作者：Eric Schwarz

可以说我是不凑巧开始玩Cinemax的《异端审判官》。我并未阅读任何简介也未观看游戏的预告片，可以说在游戏发行前我根本就不了解这款游戏。尽管开发者经历了极其漫长的游戏开发过程（将近10年，并于2009年与玩家见面），并花费了3年时间将其转化成英文版本，但是最终游戏却未能获得广泛媒体的关注。

当我听说了这款游戏时，我立马为之着迷了。等距的2D预渲染视觉效果？《暗黑破坏神》式战斗？满是怪物的漆黑迷宫？围绕着调查，研究和阴谋而展开的故事？成人主题？基于现实中的欧洲宗教历史的世界？可以说所有的游戏内容都有趣得让我难以置信！

不幸的是，当我开始玩游戏时这种兴奋感很快便淡却了。《异端审判官》所存在的问题便是，就其核心而言这是一款老式游戏，所以它便具有许多老式游戏固有的缺陷，如设计师未能倾尽全力去创造游戏，或者只是呈现出一些简单的设计。有时候脱离怀旧感会让我们忽视这些早前游戏所存在的问题，但是不得不正视的是《异端审判官》带给我们的是一种沮丧且单调的体验。我这个不称职的老式RPG游戏粉丝将通过本篇文章进一步分析《异端审判官》中遭遇失败的老式设计方法。

方向问题

要说渗透于整个《异端审判官》中的最大问题便要数方向问题了。这款游戏并不能清楚地告诉玩家该做什么，该去哪里以及何时采取行动等。当玩家得到一个任务后，他只能投入大量数时间去搞清楚这一任务，而这一过程有时候能够带给他们奖励，有时候也会让他们感到极端沮丧。

在《异端审判官》一开始，玩家所控制的角色将一个人站在森林中的泥土路上。尽管在简介中会引入一些含糊的指示，但是当玩家真正进入游戏中时，他们便会发现自己还是搞不清楚游戏的一切。沿着这条泥土路往北走将会出现一扇通往Hillbrandt的门，并且门外站着一群守卫。在放行前这些守卫坚信我能够与缠绕着城墙的巨大蝙蝠相抗衡。所以说在进入游戏短短几秒钟后我便迎来了第一个支线任务。

这个任务并不复杂，不会花费玩家太多时间。并且这也不是强制性任务，除非你粗暴地对待门卫而威胁他们赶紧放行。但是它却很容易让玩家分心。在游戏一开始玩家总是会为自己明确一些方向。从表面上看来这是玩家进入游戏世界的第一步，但是比起帮助玩家熟悉这个世界，游戏在一开始便呈现出了最致命的战斗。当然玩家也可以忽视这一任务，但是许多玩家却不想这么做，或许他们不想粗鲁地对待门卫，或者不希望错失获得经验值或战利品的机会。

Inquisitor(from members.shaw.ca)

当玩家杀死了蝙蝠并进入城镇后，他便来到了游戏第一阶段的主要任务中心，但是此时他却还不清楚自己的目的地是何方。玩家的目标是与主角碰面，但是教堂却设在城镇的另一边，并且沿途玩家将经历各种探险并与其他角色进行交谈（或被引诱），甚至在玩家真正了解这个世界和游戏故事前就需要深深融入各种任务中。事实上在搞清楚为何我要来到Hillbrandt以及我需要在这里做些什么之前我便已经执行了一些支线任务了。

可以说缺少明确的方向是贯穿于整款游戏中的一大问题。在《异端审判官》中便存在着许多这样的实例，如未明确告诉玩家前进方向，该做些什么，该与谁对话等等；并不是因为我太笨未能领悟游戏的提示，而是因为很多时候玩家完成一个简单任务的事件顺序总是非常明确，并且他们能够轻松地略过其中的一个步骤。在打开一个对话选择前玩家总是能够很轻松地与某个特定的非玩家角色进行对话，尽管游戏中并未提供任何指示让玩家去进行这种对话。可以说我在《异端审判官》中一直都是在X和Y之间周旋着，不断检查彼此间的对话以确保我不会错过某些内容——因为游戏并未强制要求我们完成每一块内容，而这也算是我们在游戏中前进的唯一方法。

