These are my opinions of the game in early alpha state. I wrote this on March the sixth after playing for several hours. I must admit that I am really impressed by the game so far. It looks very promising and the game is a lot of fun to play already. Note that I played both with mouse and keyboard and the steam controller. English isn’t my native languages, so it is likely that you may find some errors. My apologies.

Character Creation

Currently only the Crusader class is available with the Assassin and Psyker class being released as the alpha progresses. When picking a class you can see their base traits that define the class’ way of playing. Only the Crusader is able to use a shield and a heavy melee weapon. They wear power armor and use Focus for their unique class skills.

After picking a class you then choose an area of expertise which dictates your starting weapons and your unique class skill. The three unique class skills Crusader can choose from are a jump (in and from combat or for traveling faster), a cyclone missile launcher for AoE damage and deploying a sentry turret. This way 3 Crusader players can play very differently depending on their expertise.

I imagine the Assassin and Psyker classes will have 3 expertises to choose from too.

Stats

As with any ARPG there is a variety of different stats in Inquisitor Martyr governing offense, defense and survivability. The gear and weaponry you use will give you bonusses in different stats. Want a lot of survivability in melee? Grab all that +HP regeneration per second and Damage Reduction. Want to bring the pain? Go all out on Ranged or Melee damage with your gear. Pretty basic stuff if you played games (especially RPGs/ARPGs) before but it makes for widely different playstyles. There is a multitude of gearslots ready to be outfitted, from weaponslots to armorslots to different implants.

To further diversify your playstyle with stats you can put points in different skill trees. Personally, I find the name confusing as these skill trees give you statboosts and not actual skills to use in combat. Currently there are 7 different skill trees to put your points in. These skilltrees have a certain theme like Melee Combat or Damage over Time.

For my Crusader I picked the Close Combat expertise for the jump skill. Because I love witch hunters from Warhammer Fantasy I needed to get my sword + pistol game on and found a nice chainsaw and a plasma pistol to use. To make up for the defense I lost from the shield I made sure to keep gear that gave me +HP Regen per second and put some points in the Magos Biologis Secrets skilltree. After that I went ham on the Melee and Ranged Combat skilltrees to deal more damage on my melee and ranged attacks.

This is but one example of how to gear and play a Crusader! So far I’ve found a nice variety of one handed and two handed weapons. From one handed power axes to two handed plasma cannons. The most iconic weapons seem to be in the game already. Want to melt heretics? Grab a flamer! Want to be the hammer of the God-Emperor? Grab your two handed thunder hammer or go for a shield plus power maul. Want to deal death from afar? Grab a heavy bolter or a plasma cannon! This game has got you covered.

I am curious to see if the current amount of weaponry is purely for the Crusader. If the other 2 classes will get the same amount of unique weaponry then there are a lot of different playstyles available, especially in teamplay. I do not know if there are enough weapons in the 40k universe to make this happen, so I suspect some weapons will overlap with the other classes. I can imagine the Psyker using some kind of staff and having a las pistol, for example.

Starmap

To get into action you must make use of the starmap. It’s kind of reminiscent of Warframe’s starmap in the way that you pick a place to go to. In this current build we can see the Caligari sector with only the Tenebra subsector open to us. This particular subsector has 4 systems with a varying amount of planets/void stations within those systems. Each planet/void station can have different missions available. It is most likely that the planet or voidstation you pick to quest on will dictate the way the levels look and perhaps even the missions available. I’ve seen a Nurgle infested planet landscape and different imperial ship interiors so far.

To give players different things to do, next to your usual monster slaying, there are different types of missions ready for you to complete. You can hunt for spoils of war on a map where you need to fight your way through bad guys to get to chests containing relics or whatnot for the inquisition to take. Perhaps you want a bit more of a challenge? Pick an assassination mission where you have to take down stronger things like Rebel Commanders, Dreadnoughts and/or Decimators. I’ve seen 6 mission types so far (Hunt, Assassination, Spoils of War, Daemonic Incursion, Nurgle Infestation, Purge), with perhaps more mission types in the future!

Combat

The combat so far is satisfying to me. I have played my share of Diablo 3, Path of Exile, Grim Dawn, Wolcen and Marvel Heroes and I think Inquisitor Martyr is already a decent competitor for your time.

