Inquisitor - Old School designs and Sins @ Gamasutra

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.

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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.

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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.

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