除此之外，为了推动情节的发展游戏总是尽可能地将更多信息加载在每一个非玩家角色身上，但是这么做最终只会耗尽所有内容。当你在城镇中与所有非玩家角色进行对话，并探索游戏世界的所有领域后，你还能往哪走？有时候游戏也需要呈现出一个特定且非理想的事件顺序，即以强制性选择的形式呈现出来（如指责某些人具有邪念——即使你并不确定他们是否犯罪，你都需要审问他们并从中找到自己能够继续游戏的证据）。有时候我们很难找到推动游戏情节发展的方法——如在第一步结束时Iron Mine地牢中的断桥便会要求玩家要么使用Levitate咒语，要么找到一个极端隐蔽的密门，当你完成这些要求后游戏将会慢慢停止，而这就意味着你很难再花五个小时去获得所需咒语去对抗再生的敌人。

这是许多人对于现代游戏的抱怨，即它们不相信玩家能够有效地明确前进方向——可以说任务指南或目标标识是懒惰的开发者用于告诉玩家如何前进的方法。同时开发者还必须清楚的是，未向玩家明确前进方向和目标将会创造出一种让人沮丧的游戏体验。玩家引导是一种艺术——任务指南虽然是一种较强势且较为循规蹈矩的方法，但是至少它具有功效。如果缺少这种辅助工具，那么剩下的游戏设计便不能有效地引导玩家前进，并最终呈献给玩家一种失败的老式游戏体验。

孤注一掷

《异端审判官》所具有的第二种老式游戏特征便是，它在一开始便让玩家陷入困境中。当玩家一进入游戏便需要面对类别选择（游戏邦注：可能会因此改变了故事细节和对话选择），人物属性表中包含了各种角色属性，玩家需要从24种技能以及各种魔法中做出选择。换句话说，如此设置让这款游戏看起来就像是一款传统的角色扮演游戏。

当然了，与其它传统的角色扮演游戏一样，一开始便让玩家面对人物属性表的设置会让玩家很难察觉到什么才是游戏中真正重要的内容。我是否想选择Pagan Magic或Divine Magic？我是否需要独自帮助追随者获得重生，还是存在其他牧师能够帮助我做到这点？对于魔法导向的类别来说力量是否真的重要？如果未能详细阅读相关指南和游戏建议（如留言板上的内容），玩家根本就不可能找到这些问题的答案。

Inquistor(from bbzhi)

其实这款游戏与我一直都很喜欢的一些游戏并没有多大差别。《辐射》和《浩劫重生》便是我最喜欢的两款等距角色扮演游戏，并且这两款游戏也都因为其糟糕的游戏平衡（特别是《浩劫重生》）以及让玩家因为自己的过错而创造出没有多大成效的角色备受关注。总的来说也就是玩家事先都不清楚某些能力或技能对于其它游戏元素的影响。就像《浩劫重生》将游戏背景设置在新维多利亚蒸汽朋克世界中，从审美角度来看我认为社交技能应该是游戏最想突出的内容，但是在游戏中创造一个重视信念，魅力与美好事物的角色并不等于他就必须拥有与战士一样强大的能力，尽管游戏中充满着各种战斗元素以及漫长的地牢生活。

《异端审判官》便遭遇了相同的问题，甚至更加严重。如果不能事先了解游戏的进行，玩家便不可能做出最明智的决策。许多玩家都表示，当他们在进行了一半游戏后才意识到咒语其实并不能有效抗击敌人时，他们便会对魔法系统非常失望。当我发现我的骑士角色因为不能使用Levitate咒语而未能完成任务，或者当我意识到我必须使用一个愚蠢的咒语去识别某些道具，并呈现出完全多余的Identify技能时，我便对此感到非常无语。当我们开始游戏后我们便不可能改变游戏难度，也不可能重新选择钥匙，因为你根本没有这么做的正当理由。

