‘The Inquisitor is a dark fantasy game developed by ‘The Dust’ and published by ‘Kalypso Media’. It is based on the Polish book series by ‘Jacek Piekara’. The Inquisitor is set in an alternate history where Jesus Christ didn’t die on the cross for our sins and instead became a ruthless conqueror of Rome. So the common virtues like compassion and mercy are replaced with merclessnes and retribution. It’s an intriguing concept but one that is also quite controversial in today’s world.
You play as Inquisitor of the holy office Mordimer Madderdin. Effectively law enforcement of the holy church. You arrive in the city of Koenigtien with the task of hunting down a vampire.
However, things take a turn when a young woman is brutally murdered and it’s up to you to crack the case.
Now the scope of ‘The Inquisitor’ is certainly ambitious, but does it live up to it or not? Let’s take a look.
I’m going to start off by being brutally honest. I really wanted to enjoy The Inquisitor as the concept sounded intriguing and I like alternative history. However, due to many reasons which I shall go through in a second, I found my time with ‘The Inquisitor’ to be a bit of a love-hate experience. Firstly the story, and as I say it is intriguing. It’s set in the 1800s and has a feel of ‘The Witcher’ to it.
The whole journey to catch the vampire is compelling, however, the many other story paths make getting there very…tiresome.
Now don’t get me wrong, The Inquisitor isn’t bad, it’s fun in its own way, but when it wants to be.
There are two halves to The Inquisitor, the first being Mordimers quest through the city of Koenigstein and the second being in a place called the Unworld. This place is kind of like a mid-plane of existence between heaven and hell, (at least that’s my interpretation) the developers describe it as a place where all the things that are bad in the world are reflected within the Unworld. There are enemies to contend with there.
Red glowing ghostly armed figures and this great big floating squid thing with an eye like Sauron always on the lookout for you. However, these enemies never feel like a threat. I walked past the armed ghosts most of
the time and used the prayer ability to mask my presence from the great big giant squid. Even if I did run into one of the armed ghosts by them either spotting me or me failing to eliminate them via sneaking up from behind and the action to eliminate them not working properly, neither enemy type felt intimidating or like I was in any peril.
The main purpose of the Unworld is to find answers to problems in the real world, however, all this means is that you run around dodging detection to light up shrines and interact with glowing orbs.
It doesn’t feel like it contributes the way it’s intended to in the grand scheme of it all. If there was more interaction with these orbs like it showing a fragmented part of a vision and then that vision becoming coherent once you make it back to the central hub of the Unworld then it would feel more necessary. However, it just feels like it breaks up the pacing of the real-world gameplay with a tedious running-around section that in my opinion could have been made more simple.
Now the main crux of the gameplay comes through investigation. Mordimer will question the locals to gain more knowledge, but his investigative skills will also include examination of bodies and the crime scenes and eavesdropping on conversations to gather more evidence and clues. You also have an Inquisitor sense which is basically the overused Detective vision from the ‘Arkham’ games. It comes in handy but it also takes away from the gameplay in making tracking down objectives way too easy, highlighting what you need to find in orange.
However, it is a useful tool in finding out where you need to go. Koenigtien is a very large city and you have no map to view, so using the Inquisitor sense shows you where you need to go with a light beaming into the sky over the objective area.
I’ve said it before but it feels like ‘The Witcher’ games, however (and I hate to say this) it feels like a Poundland knockoff of the gameplay of ‘The Witcher’.
I love the phrase borrow from the best, but only do that if you intend to make what you’re borrowing just as good. The investigation gameplay feels lacking somehow, just as much as the combat which feels sluggish at times.
Before I get onto the issues I’ve had with The Inquisitor I want to point out the good. The first is the setting. The lore of ‘The Inquisitor’ is a dark and intriguing one and the world built in this game reflects that beautifully. The city of Koenigtien feels authentic and vast, with a real lived-in feel. As you move through the different areas you can feel the descent from the rich and wealthy areas like the cathedral district all the way down to the slums and near to the docks.
It feels real and how life would be like back then. Even the dungeons of the executioner have a really dark and gritty feel to them which gives you a real sense of unease about how brutal the retribution these people cast out to the criminals of this world differs from ours. I was really taken aback by how gruesome The Inquisitor can be from seeing a body hanging but split in half by the executioner’s torture of an innocent suspect.
It’s a horrific reflection of humanity in this world and contributed well to the storytelling. And while on the topic of the grim and gruesome I do love the character of the executioner. Once he dons the outfit of the merry executioner and goes rhythmically insane, he has an air of ‘Heath Ledger’s Joker’ and his unpredictability. He’s menacing yet comedic at the same time.
However, this leads me onto a good segway for the bad parts of The Inquisitor as there is a section where you are hunting and then fleeing from the executioner in the maze of the dungeons which feels infuriating at times. You can get easily lost and it’s not very straightforward where you need to go. You’ll just be running around aimlessly until you reach a new event area. It’s very tedious and not fun. I honestly couldn’t wait for this section to be over.
Unfortunately, the issues of The Inquisitor outweigh the good it has to offer. The graphics for the starter feels very outdated with textures failing to pop in at times and character models that look like their eyes want to pop out of their heads. And with these character models, you’ll see a lot of the same faces used over and over and over again during your play-through. I counted seeing the same character models 5 times in the space of 30 minutes in different areas of the city. It feels cheap and half-arsed which is a letdown and really breaks the immersion.
The voice acting is good in places (when the voice matches the mouth movements) with some good voices all around, most notably the merry executioner, but some voices are very wooden and with dry delivery.
There are lots of quick time events in The Inquisitor, however, they feel tagged on, way too easy and overused. Half the time they come when your character is chasing someone and even though you enter the correct button combo on time you’ll still see a delay with Mordimer running into (and sometimes glitching into) an obstacle before making his way around it.
The biggest disappointment though comes from how The Inquisitor runs. I’ve been playing this on my PS5, which is a powerful machine. However, I kept having issue after issue with the game’s performance. As I mentioned before I would have textures failing to pop in at times making parts of a scene look like it’s molded out of plasticine. When going between sections of the city there is a load screen, and in one instance I had the load screen freeze causing me to have to go back to the PlayStation home screen and close and reopen the game in order to continue.
However, the worst issue I had in The Inquisitor, incidentally the worst issue I’ve ever had playing a game, was a dramatic drop in the frame rate during a cutscene that involved me questioning an NPC. The frame rate dropped all the way down to what felt like 5 frames a second making what I saw on screen look like a slowed-down stop motion.
It was infuriating, but I had to laugh as the dialogue for this scene would play out but the conversation between characters would pause until the frames would catch up. I let it play out waiting for 5 minutes with the hope that it would correct itself but it didn’t. Again, I had to quit out to the home screen, close The Inquisitor and restart again to continue.
Overall ‘The Inquisitor’ sounds intriguing and offers great locations and good lore, however dull gameplay, hit-and-miss voice acting and poor performance make playing The Inquisitor an unenjoyable experience.
The Inquisitor gets a 3 out of 10.
The Inquisitor Trailer
The review was based on a playthrough on PlayStation 5.
The Inquisitor is available on Playstation 4 & 5 Xbox one, Xbox Series S/X, PC.
Read more of our reviews here https://invisioncommunity.co.uk/category/review/
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