muttly13: I wanted to like this game. I have been watching it since inception and thought it looked like a decent Diablo clone in a interesting setting. It has been in my cart more than once. But lack of funds, time and drive held me off. Then I started seeing some of the reviews and kind of let it go by the wayside. Then I saw it for a buck and change on a flash sale! How could I go wrong! Purchased it and laughed maniacally with how my procrastination had paid off! I was so smart!
Let me not mince words... Undoubtedly, without pause, the worst money I have ever spent on GOG. I wont bore you with a long review of why I think this, many people will counter my every syllable I am sure. Lets just say in the long history of my gaming career, I have never played a game so hell bent on punishing its players. Not through difficulty or bugs or lost opportunity to follow a story, but through sheer, mundane, boredom. Boring to look at, boring to play, boring to advance, boring to do just about anything. "Inquisitor" is apply named and has every reason to be sold for a buck and change.
Dont take my word for it. Go out and read some reviews. However, if you, like me, decided after some research "It still looks like it could be cool! am gonna wait for a sweet sale! How bad could it be?" I am here to tell you, its that bad. Go buy yourself a pack of gum instead. It will provide much more enjoyment than this.
Actually for me the game wasn't "boring" at all - the "investigation" parts were quite good (although there was a lot of repetition - you can ask almost everyone about almost everything, and 90% of the answers seem the same but worded a bit differently). Solving those mysteries is kind of cool, and on top of that you get to torture people and the ultimately see them burn! I also liked how every item in the game has a detailed description, which tended to be loosely based on a real-world item from the middle ages.
I agree that it punishes you though - not in a good, old-school way, but via its shitty combat mechanics that appear to be designed to piss you off at every opportunity. The combat is incredibly repetitive, incredibly simplistic, and incredibly annoying to slog through.
What I really, really loathe about this game though, is the fact that the two points above exist in the same game. If this game were only really bad all the way through, I'd dismiss it as a terrible game and not look at it twice. Unfortunately (for me), the investigation/adventure parts are kind of interesting, and occasionally they even make use of certain skills. There also appear to be slight variations on how things go depending on which class you choose at the start, which affects some side quests and companions you can have. On top of that, the whole premise of being an "Inquisitor" is pretty unique. So for that reason alone, I ploughed through the shockingly-annoying God-awful combat, just to get to the next part.
At least until partway through act II. After that I couldn't deal with it any more. Unique or not, slogging through hordes of similar enemies is mind-numbingly boring, and it does nothing but artificially extend the game length. If someone remade this game with significantly reduced combat, better combat mechanics, and ideally a way to avoid most of it (e.g. especially if you're playing as a thief), then this would turn into a good game.
Unfortunately, I have to agree with the overall theme of your post - this game is NOT worth your time. If you're interested in the game at all (e.g. for the premise, like I was), you're basically setting yourself up for a lot of frustration. It's like some kind of torture to endure, all for the promise of potentially getting a bit more of the story at some point. Sometimes I feel that it was designed by some kind of insane sadistic madman, who unleashed it to torture people who like RPGs just to see how much they could handle before giving up.
However, if you STILL want to try it anyway, I'd suggest the following:
- Do NOT play on easy, because your companions will die instantly. Strange as it may seem, higher levels don't increase enemy attack power - higher difficulty only increases enemy health, AND (strangely enough) the health of your companions. Additionally, you'll get higher-quality loot. I played on easy first, and the game sucked completely; then I played on hard and while it still sucked pretty bad, I did manage to play through till most of Act II. It's possible that the "Normal" (medium) difficulty is actually even better (due to enemies having less health - EO act II it becomes a huge slog due to enemy health) - but I doubt I'll ever end up trying that.
- There's a pause in this game, and it's possible to issue orders while paused. It cannot be rebound in-game - it's the "PAUSE" key. I re-bound it with autohotkey to SPACE, and it made the game MUCH more bearable to play. Another option is to use CheatEngine to slow the game down during combat, because by default it's stupidly fast (I uncovered some demonic thing as part of a really early quest, and it took literally 3 seconds for her to kill me!).
- Just buy a HUGE amount of potions of all types, and allow your companions to use them. For some reason only your PC has inventory, but all characters can automatically regain health/stamina/mana this way. Unfortunately you still need to drink these manually, but that's actually not too hard to do - it's just an incredibly lame game mechanic.
- There's a way to cheat in-game, which will allow you to max your level immediately. For some reason, when I tried this I found the results to be less than satisfying, as your various skill levels don't appear to do much beyond acting as limiters to the spells/equipment you can use. Still, at least the option's there. Unfortunately, there's no God mode though.
