Inquisitor

Check this game out.
Never seen it mentioned on rpgwatch before? Seems like the real deal.

http://www.inquisitor.cz/english.asp

The link doesn't work for me ... And I think I vaguely remember it having been mentioned once ...

Link still works fine for me.

Try this one http://games.cinemax.cz/inquisitor/

Or google it

I don't have anything to do with the production of the game or anything, btw. I'm just a big fan of 2D isometric oldschool kinda RPGs and came across this. We see so much dragonage and divinity2 at the moment but hearing this game existed was actually NEWS, you know? Sounds like it could be a classic.

From the site:

• 10 years of development
• More than 1 500 pages of storyline
• High-resolution state-of-the-art graphics
• Original artwork
• Extensive locations and large areas to explore
• A credible story from the medieval fantasy world
• Spectacular soundtrack
• Three playable characters: priest, knight, thief – 3 unique independent stories
• Surface areas and gloomy underground locations
• Interrogation, torture, sentence
• Massive RPG system
• Combat, occult, sorcery

Inquisitional statistics:
• Three playable characters, 90 monsters and 180 NPCs
• Animation of the game characters consists of almost one million sprites (i.e. graphical elements)
• 34 surface areas with deep forests, green pastures and extensive towns
• 1.2 million square meters of exteriors
• Dozens of interiors, buildings, temples, palaces and forts
• 37 extensive dungeon complexes (including multilevel dungeons)
• 100 kilometers of twisting corridors
• Game environment design uses 50 000 manually finished sprites
• More than 200 weapons and projectiles including many magical ones
• 80 spells with spectacular effects, 6 different black art schools
• Huge amount of potions

I'm thinking of preordering the game before 2010. It looks like a promising game. 30 dollars if you will preorder before 2010 and DRM free. But I can't decide whether or not to buy and I don't want to waste my money for a crap. They say it released in Czech Republic. So, any of our Czech forum friends give us comments about Inquisitor?

http://www.rpgwatch.com/show/news?ref=0&id=59

Five mentions over the years here and countless mentions at RPGDot. Sent them several enquiries in 2004 or so that they never responded to. Lost interest in the end.

On the trailer I find the walking toooooooooooo slow. And the music is generic crap.
But I'd like to play it anyway.

I thought it was vaporware....

I remember the news about it in rpgdot days. I don't know. Sometimes devs are so exaggerating about their games, they are saying how great their game will be, but in the process of all the talking they forget to make the game what it supposed to be. I remember the news and articles about Harbinger (devs said it would be like Fallout in space ), Restricted Area, Valhalla Chronicles, Legend Hand Of God. So, I don't want to spend my money for another disappointment.

the only (?) czech review so far states it's solid story with dated visuals. I'd try it myself, but torturing people was never my forte. I tend to play the good guys.

Must be full of bugs since there are already three patches for Czech version.

http://www.patches-scrolls.de/inquisitor.php#103

don't think so. Judging by the repaired issue, it more looks like they care about their customers and don't let the game be spoiled by bugs for years (see this you big industry sharks??) So while the game has three patches, only minority seems to be showstoppers (corrected texts, balanced potions and obviously some fan based requests fulfilled).

I somehow tend to side with small studios because they HAVE to care or they'll go under.

This being said, I'm still not gonna torture anyone.

They'd have slightly less chance of going under if they took 2 minutes to send out a press release or development update to, you know, one of those RPG news web site thingies I've heard about.

metamorphium said:

don't think so. Judging by the repaired issue, it more looks like they care about their customers and don't let the game be spoiled by bugs for years (see this you big industry sharks??) So while the game has three patches, only minority seems to be showstoppers (corrected texts, balanced potions and obviously some fan based requests fulfilled).

I somehow tend to side with small studios because they HAVE to care or they'll go under.

This being said, I'm still not gonna torture anyone.

Click to expand...

I also want to preorder the game to support these small studios. But, I'm still hesitant since no real tangible information about it.

I took another look at the video and screens for this and remembered how much I love well-done 2D sprites. I Google translated two Czech reviews and the comments were promising.

I'll try to establish contact with them in the New Year and see if we can get a interview or somesuch going. There doesn't seem to be a mention of Wooden Dragon anymore; were they taken over by their publisher?

As for the preorder deal, I'm going to take it to do a review but I just can't see a Czech 2D action-RPG selling at $49.95, so I think they'll lower the price, anyway. Could be wrong, of course.

it costs $36 here. Where did you see $49 price tag?

metamorphium said:

it costs $36 here. Where did you see $49 price tag?

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On the website - it says the pre-order is $29 versus release price of $49.

my experience

Well, I just finished playing the Czech version so I can give some comments:

The good things: Dark original story full of treachery and many evil heretic deeds you will have to investigate (starting from changing of shit to gold by dark magic to sacrifices of young virgins during invoking of deamons). Dialogs are well written and sometimes quit funny (I hope the translation to English will preserve that.) (There are some things clearly borrowed from works of Czech writers btw.). Very long play time. Soundtrack is good.

The bad things: The dungeons are usually very generic, you frequently spend several hours doing nothing but cleaning one similar room or corridor from monsters after another…. it gets boring… sometimes you discover some interesting enemy, but it is rather rare (95 percent of story and dialogs happens in cities, while outside them it is almost only fighting). The fighting system is primitive, you mostly just click mouse buttons to attack with weapons or cast spells and use shortcuts for drinking potions - I felt that I don’t have many strategies to choose from. And the fighting happens too fast, I really missed that I could not pause the game like in infinity engine games. Don’t expect anything from your party members – they don’t have anything to say, you can’t directly control them, not even their levelling up, and they will have the same equipment during entire game. There are many annoying issues with game mechanics, balance and interface (items in inventory of the same kind are not stacking together, NPC critical for finishing the game are not protected from your attacks, etc., etc.). There are bugs, some of them serious (but they are relasing patches fast, maybe most of the will be gone by the time of English release).

And there is one thing you really should be aware… the game is VERY difficult. You die and die and die. I selected “easy difficulty” but it was more like nightmare.

Generally the game is something between Baldur’s Gate and Diablo made with much smaller budget and a LOT harder difficulty. I would recommend it, but only to hardcore rpg fans, it is probably not for mainstream players.

Thanks for that feedback - definitely still sounds quite positive to me. Since this is so story-oriented, the big concern is the quality of the translation.

For better or worse, my order is in, so time will tell.

By the way, do you know if "Wooden Dragon" is still shown as the developer? In English, everything only seems to say the publisher, Cinemax.

Question to our Czech forum members

Are there any online game shops in Czech Republic that send games to EU for fair postage and have an option to pay via paypal or credit card or even bank transfer. I would like to order Inquisitor and couple of other titles not available in English retail format (like Day Watch, Weird War, Numen...). Thanks

Dhruin said:

By the way, do you know if "Wooden Dragon" is still shown as the developer? In English, everything only seems to say the publisher, Cinemax.

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I didn't found any mention of Wooden Dragon even on Czech site and it doesn't shows any other logo expect "Cinemax" when starting the game either.