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Author Topic: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr  (Read 10587 times)

Mech#4

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Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
« on: September 01, 2017, 02:50:56 am »

This is a game that was first mentioned around the time all the other W40k/Fantasy games were being announced, leading to me only glancing at most of them. Some time has passed and it has now been released in Early Access on Steam.

"Warhammer  40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr" is an ARPG with randomly generated levels and missions, destructable environments, locational damage on enemies, finishing moves, crafting, as well as a planned system for "Seasons" where a themed mission system is released and community actions will determine the outcome.

Generaly opinion of it so far seems to be pretty positive. People seem to be happy with the gameplay and mechanics, with complaints being a few performance hiccups and repetitiveness, though since the game is in early access it's probably to be expected.

Spoiler: Blurb from Steam Page (click to show/hide)

At the moment it seems like there's 3 playable character classes. Crusador Inquisitor, Primaris Psyker and Death Cult Assassin I would assume focus on heavy melee, ranged and fast melee respectively. I do like a good ARPG and I don't really need them to do anything hugely ground breaking. Fun abilities, class and enemy variety and lots of loot are the main things I look for and this seems to have that.

They also seem to have ideas for PvP things with invadable player fortresses, cabals which I imagine function like guilds. Multiplayer content isn't really my forte so someone more knowledgable can maybe cover that.
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nenjin

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Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
« Reply #1 on: September 01, 2017, 09:26:18 am »

I'm definitely interested in the game, been watching it in its development prior to Steam.

Some feels though:

Combat has always looked a little meh. A much slower version of Diablo with guns. I like all the RPGness going on but combat seems to consist of walking through some corridors to shoot down one pack of guys at a time. Swap a few tilesets and enemy models around and you've got the game.

It feels like another one of those 40k games where the flavor is spot on but the game side of it looks a little bland/basic. Sort of like Mordheim, down to the UI and menus.

Neocore is also a company that has simultaneously impressed me and let me down by turns. King Arthur The Roleplaying Wargame was great, but it was also a buggy, crashy, poorly optimized piece of shit they never fixed.

Probably won't get it in EA, I think this is one of those games where it needs to be feature complete so nothing can be left to second guess or chance.
« Last Edit: May 01, 2018, 06:06:13 pm by nenjin »
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umiman

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Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
« Reply #2 on: September 01, 2017, 12:45:47 pm »

Neocore is also a company that has simultaneously impressed me and let me down by turns. King Arthur The Roleplaying Wargame was great, but it was also buggy, crashy, poorly optimized piece of shit they never fixed.
This is my opinion as well. I really want to love King Arthur but holy shit is it unplayable.

I don't trust these devs enough to get this in EA, even if I like the premise.

nenjin

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Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
« Reply #3 on: September 01, 2017, 12:51:59 pm »

Wasn't unplayable for me but it got to the point where, midgame, when you were pausing frequently to cast spells with accuracy, reorganize charges and other things, the game would just up and derp on you and crash.

Which wouldn't be a deal breaker except high level gameplay pretty much demands that action out of the player to be successful. And it kept happening in the same all-important battle in the same place. So eventually I just gave up.
« Last Edit: September 01, 2017, 12:54:58 pm by nenjin »
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umiman

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Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
« Reply #4 on: September 01, 2017, 12:57:10 pm »

Wasn't unplayable for me but it got to the point where, midgame, when you were pausing frequently to cast spells with accuracy, reorganize charges and other things, the game would just up and derp on you and crash.

Which wouldn't be a deal breaker except high level gameplay pretty much demands that action out of the player to be successful. And it kept happening in the same all-important battle in the same place. So eventually I just gave up.
For me the FPS was like... 10. Was pretty much unplayable. This was back in the day when it was released though.

Mech#4

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Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
« Reply #5 on: September 02, 2017, 03:05:14 am »

I remember looking at King Arthur a few times but I always held off on buying it due to some of the issues I read about.


