Alpha Pariah, (a soulless person who can neutralise warp presence and destabilises psykers powers)

Inquisitor: Martyr is a top down hack and slash ARPG, with similarities to Sacred, Torchlight & Diablo that has you wading through mobs of enemies in order to uncover a millennia old secret that could save or destroy the Imperium. For the sale price of $25 I thought it was a good game, lacking some of the polish of its AAA counter parts have but still worth the solid 25+ hours it provided.Set in the Warhammer 40K universe you play as an inquisitor, an agent of the imperium who can sentence worlds to death for the slightest hint of corruption. Receiving an order to investigate the Martyr, a long lost fortress monastery (giant spaceship) that has been ejected back into real space from the warp you start to uncover secrets that could tear the imperium apart and have to make a choice that could shape the Imperium of Man for millennium to come.The game does both an excellent job of building the grim dark setting of the 40k universe, while also butchering some of the background and doing a poor job of explaining any of the universes overarching story. Having prior knowledge of the 40k setting is almost mandatory. You are only given the briefest introduction to what the inquisition does, how tech is worshiped and treated and the other imperium factions are barely mentioned at all (the different Inquisition factions are better explained in Prophecy). The setting of the Imperium (fascist religion who worship a corpse vs cultists who worship dark gods) is skipped entirely. This makes roleplaying options between radical and puritan difficult, as by todays standard the choices seem back to front (killing everyone is a puritan option, while sparing people is a radical idea). The main character of the game break long standing background ideas – the. GW have set the precedence on some of their recent books, but it goes against nearly 30 years of background. One of the player character classes, the Psyker shouldn’t even be allowed in the same room.Gameplay was good, as instead of never ending maps you get short 10-15 min missions (think torchlight), where you either have set targets to neutralise, all foes on a map, destroying objects or hacking terminals or rescuing and protecting weaker characters. When everything is done you teleport back to base, equip loot, sell unwanted items, upgrade stats and abilities before diving back in. The cover system was very cool, and not something I’ve seen in a hack and slash. Each character has a suppression bar, which show how likely they will be effected by effects (knockdown ect). Battles become very difficult when you start to constantly get knocked around, which is where the cover system comes in. You can also use it when using ranged weapons (if you equip them), and the AI does a decent job of trying to use it as well.I would highly recommend focusing on doing the main story missions, until you have unlocked the morality options (end of chapter 3). Many of the DLC missions give good boosts to this bar and other than main story missions additional chances to progress on this are very limited and depend on RNG (Prophecy greatly adds to this). The game systems and options are unlocked very slowly (like morality, tarot cards, void missions), so you miss out on quite a few drops if you deviate from the main story early. You are constantly unlocking options for your character up until lvl 50, so there is plenty to experiment with.The game suffers from what all hack and slash ARPGs suffer from, equipment creep. No matter how good the item is, it will eclipsed eventually by a higher level generic item. Luckily each character isn’t locked into a set build that focuses around equipment (the right abilities help, but it’s only a problem when you are at max level). Perks can be changed freely at the ship, and skill trees can be reset for a slight cost. I found myself switching between whatever weapon setup was most handy at the time (from ranged to close combat), and all the stats are in easily readable format. Each of characters plays very differently and has unique skill tree options, as well as some shared skill trees. Some weapons are shared between the classes, others are locked. There is also a crafting system where you can increase the lvl on loot or re-roll its buffs), if you really want to keep a certain equips for a while longer.I found there was a good range of content to keep myself occupied after the main story. I didn’t hit the lvl cap where I would start farming for the best equipment, but that wasn’t an issue. you have a large choice of free flow missions to pick from, priority missions which, are a few missions strung together with a narrative linking them and some choices to make, war zone missions and void missions which get progressively harder as they continue but give better rewards. There are also challenge maps that have you fighting continuous waves of enemies for better lootThe stages that you traverse look like they come straight from the source material. It’s full of derelict spaceship corridors, frozen planets, destroyed city’s or death worlds. While each stage mostly forces you to follow a path there is tons of objects that look like they belong in that universe, and most of it is destructible. I really liked how every enemy wasn’t just cultists, but how it differentiated between renegades, cultists, daemon worshipers, daemons before you even get to the dark elder and chaos marines.Graphically the game looks good, but only supports up to HD, so on bigger screens some of the objects can appear blurry. There are tons of destructible objects (including cover), so when you are killing enemies stray shots put holes in objects or blow containers up. It does look like there was a high amount of work that has been put into it.The voice work of the main characters was good, as some of the side characters (I loved the stilted speech of the tech priest). The crusaders inquisitor righteous speech’s sounds good, and there was enough humour in the comments between other followers on your ship that it didn’t get dull.Multiplayer still seems active, it only took a couple of minutes to join a game, and loot seems to be unique per player. You can join a cabal and earn extra rewards for playing together. I think the game would be a lot more fun playing with a group of friends.My thoughts for the DLC are under my Inquisitor: Prophecy review (https://steamcommunity.com/id/Carrionjr/recommended/1042800?snr=1_300_recommendgame__402) and hasn’t changed.If you are wanting to get 100% achievements then you will need to purchase some of the DLC, as well as the expansion and be prepared to sink a fair amount of time into playing the game.