Reflections on Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor Martyr

I've been playing a lot of Warhammer 40,000: Inqusisitor Martyr (henceforth just "Inquisitor Martyr") recently, and I've been really enjoying it, and I want to talk about some things that I think they did well and things that I think could stand improvement.

Inquisitor Martyr isn't my first Neocore game; I also played their Van Helsing series, though it sort of blurs together because my history with ARPGs tends to be semi-meaningless blurs of sleeplessness and other stuff. I have a tendency to listen to an audiobook in the background while playing, and my focus is usually on that, but I also play a fair deal with a larger focus on the game.

And Inquisitor Martyr requires some more concentration than other games of its genre often require. It bills itself as a tactical game, including a cover system that is pretty fluid (once you get the hang of it) and allows some of the brutal weaponry of the 41st Millennium to really shine. It's good looking, as far as ARPGs go, though it is prone to having a certain amount of minor graphical glitches.

But its real draw is the character development. Like most ARPGs, it is class-based and each class has their own selection of weapons and gear that they use the most. Unlike some of Neocore's other games, each class has a very rigid "unique" advancement path (e.g. a Psyker tends to turn out one way, an Assassin turns out another), but there are many different passive/situational abilities that are unlocked through well over a dozen skill trees (including a Radical/Puritan morality system in keeping with Warhammer 40,000 lore).

Although I've put about 100 hours into both the early access and released game combined, I spread my play time across three characters–one of each class–so I haven't really gotten to endgame or the Radical/Puritan system yet, so I can only speak on the more low-lying core functionality. Sadly, they wiped characters at a couple stages of early access, which came before the story mode was fully added, so I haven't had too much of an opportunity to go through the storyline.

As a player, I feel like Inquisitor Martyr does a good job at letting me choose how to develop my character. I get feat slots that let me choose between various effects, many of which are useful across most play styles and some of which are very useful for a couple playstyles. Attribute points that are earned through perks are either pre-allocated or can freely redistributed, and while skill points are locked in after they are spent they can be reset with items that are not terribly rare.

As a result, I find that it's a game that's relatively forgiving for a newcomer. It doesn't do a whole lot of stuff that requires you to make committed decisions, and that ability to experiment works well.

With that said, I definitely have a bias toward the Psyker as my favorite class. They unlock psychic powers that can be customized with boosts, which makes them feel more like an extension of what you want the character to be. Their Levitate ability is a nice 25% speed boost outside combat, which allows missions to go by significantly quicker and with a higher proportion of action to walking.

One of my gripes with the game is the gear system. I've actually enjoyed Van Helsing's interesting gear, and while each weapon, armor, inoculator (the game's equivalent to healing potions), and device you can equip feels significantly distinct, there are a few issues that warrant a brief talking about.

Character progression is based on gear level. As you increase in rank, you find better gear, and as you find better gear the challenges adapt to you. If you're below rank for a mission, you take more damage (and get higher rewards), and if you're above rank you deal more damage (and get lesser rewards). At first glance, this seems like it might actually be a desirable system, since, after all, it means that you're going to be having more control over the difficulty.

However, I've found this system to be annoying more than fun. It requires you to switch away from good gear; in Van Helsing or Grim Dawn I would often go for four or five levels before I found gear that fit my style (and Lord have mercy on anyone who looks at my Dungeons & Dragons Online inventory, which has gear of roughly the same early-game level regardless of what my character level is), and in Inquisitor Martyr you don't really get to keep moving forward if you do that.

This is mildly problematic because it leads to grind, but it's also shown in the inclusion of a "story mode" that drops the difficulty of the main story missions greatly. I've been using this on one of my characters (the Crusader), who I don't like as much as the others because they're slower by default–I unlocked the movement speed granting skill tree as soon as I could, and it makes the Crusader a lot better–and because it's actually one of the quicker ways to get through ranks so I can unlock the Crusader weapons that I like.