因为带有某种程度的自由，我们很难在角色扮演游戏中避免其中的某些问题，但是如果玩家能够详细阅读游戏机制或者游戏中途弹出的简单教程，他便能够避免其中的某些问题。例如玩家可以采取一些强制性的方法，如当你面对一扇紧锁着的门并且不能使用咒语去打开它时，你便可以为了前进而拼尽全力推倒它。但是如果你未能阅读相关教程你便不可能知道这一方法。我同样也投入了大量时间去一个个地收集游戏中的药剂，只是因为我未看到其它更快速的方法——而我之所以会碰到这些问题也要归咎于游戏过于复杂的用户界面设计（不够直接）。

除此之外，游戏中的信息呈现有时候会模糊了游戏机制，从而导致玩家只有经过反复的尝试才能真正搞清楚如何更好地进行游戏。举个例子来说吧，在《异端审判官》中有一些对话检查，并且基于玩家是否能够说服非玩家角色而会出现不同的任务结果，但是游戏却从来不会提醒你这些检查何时会出现，以及玩家该使用何种技能或属性去检查它们，成功的几率有多大，甚至游戏也很少会呈现出任何可替换的结果。尽管这种方法能够提高游戏所带给玩家的沉浸感并减少游戏的“野性”，但是这同样也会让玩家感到困惑，让他们搞不清楚自己的哪些选择能够真正影响到游戏发展，或者到底该怎么做才能更好地优化角色的发展。

而这些问题都是有关于游戏平衡。有些游戏环节非常简单，即只突出一些没有多大杀伤力的敌人，但是也有些环节却异常困难，即会出现各种幽灵，精灵和魔法师，并且他们能够在短短几秒内便摧毁你的角色所控制的坦克。这时候牧师便会很容易死亡。有些游戏的boss非常强大，所以他们能够很容易便杀死级别很高的角色，而玩家只能依赖于“奶酪战术”才能打败他们，如利用AI。如果玩家不能预先知道敌人的水平，他便只能进行快速存档或默默地期待着好结果。

尽管克服一个复杂的挑战，基于自己的逻辑推理而想出一个问题的解决方法或只是在地图上找到一个目的地都能带给玩家满足感，但是反之如果你不觉得自己像个天才，你便只会认为自己很愚蠢或者将反复地抱怨游戏。糟糕的是我们在《异端审判官》中获得的更多感受便是后者，因为我们总是能在游戏中感受到无端的沮丧。

任天堂游戏般的难度

传统游戏所具有的一大特色便是较高的难度。就像在《忍者蛙》的第二个级别挑战中时，玩家就必须拥有猫一般快速的灵敏度以及学者级别的记忆力，或者在不使用Konami Code的前提下打败《魂斗罗》最后的boss。很多玩家都将挑战作为真正的目标，特别是那些伴随着通过难度去延伸游戏时间并要求玩家必须精通游戏机制和个人级别才能取胜的游戏而长大的玩家。

《异端审判官》的开发者似乎认为在游戏中提供尽可能多的挑战是个很好的主意。游戏一开始开发者便设置了合理的难度（即玩家可以在一开始轻松地杀死最基本的敌人），并在此之后难度将逐渐提升。就像之前所提到的，有些boss极端强大，玩家如果不能借助其它工具便不可能打败它们。而在游戏的许多环节中玩家可以通过快速喝下大量药剂而获得胜利，因为怪物的咒语将削弱你的能量，摧毁你的装甲，并耗尽你的精力，并且它们总是能够比你更快速地投射出咒语。即使你打败了这些怪物，你也会想着重新加载游戏，因为你的某些追随者已经被杀死了，或者你因此失去了一些重要技能。