I like the GIF of a horde of Nurglings swarming the player backed up by possibly a Chaos Spawn. The ability to shoot off the arms of enemies like the Obliterators, removing their weapons, is also a neat addition but whether it'll be feasable to do in a busy combat or just easier to chomp throught their HP will likely determine how often it's used.

I think variation in combat has quite a bit of potential if/when they start expanding the game that way. Bloodletters for melee, Horrors for ranged (it would be neat if the pink horrors split into blue horrors on death), Chaos Spawn could have random effects and stats like champions in Diablo 2 (Regeneration, lightning enchanted, etc). A lot of variation could also come from traitor guardsmen, toting las-guns, mortars, auto-gun emplacements with cultists supplying buffs based on the Chaos Gods.
Further on, other races would help also. Orks, Necrons, Tyranids and Eldar. I think one of the videos mentioned a Dark Eldar raid which would be fun to deal with. I think there was also a Knight in one of the videos.
ARPG combat does tend to be rather mindless but adding things like priority targets (like the Shamens were for Dark Ones in Diablo 2) makes things much more interesting as you have to pay attention.

Items seem to be divided into weapons, full body suit of armour and various medallions and implants. A bit light on the loot variation with no seperation of things like belts, pauldrons, torso and leg armour but visually it would help keep things more consistant. Though, I think dyeing armour is an option going from one screenshot.
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nenjin

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Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
« Reply #6 on: April 29, 2018, 05:57:44 pm »

So I finally caved and got this. It's in Early Access still but it's supposed to release pretty soon so I figured why not.

And I confess....it's totally drawing me in. I've had some reservations about it but now that I'm looking at the game in front of me they're somewhat fading. It's still very clearly a WIP (which is annoyingly, liberally stamped in many places including on some cutscenes) and it shows in some places, but overall it looks fairly quality.

I'll write up a bigger thing later but for the moment...

-So. Dense. There's simple text tutorials to start to explain stuff but there a lot to get through, many sub-systems and different bits bolted on everywhere. I knew somewhat about some of these systems in staying informed with the game, but for someone new....phew. Be prepared do some screen hunting and tutorial reading.

-So 40k. It's trying hard and IMO, doing well so far. The voice acting, the visuals, the music, and especially the UI and presentation, all very well done. The text logs you find in game are written with all the flavorful header gibberish you'd expect of 40k communications.

-Looks way better in person than the videos I've seen so far. I'm spending a lot of time enjoying the scenery atm, with all the detail they've put in to it.

-Won't say much about combat atm, other than that Martyr isn't a straight Diablo game in how it handles. More like a blend of Diablo style point and click and a top down action game where you steer your character with keys and manage the camera with the mouse. It makes for a weird little hybrid of a game that I'm still getting used to.

-Crazy stuff you don't expect to see in a Diablo-looking game, like manning turrets and going in over the shoulder mode, or vehicle gameplay. This game is trying all sorts of unconventional gimmicks.

-It's clear from the first hour that it intends to be a long-term, grindy sort of game. There's 3 main classes with 3 subclasses each for a total of 9 playable classes. There's a character level, and then an overall account level, with a sprawling set of upgrade trees that, atm, I honestly can't tell if they're character specific or account-wide and affect all your characters. There's so much shit to unlock over hover over, so many boxes to click in to, to discover yet more stuff to spend points on doing stuff...that I can already feel my time being sucked in to this game.

-The story is, so far, convoluted and fast moving. The voice acting and cutscenes are pretty spot on, but some of the grammar of the written stuff is a little a spotty. It's so far of decent production quality, and only slightly cringe inducing. Which is a pretty good sign. In terms of tone it seems a little less straight laced than like, BFG. There's a sense of fun in some of the writing and dialog.

