REVIEW – When a studio developer takes a book series and turns it into a game, it’s not always a bad thing. But when the execution is poor, it’s fair to say that the new product is disappointing. The Inquisitor has reached that level, so despite a good idea, the result is just not good. The adventures of Mordimer Madderin in the year 1533 were the first disappointment of the year.

Jesus did not die on the cross, but came down and wreaked vengeance on all non-believers. 1500 years later, an army of inquisitors brutally enforces the faith. In this dark fantasy adventure, play as Inquisitor Mordimer Madderdin as you solve intricate cases and uncover deep secrets.

Cross It

A dark fantasy adventure game in which Königstein is divided into four parts. There’s the densely populated town, the bustling city center, the church district, and the countess’s castle. As soon as you land, you’ll be reminded of CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher. This is no coincidence, as the work of a Polish author (Jacek Piekara) was adapted by Polish developers (The Dust S.A.). The gameplay is similar, as you grab a sword and fight like this, and the medieval period is the same. As in The Witcher, we have a special “mark”, but this time prayer is the key. It gives us a ray of light and we can see what might be interesting. The game says we’ll run out of energy to pray, but that’s nonsense. It’s just one of the… many bugs. But why is it a dark fantasy that we act in the name of Jesus? The Steam synopsis is not wrong: here Jesus has torn himself from the cross and gone on a bloodbath. We might as well do the same when The Inquisitor (abbreviated to TI until the end) starts throwing a ton of QTE at us in a very short time.

Meanwhile, you don’t even notice when your chased character runs over another, an NPC suddenly disappears, and the animations seem surprisingly awful. And there are a lot of these little stupid bugs that just take away from the immersion, even though the environment is quite atmospheric in places. Superficiality also defines the game in every way. The character models are ugly, and the orange stripe used for character tracking is not recommended, as it creates a dizzying effect at the edge of the screen. If you’re lucky, the world will load properly, because more than once buildings can disappear or trees can fade in and out like a magic trick. So it’s not enough that the game is visually ugly, it’s also glitchy. Finally, the gameplay is not that great. Our only sword can be used almost all the time with the duo of light attacks and dodging attacks (the latter is also done by the AI, although sometimes, despite hitting them, they don’t take any damage due to dodging). There’s no HP bar, because why bother: the bloodier the screen, the closer you are to death.

The last sacrament

Then there’s the sherskin, the Inquisitor’s secret weapon. If you throw it at your enemy (you could say something like sand), you can attack them, if you use it on yourself, you heal yourself. Somehow it recharges every time between fights, but you can only use it three times in between. The combat has some potential, but it’s too easy, the invulnerability frames are weird, and there are a lot of scenes during boss fights (which are also littered with QTEs). Can the puzzles save The Dust S.A. game? No, because they are easy and/or boring. And when it comes to the dialogues (of which there will be many), it is better to be careful, because some people can die against our will. TI didn’t really talk about choosing the right options in dialog to avoid something bad happening, and it wouldn’t be surprising if that annoyed you. Oh, and then there’s The Unworld.

In our investigation, we get visions directly from Jesus, and we connect the dots here in a reflection of humanity. It’s not a very good visual (understandable, of course). Collect the five shards and then the whole story comes together. Except that you have to defeat a floating octopus monster called The Murk. When you pick up a shard, it screams, drowning out the sound file that plays when you pick up the shard. LOL. You have to pray against it. Then Murk’s Veil (dark stuff that slows you down and draws your enemies’ attention to you) can be passed over time with one of the new abilities. The trick is to sacrifice your life force for the light. It’s only superficially dangerous because it’s maddeningly easy, as is defeating the Murk’s Brood, the “Guardians”. Here, too, you must pray. And the light sources will lead you to the shards. This other world affects Mordimer’s body, which is a good touch. The voice acting is great, by the way, even during the fights. Oh, and the story starts well, but it’s also a bit of a bummer, but there are several endings. The question is whether it’s worth spending 8 hours on the game again…

Burn him at the stake

The Inquisitor gets a 4.5 out of 10 only because it’s quite appealing in some ways, but the execution is so terrible that it’s hard to comprehend in my mind. It’s buggy, glitchy, and easy. It’s disappointing.

-V-

Publisher: Kalypso Media

Developer: The Dust S.A.

Style: Action RPG

Release: February 8, 2024.