Well, the game is written in an older style, which some might be unawares to. Something closer to Old English rather than modern English (please note, it is NOT Old English specifically). Thus some things read a bit more awkwardly to how most would commonly read English. As far as I'm aware, this is intentional though.
Alright, 2 AM. Starting up Chapter 2 in a new city thats bigger than the first with even more reading. Worst time ever to start up a new chapter, but here I go.
And while I am at it, the fact that so many posters in here keep mentioning the text quality of the game makes me think we played 2 totally different versions. Here is a screenshot from the second NPC I just met:
That sounds...perfectly fine to me? Sure, might not be nobel price worthy, but I'd say its more than just serviceable for the amount of text found here.
"So why there's so much hate in you?"
You are right,doesnt sound like standard english, but inversing certain sentence patterns could be very well a deliberate attempt at making the language sound a bit old/noble/whatever, which is the impression I get from reading the text. "Where has all their justice gone, that they so perseveringly enforce with the aid of their soldiers?" isnt quite a sentence I'd expect to hear in "real life" either for example.
I can see how someone might dislike that if they arent fond of it, but its nothing I'd hold against the game. Thanks for the opinion though, clears up the assumptions what people actually complained about.
Some quick impressions on Act II so far (story/quest related only, as that is the only thing I did in 3 hours), they set up a new story line with new villain and new quests, which is expected. I am kind of surprised by how much similar terrain they are retreading there though. More kidnapped young ladies, another stolen sacred item etcpp, another wise herb woman, another crazy beggar who knows everything if you pay him... they really could have upped what those sidequests are about, which would make it seem more like a progression. They do hint at some things that might happen in the new city that didnt before, but I am not sure how much of that comes to fruition. The text by the villagers was still nicely presented and I dont feel like the quality took a nosedive actually, it just feels... too similar to the first act. They should have spiced it up a bit, it doesnt take much to come up with other ideas about what might have happened in a city ravaged by demons or about the backstory of a character who knows everything, instead of the same beggar everywhere. They could use enchanted humans that you see as a crow, a ghost, small children, whatever. Just a small thing, but if you spent 100+ hours in 3 acts, some more variety would have been nice.
As I said, the quality is still the same though as its pretty much more of the same like in Act 1. The text is still interesting, but I am now more interested in figuring out during the next days whether they had some new ideas for the dungeon layouts and such. If it all feels too similar to Act I, I still wouldnt have issues recommending the game for Act1 alone though, with the added bonus of there being more if someone wants it.
As I said, the quality is still the same though as its pretty much more of the same like in Act 1. The text is still interesting, but I am now more interested in figuring out during the next days whether they had some new ideas for the dungeon layouts and such. If it all feels too similar to Act I, I still wouldnt have issues recommending the game for Act1 alone though, with the added bonus of there being more if someone wants it.
Schopenhauer
Member
I think you are reaching there. It didn't feel as much like a style choice as the person doing the translating not having a firm grasp of conversational English.
I honestly wouldn't have minded so much if there had been less text to read through.
Absoludacrous
Member
Nice thread Toma. Just picked it up from Bundle Stars. Will try it out after I work my way through Original Sin.
It's definitely a style choice and if you read enough of it that becomes immensely apparent.