You have 4 weaponskills, 1 grenade slot, 1 class skill from your chosen expertise and your wardrug (heal). The weapon skills depend on the weapons you use. If you use a sword and shield you will get 2 melee sword skills and 2 shield skills. Using a pistol in your offhand? Then you have two pistol skills based on the type of pistol you are using next to your 2 melee sword skills. I have seen around 7 one handed melee and pistol items and around 8 two handed melee and gun items. Those are a lot of different weapon combinations especially when you consider that you can take a second weaponset with you! This way you can have an anti infantry melee set and an anti armor ranged set.

The combat itself feels slower than the combat of the titles I mentioned at the begining of this chapter, however I find that fitting to the warhammer universe. You can do your run and gun stuff but not as crazy as in Diablo 3, atleast not from what I have seen so far. This is low level play we are getting to see and how endgame will play is not yet clear. What also may be of influence of the combat speed is the current available class. The Crusader is a tank character.

During combat you can make use of the fully destroyable cover in the maps. Imagine landing on a Nurgle infested planet. You can crouch behind some weird fleshy trees as a Nurgle Dreadnought unleashes a deadly barrage from its autocannon. In the imperial ships you can stand behind various pillars of the ships interior. I believe destroying cover deals damage on enemies using the cover, so it can be a good idea to shoot a pillar or destroy cover with a grenade to deal extra damage.

Another reason to use cover besides the fact that you won’t get hit as much, is the suppression system in the game. As more enemies swarm or shoot you, you will get more and more suppressed. This results in your character being slowed and more susceptible to knockdowns. I don’t know the other negative modifiers yet but these were the 2 obvious noticable things.

The animations appear fluid but there is room for improvement. Some animations aren’t even in the game yet. This is especially hilarious to me with my favorite weaponset, the chainsaw and plasma pistol. I float around the levels with my upper body rotating to shoot and when I get close to enemies they just explode into this gory rain as there are no shooting or melee combat animations for the melee and pistol combination yet. However the animations that are in the game look fine and the general aesthetics are great.

Progression

Progression what I’ve seen so far comes from rarity in gear, skill points for stats, attribute points (more stats), completing heroic deeds (kind of like achievement hunting) and perhaps unlocking newer subsectors on the starmap.

Regarding gear, I’ve found common (yellow), uncommon (blue) and rare (green) gear. I’ve seen some youtubers with purple and orange gear though, so I know there are 2 more rarity tiers from what I’ve found in-game. Skill points seem to come as you level up, as you would expect. Attribute points seem to be awarded when you finish heroic deeds, like killing certain enemies or killing enemies in a certain way. You can put attribute points in 3 different trees for different stats like movement speed, resistances or more damage while your suppression-bar is in the green.

Hopes

After being burnt by Eternal Crusade I really didn’t feel like jumping in another alpha stage game but I’ve been keeping an eye on Inquisitor Martyr since its announcement. I didn’t hop on the alpha straight away on the 10th of February as For Honor kept me busy but I was too curious to just wait for more content so I bought the 40 euro’s package.

From what I’ve seen so far there is a lot of good stuff in the game. The Crusader feels good and the variety of weaponry is amazing. I hope there are things like Diablo’s Legendary Weapons planned that alter certain skills or certain armors/implants that alter your class skill (like your jump skill costing less Focus, dealing less AoE damage but you can travel farther, or instead of summoning 1 sentry turret you now summon 3 turrets). This would keep the hunt for different builds going plus it would look great having a team of Heavy Bolter users all using their weapons differently due to skillchanges because of the gear that is worn.

The starmap seems big and the current system looks like it can be easily added to. This makes me hopeful fort he future where new subsectors could be opened and new maps with different landscapes and lay-outs would be revealed.

As it is with an alpha there are some bugs and visual glitches in the game but nothing too serious from what I’ve noticed so far. Things like the sword/pistol combination not having running/fighting animations, enemy ragdolls flying over the screen or bodyparts being stretched over the screen when blown up are things I’ve seen so far but that doesn’t bother me too much.

Conclusion

All-in all I think this is a great game and it’s in an early alpha state. The content in the game points towards a very interesting future and the roadmap on the website of Inquisitor Martyr promises some really cool features like vehicular combat, Perks, Cabal Wars, Different enemy factions, Crafting of gear, SKillcrafting, Special starmap locations and more!

If you like warhammer 40k and action roleplaying games, or just want to play a sci-fi action roleplaying game, definitely give this game a shot if you do not mind a growing game!

TLDR

Class system seems cool, Combat feels nice but a bit slow, lots of different things to upgrade (weapons/armors/implants), lots of stats and stattrees (named skilltrees in this game and attribute points for more stats), starmap looks nice and appearantly way way way more to come!

Thank you for your time and I am really curious as to what you guys think of the game and my opinions :)