And this is where the issue comes up: it can be difficult to find gear of a new level that has the qualities and properties that you like on gear. There is a system that allows you to reroll these, but it becomes exorbitantly expensive quite quickly, and since a large portion of how good an effect is depends on rarity, it may not be practical to even do this, since unless you find gear that is at least as rare as your current gear you will not be able to replace it with something better until you get very lucky or find something of equivalent rarity.

The result is that the main progression of power becomes the gear, rather than the character, and I'm not honestly sold on the gear system. There are some weapon types I just don't find satisfying (like the flamer, or most single-shot heavy weapons), and others that are incredibly useful, but only in certain situations. Many types of gear are locked away behind the rank advancement system, which seems like a catch-22: the main means of progressing in a meaningful sense (being ready to tackle main story content on anything other than story mode) is to upgrade gear, but powerful gear requires you to have increased your rank, which can yield tangible bonuses but not to the extent that you would hope.

One thing I do like, however, that helps mitigate some of the angst that this sort of grinding would cause (especially since I am playing three different characters, all of whom are currently below Rank 20, the point at which you've unlocked the lion's share of the gear), is that there is an achievements system tied to tangible benefits. While many of these unlock perks or give attributes that only benefit that class, a good portion do give benefits that actually help your other characters.

This means that you don't have to feel too much like a novice if you go back to a second or third character, and it helps you when your gear isn't currently at the rank you need it to be at for the story missions that you want to complete.

The story missions and procedural content are a weird mishmash in my opinion. The story missions don't feel quite as developed as Neocore's Van Helsing's story did; the supporting characters are voices in the ears of the player and you don't get as much rapport with the villains (at least as far as I've gotten, which is not terribly far) as you did in Van Helsing: I don't feel driven by the plot. There's a layer of irony to this, because of the fact that Inquisitor Martyr is definitely a higher-budget title and really does show off cutscenes that are impressive, but not always substantial.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Van Helsing probably hooked me more because there was more meaningful interaction with side-characters. The Inquisitor just doesn't feel like they have as much personality as Van Helsing did, and they don't have any trusty sidekick or companion to talk to, instead having a Rogue Trader and a small retinue who will occasionally chime in from afar. The dialogue can be dryly ironic or humorous, but the delivery is deadpan and unenthusiastic, lacking the character of Van Helsing's spoken lines.

At the same time, I think the procedural missions are generally quite good. I don't like the data gathering missions, simply because they require you to stand still at a terminal (I believe that co-op handles this better, since only one character has to be occupied, but I haven't tried it), a process that results in enemies slowly spawning in and then you having to interrupt your efforts to dispatch them before repeating the process a couple times. The levels are pretty, varied, and tactically interesting, with traps and cover that require a calculated approach.

The enemies are a strong point in the game as well. There's enough variety to require a variety of different tactics, and different types of enemies feel like different challenges: fighting a faction that has a lot of melee combatants can be easy for a ranged fighter, but melee fighters get deflection bonuses and high-damage weapons that allow them to go toe-to-toe with some of the big enemies. You don't even have to choose between one style; you get two weapon sets, and a lot of the character progression options are style agnostic (like movement speed: useful for ranged combatants and melee combatants alike).

Overall, I'd say that one of the learning lessons to be taken from Inquisitor Martyr is to really devote yourself to what you want to do with regards to progression. I actually preferred a system in the beta where you had an account rank and an individual character rank, which gave more bonuses to your second and third characters than the current system did and really gave an incentive to play all three classes.

Another big lesson comes down to getting your setting right. For all the gripes I might have with the story, Inquisitor Martyr feels like a Warhammer 40,000 game, down to the mighty kick of a heavy bolter (which leaves large chunks missing from both cover and static terrain) or the flash of a long-las (which leaves behind white-hot patches where it hits).

Is it my favorite game ever? Not by a long shot. But Inquisitor Martyr is good fun, and while it's probably not better than Neocore's previous efforts with Van Helsing, it's exactly what it advertises.