I play a lot of isometric RPG titles, in case my avatar was not indication enough, and every single one of them does combat better than this does. It can be far more complex than you give it credit for.

More complex how?
I don't see how there's that much more.
Maybe shielding and dodging as well.
But... not that much more.

You know what i don't get about you people who are complaining? you say you played all the classics and such, i saw a lot of people mentioning planescape and just by your comments i can already say you haven't been even near that game. Guys all the good ol' rpgs were text heave as shit, i mean planescape? it was a book with graphics, baldurs gate could drop whole essays on you in a matter of seconds, and to clarify icewind dale was not a RPG it was a hack'n'slash with a lot of text. The combat is crapy? well the only way to play PS torment was to go mage and spam spells at badies, or go anything also and get you ass handed to you, and even then it was annoying as hell. And for all you "rpg fans" that are saying its too text heavy and the story is crap , inquisitor is the very definition of a RPG, you get drooped down somewhere, with a mission and you have to learn everything peace by peace by talking to people and investigating stuff and not by a magical brick hitting you on the head and telling you everything, the idea of this game is to fell that you are part of the investigation and you, are making the progress, no one will tell you where to go and what to do because they don't know anything or almost anything, and if they know something then that most likely means they are the evil bunch and sure as hell wont tell you anything since you know, they want to stay alive and so on. This game is not perfect, but it is a good game, with a good story and most of all it is a comeback to both the old-school RPGs like planescape torment, and the good-old times of paper and pen RPGs, AND a big middle finger t words what the RPG game business is becoming, i mean come on, everything is becoming more action and cut-scean based. To sum up, not bad game not great ether, can recommend as i have had a lot of fun playing it

Let me give one strong example; The Witcher, played isometrically. There you have to switch between three fighting styles , and while you're just clicking with one button for physical attacks, timing is very important. But even with basic combat of 'click the enemy', anything that doesn't force you to quaff potions constantly to succeed is inherently superior. Hell I even found Arcanum's combat, which is notoriously flawed, to be superior, as it did not present such a barrier to entry. For an example for a strictly isometric game, look at Fallout, which implemented VATS targeting, action points, weapon type specific stat grounding, etc. It's far deeper than simply the method with which you conduct combat. Combat in Inquisitor, potions aside, is built on an inherently broken equipment mastery system.

Being dialogue heavy is not a bad thing; it is, after all, an RPG. Inquisitor's problem is that the dialogue is not very well written (or, at least, translated). I do have to disagree about Planescape's combat though, I found it to be entirely manageable, with only a couple of sections that presented a problem. I did play as a mage for much of the game, as that was most befitting my character attributes, but I could also manage with melee attacks, and my time spent as a Fighter was no trouble.

I will reiterate this. I am very glad people are enjoying it, more power to you for that. I can absolutely see why, the game has a brilliant visual style and sense of atmosphere, and the investigative angle is unique and interesting. But nonetheless, I strongly feel that the game is ruined by its frankly abysmal combat. In this area, it is quite simply beyond defence.

as far as the writing gouse, it is the fault of the transletion, they eather did not cear enough or did not have enough money for it, i spead a slavian language myself and know how hard it is to translate it to english, sometimes i can even see the mistakes in translation and know what they translated wrong

I finished it a few months ago and loved it. It repeatedly kicked me in the nuts, but I suppose that I'm a glutton for punishment. The new update doesn't seem to do much fortunately.

The technical/mechanical sense of it is that class based design avoids the jack-of-all-trades-superman-PC, and gives every vocation an advantage and [ideally] allows for varied gameplay in a well designed RPG. It defeats [and hamstrings] the value being a wizard vs. being a soldier (for instance), if the wizard can as easily master a sword or the soldier can gain a lifetime's study and pick up spell casting ~virtually overnight.

Classes force the player to choose the PC's past education and aptitudes ~and stick to them. The narrative/fiction sense of it is that classes depict the characters personal past decisions and aspirations ~their life before the events of the game. What they know and are [assumed] good at, and familiar with.

**In most refined rule systems, it doesn't matter if a mage could theoretically learn to use a battle axe like a berzerker ~that's not their place in the game mechanics.

I completely agree. I purchased this game quite a long while ago despite some terrible reviews - I based this decision on the fact t hat a lot of people claimed it was a great game with good writing and the superficial flaws are what dragged the review scores down.

Unfortunately, the issues with this game are far from minor. The amount of dialogue is ludicrous and is generally poorly translated and all around uninteresting; the graphics/animations are not terrible, but incredibly bland; the game often puts you in situations without any clear indication of what you're actually supposed to be doing (which is made worse by how slow and clunky the gameplay is); and virtually all of the systems at work here are completely archaic.

This game had a lot of promise and I wouldn't say it sucks, but it's far from enjoyable, in my opinion.

Two things:

I'm finding the writing to be TERRIFIC! I'm thinking they must have updated the translations? Because it goes right up there with some of the best RPG writing that I've played/read. This is a text-heavy game, so if you had problems with it being hard to read before, definitely try it again because it is good to go now!

If you are not enjoying the combat aspect of the game because of its flaws, play on EASY. No point at all in suffering through rough hack-n-slash combat to get to the better RPG elements of the game. It's like the opposite of Diablo, the only thing that game had going for it was fun-feeling combat, the harder the difficulty and encounters with monsters, the more fun it was (blizzard knows all about the balance between risk/reward) because that is all it had (the worst quests, dialogues, characters, etc.), Inquisitor is all about the quests, dialogue, characters, and the combat is just necessity by default because that's how those types of RPGs be (unless they're not...ehhh.)

Arcanum's combat isn't so bad if you play on turn-based and have the combat speed on fast, I used to find it awful but now it is kind of fun, actually. Harm spell is crucial though IMO. I'm finding Inquisitor's a bit more tedious and think I should start over on easy just to cut down on the amount of clicks and stamina problems. Where Arcanum's is just poor animations and little clunky, Inquisitor's is grueling and repetitive (though I haven't gotten very high yet.)