更重要的是，有时候游戏总是未能遵循相关规则。就像游戏中会出现一些非常复杂的打斗场面，即敌人神秘地出现在你身边，而如果你不能迅速意识到他们的存在并逃脱，他们便会以迅雷掩耳般的速度致你于死地。还有一些环境元素，如硫酸或火山岩浆等不会对敌人造成任何伤害，但却会以极快的速度消灭你。有时候游戏在这方面表现得太过盲从了，如当你认为冰能够制服具有火的属性的敌人时，实际上他们却不会因此遭到任何伤害。

虽然《异端审判官》中设有许多随机的追随者，但是实际上却带有明显的强制性，因为其中渗透了各种挑战元素。追随者不仅能够应对更多伤害，同时也能够有效地分散因为玩家而遭受到的伤害，所以对于玩家来说这是非常重要的角色，特别是对于那些打斗类角色而言。与敌人一样他们同样也能获得奖励，在较复杂的背景下他们将遭遇更多伤害，但同时也会获得更多生命点，如此才能与日渐强大的玩家保持平衡。

更重要的是，追随者总是与《异端审判官》挑战中的另外一大组成部分维系在一起。游戏的一大秘密是，战斗都不具有多大的深度，并且会让玩家觉得就像在玩《暗黑破坏神》的复制品一样，杂乱的布局，笨拙的节奏以及时间安排都让玩家很难准确地使用咒语和技能去击败目标玩家。可以说玩家获取胜利的唯一有效的方法（无需为战斗添加任何复杂性）便是在库存添满75%的药剂，并一口气喝掉它们，同时利用可怜的AI去诱惑敌人并杀死他们。

当然了，追随者本身也拥有生命，活力以及魔法值，他们同样也会消耗你库存中的药剂。因为你和你的伙伴（追随者）的快速消耗，你可能需要每种类型的药剂都采购50份以上。而当你用尽了库存中的所有药剂时，游戏便会变得更加困难，因为你能够打败更强大敌人的唯一方法便是不断喝药剂。这是一种相对关系，即当你拥有药剂时你便能够轻松地击败敌人，而当你没有药剂时你便只能乖乖地等死。

这便意味着在《异端审判官》中损耗便是真正的挑战，除了怪物boss能够轻松地杀死你的同伴外。不幸的是游戏中很少有帮助玩家获得新的供给的方法。《异端审判官》中并不存在回城术咒语，唯一具有相同属性的道具是Magical Box——当目标遭遇破坏时该咒语便会释放出一个妖怪帮你实现一个愿望，不管是治愈伤口，提供战斗援助还是打开一个特殊的商店等。不幸的是要获得这个Magical Box需要付出极高的代价，并且玩家总是很难找到它；更重要的是当这一咒语释放出一个妖怪后而你又未许任何愿望，你的角色便能够获得额外的技能或特技点——也就意味着如果你拥有这一咒语但却未释放妖怪你便会失去提升角色能力的机会。我想说的是，除非你自己把握住了免费升级的机会，否则你便需要花费大量的时间自己走回城镇中，在黑暗里穿越各种敌人和迷宫。当然了，如果你用尽了药剂并且也未拥有Magical Box，你便不得不多花费15至30分钟的时间徒步来回走。

当玩家因为克服挑战能够完成某些任务时，挑战才算真正具有功效。作为一种能够帮助玩家达到目的的方法，挑战具有一定的吸引力，但是这也只是针对少量玩家而言，甚至很多玩家还夸大了他们对于难度的渴望。而当挑战变得沉闷，缺少公平性或者失去了平衡，那么其内在的乐趣便会迅速消失。虽然《异端审判官》中突出了老式游戏般的挑战，但是玩家却很容易因为这些挑战而感到沮丧，从而导致游戏只能继续拉长本来就够长的地牢挑战。

