Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr (PC) Preview

First things first: this is NOT a sandbox, open-world experienced as advertised. Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor is a run of the mill hack-and-slashy ARPG where all that can be done is to select a level, do some killing… and that's about it. Even worse, while there are tons of planets to "visit" and do missions on them, every single of those feels exactly the same - just go in, slay baddies, rinse, repeat until you fall asleep.

Now, while it's a bit too soon to judge, a lot of menu clicking must ensue before getting to taste a little bit of action, and with lots of loading in between. Yes, it's too soon to judge, but still, an Early Access version is an "exhibition" of the developer is capable of, thus a little more polished and streamlined design would be more than welcome. Of course, these are issues that can easily be overlooked if the gameplay is fun.

Unfortunately, it's not fun. Bad? No. Decent? Sure! More than that? Don't get your hopes up. Inquisitor - Martyr is an ARPG without all those little things that make the genre entertaining. For starters, all missions are pretty much identical: run around in a map with a shape slightly more complex than a letter of the alphabet, and kill enemies. In many ways that's what this genre is all about, but no, some level variety is always expected.

The main problem, though, is not how repetitive everything is, but how dull. Battles are simply not fun, and that has a lot to do with how clunky and sluggish controlling a character feels. Furthermore, instead of being fast and adrenaline-pumping, this forces you to lure small amounts of enemies to slowly kill them, usually avoiding to grab the attention of a whole team - and, no, this doesn't make the game more tactical, but less enjoyable.

The final part where this feels bad, even for an alpha version, is the whole skill and level-up system. Firstly, levelling up is extremely slow and unrewarding, since one can spent quite a time farming for EXP only to get a 1.5% increase in one of the passive skills. In terms of actual abilities, while the classes are somewhat diverse, all skills are weapon based, so, once you find your favourite tool of the trade, you'll probably stick with it for the rest of the ride.

So far, the only good thing to say about this is that the atmosphere is spot on, as the grimdark universe of Warhammer 40,000 feels at its best here. Technically, the world has seen better graphics, but in terms of design it all looks very good, and the sound has lots of "oomph!" even when it comes to the sound of the character walking. Lore-freaks, however, will be disappointed to know that this doesn't involve a story yet, which makes it hard to tell if it will be something good.