I've been hesitant to get this because there's just so much to it, it tended to look repetitive in some videos, it's Neocore Games and it's been in development forever. So I was kind of primed to be filled with regrets after dropping $50 on it. But I'm charmed, frankly, despite how obviously quirky of a game it is, with how 40k it is and how it's weaving all this different stuff together. It is not a boiler plate action game. About the only thing I can tell will get old fast is the map design.
« Last Edit: May 01, 2018, 06:06:36 pm by nenjin »
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Ozyton

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Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
« Reply #7 on: April 29, 2018, 06:17:00 pm »

I've been wanting to look into this game but every time I try to find videos I find stuff that's pretty outdated or the quality of the video is just... not good. Do you have any specific videos or channels that give an impression of how the game plays these days? The steam reviews typically say that it's a decent game right now but a bit overpriced.

nenjin

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Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
« Reply #8 on: April 29, 2018, 07:18:00 pm »

I sort of had the same problem which was influencing my choice to buy. I'll look around some. Not saying the game is the greatest thing since sliced cheese atm, but it's surpassed my initial expectations.

The price tag does seem somewhat high, almost AAA price tag. But to me, if they've taken the time to faithfully model all the different 40k weaponry, put good sound effects on it, just because it's 40k and it's what fans want and expect....that's a price I'm happy to pay. I mean they just dropped a video of alpha gameplay of a pilotable Knight. There are even Leman Russ down there. That's a lot of development effort. So the price tag doesn't surprise me, because Neocore has not gone small or simple with the game. The loop may get a little repetitive, but there's a lot of detail in it so far.
« Last Edit: April 30, 2018, 11:13:01 am by nenjin »
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Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Quote from: Sindain
Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
How will I cheese now assholes?
Quote from: MrRoboto75
Always spaghetti, never forghetti

sambojin

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Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
« Reply #9 on: April 29, 2018, 07:30:22 pm »

Watched a fair bit of this on twitch at one point. It looks pretty good, and I'll probably buy a copy when I update my rig. It was a bit stop/starty on the action when I saw it, and some of it looked a little grindy or "pick them off from a distance" style gameplay (except for the arena bits and boss battles, where it was a matter of hoping you do enough damage before you get flamered it death), but this was a couple of months ago now. Hopefully they'll improve pacing a bit.

It looked like there were enough levelling options and character variety to be worth playing around with anyway, and it was quite pretty in a grimdark sense.
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Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
« Reply #10 on: April 29, 2018, 07:47:15 pm »

Quote from: The sidebar on Steam
Requires 3rd-Party Account: Neocore Account and the game requires constant online connection
Interest killed.
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Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
« Reply #11 on: April 29, 2018, 07:51:24 pm »

I mean, unfortunately that's only getting more common. Eventually with that mindset you'll be that weird old dude down the street who only plays retro games and smells like mothballs.

Joking, mostly, to each their own, and as someone who's loved with no internet I can understand reasons why.

I hate hearing that this game is acceptable, because my ass shells out for the mediocre 40k games, and this is only going to tempt me until I get it.
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nenjin

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Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
« Reply #12 on: April 29, 2018, 09:02:03 pm »

It uses your Steam account to verify. You punch in an account name and that's all the registration you have to do after starting the game. (Previously the game was played and distributed solely through their own portal.)

Now, what happens when you've got Steam in offline mode? No idea. The game automatically puts you in global chat, but that's the extent of forced socialization. This seems like a game that should easily be playable offline....but may not be.

There are a few social features, like coop, pvp and cabals, which are like guilds with gameplay benefits to partly justify the online connection.

So it is one of those always online games, by all appearances. I can see what happens if I go offline to play it. But I can get why that's a deal breaker for some.

Anyways, one thing I will note about the crunchiness of the game....it feels like there are a lot of random, arbitrary bonuses to everything. If you're the OCD kind of person that's like "Oooh yeah I'm gonna get suppression damage on every piece of gear and have it at like 300%" then it's a wet dream. But it's a lot of RNG, fiddling and crafting and so far it's been a bit of white noise in that department. After a little more time with it I may have a different opinion.
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Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Quote from: Sindain
Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
How will I cheese now assholes?
Quote from: MrRoboto75
Always spaghetti, never forghetti

Biowraith

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Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
« Reply #13 on: April 30, 2018, 01:11:50 am »

On the one hand I'm really looking forward to this game because there's been so few full sci-fi Diabloesque ARPGs, let alone good ones.  Plus it seems to do a pretty good job of capturing the 40k feel. 