结论

很奇怪的是，虽然我一直在抱怨像《异端审判官》这类型游戏的种种元素，特别是糟糕的设计选择，但是我却仍会频繁回到游戏中享受游戏乐趣。也许人们总是会喜欢并欣赏一些自己所讨厌的事物吧，但是不管怎么说，我所列出的这些问题都足以说服我放弃这款游戏。然而就像我今天仍在玩的一些老式游戏一样，这款游戏具有这一时代的游戏（即设计师总是能够准确地提供给玩家他们想看到的内容）所缺少的吸引力。同时它也为我们清楚地呈现出了过去十年里游戏的发展过程，并值得玩家独自进入游戏体验游戏乐趣。

（本文为游戏邦/gamerboom.com编译，拒绝任何不保留版权的转载，如需转载请联系：游戏邦）

Inquisitor: The Sins of Old-School Design

by Eric Schwarz

Cinemax’s Inquisitor is a game that kind of snuck up on me.  I didn’t really read any previews, watch any trailers, or know much about the game at all, right up until its release.  Despite originally being launched in 2009 after an extremely lengthy development history (nearly a decade), and spending three years in translation to English, there was very little hype or media attention.

Once I learned of it, though, I was instantly ecstatic.  Isometric, 2D pre-rendered visuals?  Diablo-style combat?  Massive, pitch-dark labyrinths swarming with monsters?  A story based around investigation, subterfuge and conspiracy?  Adult subject matter?  A world based on actual European religious history?  It was almost too good to be true.

Unfortunately, that love affair died pretty quickly once I started playing the game.  The problem with Inquisitor is that while it is indeed an old-school game right down to its core, it also suffers from many of the flaws that old-school games did, either out of a devotion to those titles, or simple design oversights by the developer.  Divorced from the nostalgia that sometimes allows us to overlook these problems in earlier titles, Inquisitor can often be a frustrating, monotonous experience, and needlessly so.  In this article, this ostensibly old-school RPG fan would like to take a moment to discuss where the old-school approach to design in Inquisitor falls apart.

A Matter of Direction

If there is one problem that permeates just about all of Inquisitor, it’s direction.  The game is simply not very good at telling the player what to do, where to go, and when.  When you’re given a quest, most of the time you’re on your own in figuring things out… which is both rewarding, and occasionally extremely frustrating.

Inquisitor starts out with your character standing alone in a forest, on a dirt road.  Although some vague instructions are given during the introduction, it’s not one second into the game and already things are a little unclear.  Exactly where am I?  Where am I supposed to go?  How do I know how to get there?  Following the road north soon reveals the gate to the town of Hillbrandt, which is barred shut by the guards, who insist that I go fight some giant bats pestering the town walls before I’m let in.  Not more than a few seconds into the game and already I have my first side-quest.

This quest isn’t difficult, or especially time-consuming.  It’s not even mandatory, if you’re rude to the guard and demand to be let in.  But, what it is is distracting.  At the very beginning of the game, the player expects some direction.  This is literally his or her first step into the world, and instead of a thorough introduction that acquaints the player with all he or she needs to know, instead, it’s combat to the death right from the beginning.  Again, this can be bypassed, but many players won’t bother, either because they don’t want to be rude to the gate guard, or because they don’t want to miss out on experience points and loot.

Hillbrandt is a not-so-charming place, but it’s full of quests and characters – so much so that the story or main objective often become lost in the proceedings.

Even once the bats are dead and the player is let into the town, which becomes the main quest hub for the first quarter or so of the game, it’s still not entirely clear where the player should go.  The goal is to meet up with a bishop, but the church is clear on the other side of town from the front gate, and along the way the player will likely explore and speak to (or be accosted by) several other characters, even receiving lengthy and involved quests before even the basics of the world and the story are communicated.   I actually performed several side-quests before ever learning about exactly why I was in Hillbrandt what was expected of me there.

