I would like to start off this review by stating that The Inquisitor has one of the coolest premises I have ever seen in a videogame, and I swear I’m not exaggerating. This is the kind of game whose elevator pitch alone is enough to warrant sales. Based on a book series by Polish author Jacek Piekara, you play as an inquisitor in an alternate reality where Jesus did not die on the cross, instead seeking vengeance on his killers, destroying the Roman Empire, founding an (even more) evil Catholic Church which promotes vengeance and mercilessness… and where the clergy is actually allowed to use magic. Oh, and your objective in the game is to hunt down a vampire hidden in a dirty, impoverished European medieval village.

You may not have even seen the final verdict at the end of the review, but you may be thinking to yourself: “this premise is metal as f***. I’m in. I’m sold”. Yep, that was my first reaction upon hearing about The Inquisitor as a whole. And to be fair, as far as storytelling goes, this is indeed amazing. Now, a premise alone isn’t enough to ensure a game’s quality. Sadly, as much as I loved this setting, The Inquisitor is a deeply flawed and janky game that fails to truly deliver and reach its full potential.

So, as previously mentioned, this is a crapsack rendition of Medieval Europe, controlled by an even more sadistic and merciless version of the Catholic church. Oddly enough, not as corrupt. As an inquisitor with the hilarious-but-badass name of Mordimer Madderdin, you are sent to the Medieval town of Königstein to investigate the rumors of the appearance of a vampire. You may be a (licensed) servant of God, but in this alternate reality, you are free to be merciless, and you are free to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh. Mordimer loves a good wine, and doesn’t shy away from going to a brothel every once in a while, especially if going there allows him to gather information on wherever or whatever he needs to investigate next.

The ways you can interact with people, and extract information from them, are quite impressive. The Inquisitor is the kind of game which would warrant multiple playthroughs in order for you to experience multiple story outcomes (if the game wasn’t so janky, that is). The writing is indeed pretty good, and you can either manipulate, woo, or torture someone for information. But that’s not the only thing you need to do in order to guarantee the info you’ve been given is legit. You need to gather proof. Given this is medieval Europe, there aren’t many options for that. The solution is to visit the Unworld.

Mordimer has a strange supernatural skill which allows him to momentarily remove his soul from his body, letting it visit the Unworld, which isn’t exactly Hell or Purgatory. It’s more of an opposite dimension residing concurrently alongside the real world, where the truth lies, or something confusing like that. In it, you will need to venture through some creepy locales and gather light balls which contain the truth to the situation. It would have been easy enough if it wasn’t for some Lovecraftian monsters residing in this dimension. Your only defense against them is to walk while praying, which momentarily renders you invisible to their gaze. I don’t understand how. Not that I really care. In this case, you can’t exactly fend off against enemies, but you can do that in the “real world”. And oh boy, it’s not fun.

The same way I swear I’m not exaggerating when I say that The Inquisitor has one of the coolest settings in gaming (and media) history, I am also not exaggerating when I say that this game features one of the absolute WORST combat mechanics I have ever seen in a game. Combat sections don’t happen all the time, but when you are locked into one of them, you have to deal with utterly sluggish controls, terrible input delay, really poor animations (Nintendo 64 games have better animations than these sections), and an overall feeling you’re not doing a lot of damage. There’s no enemy feedback, the sound effects are poor, your moveset is limited.

In fact, even though this game clearly wants to be a bite-sized version of The Witcher in its storytelling, setting, cynicism and overall, uh, Polish-ness, the game The Inquisitor reminded me the most was Shenmue 3, and this is not a good thing to be compared to. Both games are adventure titles in which you walk around a semi-open map, exploring your surroundings and questioning people in order to advance through the plot, which is a murder mystery. The difference is that Shenmue has you walking around a town asking about where sailors hang out. The Inquisitor, admittedly, makes questionings a lot more interesting, thanks to you being a feared individual who can torture and interrogate people with little to no repercussions. And then both games feature tacked-on combat sections which suuuuuuuck.

I really hate the fact The Inquisitor is so full of flaws. I love the design of Königstein, and how dirty and depraved it looks. It clearly reminded me of Witcher 3‘s Novigrad, if that city was covered in ten meters of manure and disease. The place itself is awesome, but the game’s character models are terribly animated, with very little facial expressions. Mordimer himself looks like the country singer Brad Paisley, if he fronted a Gothic metal band instead. He is always frowning, barely moving his facial muscles in order to express his feelings (or lack thereof).

To make matters worse, the framerate is, well, terrible. There’s no other way to describe it; it’s simply terrible. This game isn’t available on last-gen consoles, meaning it had no excuse to run so poorly on the PS5 and Xbox Series X. It rarely manages to achieve 30 frames a second, let alone 60. The rare instances in which a somewhat decent framerate was achieved was whenever Mordimer ventured the Unworld, which is emptier than Königstein itself. The frame pacing is all over the place as well, as to be expected, directly impacting the game’s overall responsiveness. Given how the vast majority of The Inquisitor is spent talking to people, this isn’t as egregious, but things become even more infuriating when you have to add in framerate issues to the aformentioned disastrous combat sections.

I don’t want to end this review on such a poor note, so I intentionally left a positive aspect for last. Despite its many issues, the sound department isn’t bad. In fact, the voice acting is quite good. Mordimer’s voice actor delivers a somewhat deadpan, but appropriate performance for a character like him. He’s not overly stoic, not overly joyful. When he sees a dog, he rejoices. When he sees a kid doing something wrong, he’s harsh but fair. When you decide to be an actual hardcore inquisitor against someone, oh boy, they’re gonna feel his wrath. Likewise, the soundtrack is very, uh Witcher-ish, but in a good way. It’s cheaper and less impressive than what CDPR was able to achieve, of course, but it perfectly fit the overall setting.

I cannot stress how disappointed I was with The Inquisitor. It’s all due to how much I wanted to love it. Its setting and premise are downright amazing. I loved Königstein and the mysteries haunting it. I wanted to know what would happen next in this crapsack world. Sadly, that required playing the actual game, which ended up being janky, messy, and full of questionable design choices. I commend the developers for taking risks when trying to adapt an unknown book into a game, but for as interesting as The Inquisitor is, it’s not worth playing it in this current state. If anything, it made me want to read the books it was based on. Any idea if they have ever been translated from their original Polish?

Graphics: 4.5 The world itself is beautifully designed, but the character models, animations, and framerate are something you would expect from a cross-gen PS4 game released in 2014, not the PS5.	Gameplay: 4.0 A lot of different mechanics add an unexpected amount of depth to this game, but the controls, framerate, and abominable combat hinder it from actually being enjoyable.
Sound: 7.5 Despite the myriad of issues seen in other departments, I was impressed with how… decent the voice acting was. The soundtrack was also a carbon copy of what you would see in a Witcher game, but still far from bad. The sound mixing could have been a bit better, but all things considered, it’s a positive.	Fun Factor: 6.5 I wanted to love this game, because its premise is outstanding. I would legit grab a copy of the books if I could. Sadly, in order to experience the bonkers story and premise, I had to play the game itself. There were interesting and enjoyable moments, but there was also a lot of meandering, jank, and terrible combat sections.
Final Verdict: 5.5

The Inquisitor is available now on PS5, Xbox Series S/X and PC.

Reviewed on PS5.

A copy of The Inquisitor was provided by the publisher.