Short version: It's a fantastic and deep game with minor and/or debatable limitations. Longer: version: Strengths of the game are the story (with superbly paced two-step ending) and well-written characters and locations, many of which I'll remember for a long time. I particularly appreciated the difficulty of the game, that I'd label as "rewarding" on Normal difficulty - one cannot expect to succeed with no thinking whatsoever (which was sort of the case in many recent RPGs unfortunately, which makes the enjoyment of succeeding in them low), but I haven't met a single place that would be frustratingly difficult*, although many places did require re-memorizing spells, learning new buffs, etc. One must "play" the game actively, making a decent party that works well together, and thinking about consequences of your actions, rather hoping that game designers have protected you from failure. I also liked the freedom to tackle situations in different ways (not always, but in many cases), possibility of exploring the world on your own, a surprisingly well-working mix of kingdom management and normal RPG experience. *) There are some well-known cases that have the potential to be frustrating,(early spider, or "broken" Wild Hunt). But there are hints for tackling these, and the former don't have to be fought much. And with the third, there is a fairly simple counter that clerics can do. You don't have a cleric? The game designers were kind enough to make traders sell relevant scrolls. And you can make new mercenaries, even in later stages of the game. Cons? Some bugs remain (I encountered one that ment I had to load 30 minutes back). Interactions with party members could be made even deeper. And I think that it might be communicated a bit better to the player just how important the decisions in companions' quests are in the end. Overall, I'm in love with the game and it's one I'll surely want to replay, probably several times.
This is a large-world RPG, with many characters, long story, and many relatively interesting environments to explore. In few places, I had almost an "epic adventure" feeling such as when playing Baldur's gate . However... There were two aspects that considerably reduced my enjoyment of the game: a) The story progression felt a bit ridiculous - one starts as a relatively ordinary dude, and after a couple of hours, bam, you're the person to reunite everyone and save the world... argh, not again. I am ok with the world-saving motivation, when it's done subtly and over many hours of gameplay. But here, you're given a mega task even as a pathetic little thing that gets killed by three goblins, when the world is apparently full of much greater heroes. Also, as much as I like to help underdogs, help people in general, fight injustice and discrimination, etc. etc., some "social justice" points in this game were just cringeworthy and pathetic. That's not a good way of serving such a difficult and deep topic. b) The fights were just not too much fun for me, but there was a lot of them and they were one like another, with a couple of exceptions. In Baldur's gate 1/2, Fallout, KOTOR,... most fights would be in some way at least a bit unique, you'd profit from different strategy, etc. For some reason, the combat systems in "new" reincarnations of older games (i.e., DA, Pillars of Eternity) don't work so well for me. Graphics is a minor negative for me - I prefer a pretty detailed 2D over a relatively ugly (and unnecessary, gameplay-wise) 3D. Overall, it's a pretty good game, but not more.
Even though Inquisitor is by no means perfect, it's a 5-star game for me. It's not because it's old school - but the story and feeling I've got from the game was among the best in RPG games (I've played probably all the better known ones). Forget small maps and story with arrows that take you from quest to quest - this game lets you do the thinking and detective work instead (yes, in one or two points, this may mean you get stuck, not knowing what to do next, but it's worth it, imho). The game contains three stages - only the first one could be a full game by today's standards, probably (speaking of area and length of playing). But it's followed by two more rich and interesting chapters - i.e., this is a big game. But I never felt it was winding down, I wanted to get to the bottom of things the whole time, unlike some other games, where you finish them just to be done. The storybuilding is stellar. Also very well balanced is your character's position in the universe. Usually, in an RPG, one starts as a lowly grunt, to progress to lord of the universe in 20-30 hours. Here, you are pretty much the whole time in a position where you're quite powerful, feared, and respected - but at the same time, you still have superiors, guys to fear, and you never become the superhero of mankind... i.e., I found this to be very well balanced. The fighting system isn't great and the game is probably a bit too difficult initially - this was frustrating me. Graphics isn't great (then again, I didn't find it too bad). But if you give this game a chance and get over the imperfections, the overall feeling you get can be really amazing. Possibly a heresy, but for me, this is a better game/experience overall than the likes of Pillars of Eternity/Tyranny.
I did actually enjoy playing and finishing the game, unfortunately, the experience went from "this is very cool" to "ah, this could be so much better". Yes, it's true that the game feels a bit short (and the end comes quite abruptly - it's like when you set up a scene, characters, rich history (or its illusion)... and then bash, boom, bang, the end. I did enjoy the game more than Pillars of Eternity, probably. I found the characters to be (a bit) more memorable, some sections genuinely good (e.g., the burning library), but: a) The game is very small, spatially - the number of areas isn't massive, and many of them are single screen. Even the big ones are quite small, you can run from end-to-end in a short time. There is nothing like the feeling of exploration of large (and not boring!) areas, such as in Arcanum, Baldur's gate, Fallout, etc. etc. b) Narrow story - it's not "linear", as there are branches, but the game felt like I was steered from choice to choice, not living the story in even remotely natural way. It's often impossible to make fairly sensible choices, because the game doesn't offer it to you, while it would, if you went in a very subtly different way. c) No strong side-quests. This is probably what made the game clearly worse for me than some other existing RPGs. Remember stories like Valygar entering his globe, or going after Jierdan Firkraag in BG2 - such examples, which are good stories on their own, are tightly woven into the world's fabric, and make it richer, and character deeper. Well, there is nothing like that here at all. At all :( d) Problematic balance of items - there was never a real need to buy items, as they were never better than what I have found. From the half of the game on, I was swamped in named and fancy-looking artifacts... but no incentive to use them. All in all, a nice world, I enjoyed the graphics and sounds, but just too shallow a game to score better for me.