This lack of direction is a problem throughout almost the entire game.  There are many, many cases in Inquisitor where it is unclear where to go, what to do or who to talk to, not because I’m an especially thick-headed person who can’t get obvious hints, but rather because oftentimes the sequence of events to complete a relatively simple task is very, very specific, but the player could easily and logically skip one of those steps.  Often it’s as simple as needing to talk to a given NPC before getting a dialogue option to open up, even though there’s no indication that the player needs to talk with that NPC at all.  Much of my time in Inquisitor was spent wandering from X to Y, checking and re-checking conversations to make sure that I hadn’t missed anything… not out of compulsion to complete every single piece of content, but because it’s usually the only way to proceed.

Additionally, due to the game’s focus on drilling every NPC for as much information as possible in order to advance its plot threads, eventually it’s possible to just run out of things to do.  Once you’ve spoken to all the NPCs in a town, explored all the areas of the game world, and so on, where else do you go?  Sometimes the game expects a very specific and sometimes non-ideal sequence of events to play out, which are portrayed as optional but are in fact mandatory (such as accusing someone of hersey – even if you aren’t sure of their guilt, you’ll have to interrogate them to get the evidence you need to continue the game).  Other times, the solution to advancing the plot will be difficult to find – such as a broken bridge in the Iron Mine dungeon at the end of act 1 requiring either the Levitate spell or finding a very well-hidden secret door – and suddenly the game grinds to a halt until you’ve completed that requirement, even if that means you are stuck with grinding respawning enemies for five hours to level up enough to get a spell you need.

It’s a common complaint about modern games that they don’t trust players to figure out how to proceed properly – that the quest compass or objective marker is the lazy developer’s way of telling the player how to proceed in the game.  But it’s also worth remembering that sometimes not including hints on where to go and what to do can lead to a needlessly frustrating play experience.  Guiding players is an art – a quest compass might be a brute-force, lowest common denominator method, but at least it works.  Without such aids, if the rest of the game’s design can’t direct the player properly, then that’s a failure, old-school or not.

Sink or Swim

Inquisitor’s second defining old-school trait is that it likes to throw the player into the deep end right from the very beginning.  Immediately upon starting the game, you get a class selection (which also changes a few story details and dialogue options), and a fairly extensive character sheet containing multiple character attributes, about two-dozen skills to choose from, and a few schools of magic.  In other words, it looks just like a classic RPG.

Of course, like other classic RPGs, this practice of shoving the character sheet in the player’s face right from the beginning also makes it difficult to get a feel for what’s important in the game.  Do I want to take Pagan Magic or Divine Magic?  Will I need to revive followers myself or are there priests that do it for me?  Is strength important for a magic-oriented class?  These sorts of fundamental gameplay questions are impossible to know the answer to without extensive reading, both of the instruction manual and meta-game advice, i.e. on message boards.

Is there anything nicer in the world than a pretty, stat-filled character sheet?

This isn’t really much different from some of my favorite games of all time.  Fallout and Arcanum are my two most-loved isometric RPGs, and both of those games are known for their poor game balance (especially Arcanum) and the ability for a player to make an exceptionally ineffective character through little direct fault of his or her own.  A lot of this boils down to the fact that it’s impossible to know in advance how useful an ability or skill is relative to other elements of the game.  Arcanum, for instance, is set in a neo-Victorian steampunk world, and due to the aesthetic I’d assume that social skills are of the utmost priority… but building a character who focuses on persuasion, charisma and beauty generally is not going to be anywhere near as capable as a straight-up fighter, thanks to the game’s large amounts of combat and lengthy dungeon crawls.

Inquisitor suffers from the exact same issue, but to a greater degree.  Without knowing in advance how the game plays, it’s impossible to make informed decisions.  Many players I’ve spoken with, for instance, found themselves disappointed in the magic system when they realized that spells were extremely ineffective against enemies until halfway through the game.  I was annoyed when I discovered my paladin character couldn’t complete a quest because he couldn’t use the Levitate spell, or when I learned there was a fool-proof spell used to identify items, rendering the Identify skill completely redundant (as well as the points I invested in it).  There’s no way to change the difficulty level after you’ve started the game, and there’s no way to rebind your keys, because… well, okay, there’s really just no justifiable reason for those.