On the other hand I gather they've gone through multiple revamps of the game during early access, including one that's they're not putting live until release day?  Maybe I've misunderstood that - a youtuber (forget who) was talking about it in those terms - but if so that leaves me very wary. 

Also I'm not sure I like the active abilities being purely tied to gear.  I like unlocking new skills and abilities and modifiers for how those skills and abilities work in these types of games (and picking and choosing to make my own build) far more so than unlocking e.g. lots of +2% fire damage upgrades, but what I've seen this looks to be more of the latter than the former.  Seems like you'd be choosing which weapon(s) to use fairly early on and that's your skills for the rest of the game.  I dunno, maybe there's more build stuff that I've missed/not seen.

On the online-only thing, I don't think offline play is going to be possible - they recently (temporarily) took down sales in Russia due to a wide ranging IP ban, because they didn't want people buying it that couldn't play.
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nenjin

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Re: Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr
« Reply #14 on: April 30, 2018, 10:31:26 am »

Well after a good 8 hours I can say that map design is a flawed point in the game. Everything is either a grid based level in a star ship, or a slightly less grid-based level on a floating sea platform, a glacier, or something else. There's no verticality to maps at all. You can even clearly see how the tiles are assembled in the mission preview windows.

What saves this from being a total disaster is that the game can be tough, and you can essentially choose how tough you want it to be by the challenge rating of the mission you pick. So this is less like Diablo where you roll in and melt the faces of 120 guys in a pack swarm all at once. You have to tread carefully because they start throwing packs with 2 to 3 elites in them at you, and between them shooting you and pounding on you, the damage and suppression (basically a bar that goes down as you take damage and when it gets too low you start getting stunned, knocked down or slowed) from the lesser swarm enemies starts to pile up very fast. And because your health and gear items are on a cooldown, often you have to retreat or at least seek some cover to buy yourself a little time.

So maps kind of suck but the combat difficulty and finesse seem to be there. You have to play slightly tactically to disassemble these hordes in good order, and that often intersects with both your class and your gear choices. Nothing will ever be "unbeatable" based on the things you've chosen, but it can definitely be harder.

Best moment so far: went in to a mission to exterminate some guardsmen who had been slated to get mind-wiped after their mission but the purge had some how missed them. I'm running around gunning them down, all is great.....when I find the last group of enemies in the level is supported by a FUCKING TANK. And here I am with a Chainsword and Shield, an Autogun and a Personal Void Shield. It took a lot of running circles around the tank carving it up with my chain sword. Of course you'd never kill a tank with a man-sized chainsword or an autogun but game needs must I suppose. For this reason I switched my loadout to a Power Sword and Shield and a Plasma Gun to deal with armored opponents. I'm not a fan of how the plasma gun shoots or sounds but it gets the job done.

So yeah. Combat's difficulty and how it starts getting technical with gameplay as soon as the tutorial levels are over kind of save it from its own design. If you had to worry less about enemies, you'd have more time to grouse about the level design. But fights can be challenging enough that levels, eventually, do an adequate job. I just wish they were more fun to explore, the only things they offer you outside of the mission objectives are consumable resupply boxes and the occasional chest with random loot, which you honestly don't need because the game SHOWERS you in loot after every mission, 90% of which you won't use. There is also the occasional set of traps (explosives, alarms that spawn enemies, locked doors and poison gas) that break up the repetitiveness of hunting down enemies. It's just not enough to make these levels feel alive though. There need to be patrols of enemies. Tile set rooms need to have SOMETHING going on for them other than a group of enemies, some cover, and maybe a resupply chest or two. If levels were great, I'd call the game great. Right now I can only call it good though, because of this single element.