Some of these issues are very difficult to avoid in an RPG with a fair degree of freedom, but many of these could have been avoided with more intuitive controls, more obvious clues in dialogue, books to read explaining game mechanics, or even simple tutorial pop-ups.  For example, it is mandatory, if you can’t pick locks or use spells to open them, to bash down doors in order to proceed in the game.  Unfortunately, without reading through the manual you would never, ever know how to do this.  I also spent several hours of the game dragging-and-dropping potions one-by-one, because I didn’t realize there was a faster way to buy things – a problem that others I knew also had, thanks to unintuitive user interface design.

There are all sorts of little things Inquisitor doesn’t communicate well.  For instance, unique weapons all have random stats, so save scumming is necessary to get the best, or most valuable, gear.

In other cases, the way information is presented obscures the game mechanics in a way that makes it hard to understand how to play in an ideal fashion without extensive experimentation and re-playing.  For instance, there are dialogue checks in Inquisitor, with different outcomes to quests dependent on whether the player can persuade an NPC… but the game never tells you when these checks occur, what skills or stats are used to check them, what the chances of success are, and it rarely communicates what the alternative outcome is.  While this might increase immersion and leave Inquisitor feel less “gamey”, it can also be confusing to players, and makes it hard to determine how much their choices actually matter to the storyline, or how to better optimize their character build.

Yet more of these problems pertain to game balance.  Some sections of the game are extraordinarily easy, featuring enemies which do very little damage… but others, such as ghosts, spirits and various mages, are literally capable of wiping out your juiced-to-the-eyeballs, fully-armored and HP-buffed tank of a character in a few seconds.  Priests… well, priests just die.  Some of the game’s bosses are so difficult that they will almost instantly kill even over-leveled characters, and they rely heavily on “cheese tactics” to defeat, like exploiting AI issues.  Without knowing in advance whether an enemy will be a breeze or a hair-pulling nightmare, the only way to really get by is to quicksave constantly and hope for the best.

There’s always something satisfying about being able to overcome a difficult challenge, or in figuring out a novel solution to a problem based on your own logic and reasoning, or in simply clearing out an area on the world map… but the flip side of that is that, when you don’t feel like a genius, often you feel like either a moron or like the game has broken on you.  Inquisitor often feels far more like the latter than it really ought to, and because of that it is often frustrating in the extreme.

Nintendo Hard

One of the hallmarks of classic games is that they’re hard.  We recall the second level of Battletoads and its demand for cat-like reflexes and savant-like memory, or beating the final boss of Contra without using the Konami Code.  Many gamers look at challenge as an end in itself, especially those who grew up playing games which depended a lot on difficulty to extend their play-time and demanded complete mastery of their mechanics and individual levels in order to win.

Inquisitor’s developers appear to have thought lots of challenge was a great idea, as well.  The game starts out reasonably tough (the most basic enemies can handily kill you right at the start of the game if you aren’t prepared), and only becomes more difficult from there.  Bosses, as mentioned above, are sometimes so powerful as to be nearly impossible to beat without resorting to exploits.  Many sections of the game are only winnable by quaffing dozens of potions within the span of a few seconds, because monsters have spells that can inflict debilitating status effects, stun you, destroy your armor, permanently drain your attributes… and they can spam those spells faster than you can.  Even if you beat them, chances are you’ll want to reload because one of your followers died, or you lost critical skills.

What’s more, sometimes the game doesn’t play by the rules.  Some fights are made difficult because enemies literally spawn out of thin air right around you, and pummel you to death in an instant if you can’t get away from them in time (usually just luck).  Environmental hazards like pits of acid or lava pretty much never affect enemies, but of course they can kill you in two seconds flat.  Sometimes the rules broken are implicit – such as fire-based enemies that aren’t weak to ice attacks, as you’d expect them to be.

Traps are a constant annoyance, and are pretty much unavoidable without pouring many points into special skills.  Almost every door, chest and barrel is trapped, but without knowing how to handle those traps in advance, it’s impossible to create a character that can deal with them effectively until dozens of hours into the game.

Inquisitor features optional followers, but in truth they’re pretty much mandatory because of the extreme level of challenge involved.  Followers don’t just deal more damage, they also distribute the damage you take across themselves, which is essential for anyone but a melee class (and still pretty helpful for a typical fighter).  They also receive the same bonuses that enemies do, so on harder difficulty settings they have more hit points and damage, making them proportionately more powerful than the player him/herself (the inverse is true on easy mode).

What’s more, followers also tie into another big part of Inquisitor’s challenge.  The game’s dirty little secret is basically that combat has very little depth and, frankly, plays like the most unpolished of Diablo clones out there, with cluttered visuals, awkward pacing and timing that make targeting enemies or using spells and skills precisely difficult.  The only effective way to win, without rendering every battle needlessly complicated, is to fill your inventory 75% full with potions and chug them down, constantly, while trying to exploit the poor AI by luring out enemies one by one to their deaths.

Of course, followers themselves also have health, stamina and mana bars too… and they consume the same potions from your inventory.  Even after you’ve bought fifty or more potions of each type, prepare for those to disappear extremely quickly as you and your party members burn through them.  Once you have no more potions, suddenly the game becomes extremely difficult because the only way to reliably defeat the stronger enemies is to chug, chug, chug.  It’s pretty much entirely binary – either you have potions and you win without a sweat, or you don’t have potions and you die.

Inquisitor loves to pile on status effects – poison, slow, stun, insanity, fear, etc. – but there are few defenses against them, reducing what could be a dynamic and interesting combat system to “kite and spam the potion hotkey.”

This means that attrition is the real challenge in Inquisitor, other than the boss monsters that can wipe your party with a look.  Unfortunately, there are few convenient ways to get new supplies.  Inquisitor has no town portal spell, and the only item of a similar nature is the Magical Box – an object that, when destroyed, releases a genie who grants a wish, ranging from healing, to assistance in combat, to opening a special shop.  Unfortunately, these Magical Boxes are also extremely expensive and fairly rare to come across, and what’s more, releasing the genie without making a wish has a chance of granting bonus skill or attribute points – which means that effectively, every genie you don’t release is a wasted opportunity to make your character stronger.  Suffice to say, unless you fancy forgoing free level-ups, you’ll be spending a lot of extra time walking back to town, slowly, through respawning enemies, in dark, confusing labyrinths.  Of course, if you run out of potions and don’t have a Magical Box, you’re basically forced to waste an extra 15-30 minutes of your time hiking back and forth.

Challenge is one of those things that only really works when it accomplishes something.  Challenge as a means to an end can be compelling, but usually only for a fairly small subset of gamers, and even then, many of them overstate their desire for insanity-inducing difficulty.  When challenge becomes equated with tedium, or is simply a complete lack of fairness, or extremely skewed balance, the fun inherent in overcoming a difficult battle tends to disappear very quickly.  Inquisitor features old-school challenge, but that challenge is often of the most frustrating, ill-conceived sort, and it only serves to pad out its already overlong dungeon levels.

Closing Thoughts

It’s strange how, even after railing against a game like Inquisitor for all of its, frankly, pretty bad design choices, I can still come back to it and look on it fondly.  Perhaps people enjoy to dislike things, or perhaps they appreciate that which they hate, but for whatever reason, all of these problems still aren’t enough to make me put the game down.  Just like old-school titles that I still play today, it’s got all the same appeal that is so often lost in an era where the player’s hand is always firmly tethered to the designer’s.  But, it’s also an excellent case study in how games have evolved for the better over the last decade, and worth playing just for that experience alone.

I’ll be turning to Inquisitor’s positives in an upcoming article – old-school design can be maddening, but the game certainly has its strengths as well, and many of them are a direct result of those same “antiquated” elements.  I’d like to cover the virtues as well as the sins.(source:GAMASUTRA)