But yeah, combat does require a little bit of brain power. Everything needs to die but the order in which they die determines how hard it's going to be. Do you:
-Shoot or explode all the weaker guys? They don't do much damage or suppression, but as a whole they both can tip a fight in the enemies favor if you leave them alone. Guys with flamethrowers especially will shred your suppression quickly and leave you very vulnerable.
-Kill the elites? Big guys with big guns and tons of HP take a while to kill, but their damage and suppression cannot be ignored for long. A single one of them isn't a match for a player, but an elite backed up by plenty of lesser units is.
-Kill the leader? Leaders may not hit as hard as elites, but they have tons of HP and buff all the enemies around them. While you'd usually want to kill them first, the buffs they add to all the enemies around them make their damage much, much more dangerous, to the point you don't have the luxury of wailing on the leader while their entire troop shoots you in the back. Or they'll drop in or summon support units.
-Destroy their support vehicles and turrets? Leaders regularly drop tarantula support turrets in to the fight, which can be the straw that breaks the camel's back. While they aren't super damaging or super tough, they're armored and that firepower can sometimes be just enough to push you over the edge.

So for me, despite really hating the plasma gun, it's an effective weapon at singling out guys to shoot from range. Where it'd be suicide to charge in to melee, the plasma gun can help you whittle down a pack to managable levels.

On top of all this, enemies often regenerate health very fast. It's not clear if this is just elites and leaders, daemons or most units, but you don't have the luxury of sniping down guys' health and running away, they will regen that lost health after a few seconds. So you have to keep the pressure on in combat when it comes to tougher targets, and that can occasionally feel too hard, especially when you've already blown through all your healing and supply pickups.

Quote
Also I'm not sure I like the active abilities being purely tied to gear.  I like unlocking new skills and abilities and modifiers for how those skills and abilities work in these types of games (and picking and choosing to make my own build) far more so than unlocking e.g. lots of +2% fire damage upgrades, but what I've seen this looks to be more of the latter than the former.  Seems like you'd be choosing which weapon(s) to use fairly early on and that's your skills for the rest of the game.  I dunno, maybe there's more build stuff that I've missed/not seen.

I'm not 100% clear on which it is yet either. I think in a way, weapons stand in for skills. You unlock more and more of the 40k armory as you level up, so every couple of games you're like "Oh sweet, that weapon is in. I gotta try that!"

For example, I got a plasma pistol and was like "I gotta try doing a chainsword in one hand and a plasma pistol in the other." Turns out that most but not all weapons have 4 abilities. If you dual wield two weapons that each has 4 abilities, you get the first two from each. So I ended up with a build that had a "channeled" melee attack (which is what chainswords do, it's called eviscerate, it's awesome), a crowd cleaving strike, a single shot from the plasma pistol or a slightly harder hitting single shot. I ended up scraping that combo because the plasma pistol just can't compare in usefulness to the suppression shield, but it's fun to mix and match stuff like you're building your own table top hero unit.

So far the most satisfying weapon I've used in game is the humble Autogun. While it's probably the least appreciated or iconic weapon in 40k, in this it sounds GREAT, does really good damage and has multiple firing modes, all of which are situationally useful. Unfortunately the gun lacks any real armor piercing damage, which in 40k is basically a must.

Lastly, I think this is a decent channel for gameplay vids, the video quality seems good. The dude looks like he has played a ton of it. I make no claims as to his quality as a youtuber though, never heard of him before: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVu0i8GXSTU&list=PLy5KHwY-7WyZ_mBF569Wyn_tzAYj7cdSO
« Last Edit: May 01, 2018, 06:11:44 pm by nenjin »
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Cautivo del Milagro seamos, Penitente.
Quote from: Viktor Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.
Quote from: Sindain
Its kinda silly to complain that a friendly NPC isn't a well designed boss fight.
Quote from: Eric Blank
How will I cheese now assholes?
Quote from: MrRoboto75
Always spaghetti, never forghetti
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