Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr Ultimate Edition Review (Xbox Series X)

STAFF REVIEW of Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr Ultimate Edition (Xbox Series X)

Monday, December 19, 2022.
by Adam Dileva

Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr Ultimate Edition Box art

I’ll admit, I know the bare basics about the Warhammer 40,000 universe. While I’ve played and reviewed a handful of their games, the ones I’ve played were mostly very tactical and turn based strategy games. Some I enjoyed, others not as much, but I wasn’t really sure what to expect with Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr Ultimate Edition, a mouthful of a title. If Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr sounds familiar, that’s because is originally released back in 2018, but this Ultimate Edition has now been improved and now exclusively for next-gen (current-gen?) with a ton of additions and improvements.

I’ll admit, I’m generally not all that into Action RPG’s (ARPG) like Diablo, Path of Exile and plenty of others, so when I saw that Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr Ultimate Edition was along the same lines, I went in with trepid expectations. Hours later, I’ve been unable to stop myself from continuing to play, constantly wanting to do ‘one more run’ to level, grind and get new upgrades. The ARPG gameplay loop definitely got its hooks in me, and I’ve been working on three separate characters continually.

So you previously played Inquisitor – Martyr and want to know what’s all included in the Ultimate Edition? Now available on Xbox Series X|S, Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr Ultimate Edition not only is an ‘all in one’ collection with all 25 previously released DLC’s, but has a ton of other improvements as well. With a bunch of quality of life improvements, visual upgrades, mission packs and more, there’s plenty of content here to last you quite a while. That said, as someone new coming into the game, it was quite overwhelming at first, as not much is taught to you very well or really slow dripped and fed to you, it’s this massive amount of content all at once that took me a good handful of hours to really grasp and figure out.

Probably the biggest portion of this Ultimate Edition’s content would be the inclusion of the Prophecy expansion that most notably added a new campaign and class. This narrative takes place over the course of three decently length chapters that takes place after the main Martyr storyline. There’s not only a new class for you to play, the Tech-Adept, this ‘pet’ class was a lot of fun to play and was very unique compared to the original three core classes. This Tech-Adept Inquisitor must use his constructs to explore new areas and fight new enemies, adding some fresh variety.

On top of this content there’s a slew of other additions and improvements coming in the form of new pets, new cosmetics, more missions in new areas, a ranked game mode, 4K support, new textures, better destruction physics, cross-gen multiplayer, a higher level cap and more. There’s no doubt that the Ultimate Edition is certainly the definitive edition if you’re a newcomer like myself, with no shortage of things to do if you’re looking for a game to sink dozens of hours into.

Taking place in the Caligari Sector, you are an Inquisitor, a highly ranked agent for the Imperium. The narrative actually starts off quite interestingly with you investigating a seemingly derelict ship called the titular Martyr. This is no ordinary ship though, more of a monastery or fortress and absolutely massive in size. As you land on the ship to explore, something of course goes awry and you must figure out where everyone went and what secret is being held within, maybe something the Inquisition might not want to come to light.

Taking place over five chapters, there’s quite a lot going on that Warhammer 40K fans will be sure to piece together into the whole mythos, but was honestly a lot to take in for a casual fan like myself. This is a Warhammer game though, so you can expect near endless waves of enemies that you’ll need to fight through to get to your objectives. Outside of the campaign, there’s plenty of other side missions and content to partake in, not even including the over two dozen DLC’s that are included as well.

ARPG fans of Diablo and Path of Exile will surely have an idea what to expect for its core gameplay loop, as you’ll be fighting hordes of enemies, leveling up, improving your abilities and of course, the mountains of loot you’ll constantly be sifting through. A few things that I wasn’t expecting was how nearly everything was destructible, usable to your advantage, a cover system that I admittedly didn’t use often and even a few missions where you take control of some massive tanks or mechs.

Before you begin your adventure on Martyr though you first must create a character from one of the four different classes. You have the Crusader, the ‘tank’ class that can choose massive guns or swords and can take the brunt of the damage for your groups. The Assassin can’t take as much damage with its light armor, but can sneak in and do some massive damage, especially to single targets with its stealth-like gameplay. The Psyker is essentially your mage, the class cannon. This is the class I chose to play initially as I wanted to play from ranged distance and blast enemies from afar. There’s more to it than that though, as I need to rotate my skills and abilities to make the most of my damage, balancing my skills as to not leave myself as vulnerable. Lastly is the new Tech-Adept, a really fun class that allows you to have constructs, essentially pets and turrets, making for a completely unique playstyle, great for groups with your friends.

There’s also subclasses after you choose which you want to play as, more like a starting point and preferred starting weapon and abilities, though you can customize your character as you level up in a very diverse skill tree the further you progress. The best part, the overall progression is account based, so if you max one character and start another, you’ll carry over many of your unlocks and gear that you’ve placed in your personal storage, as well as the numerous and confusing currencies that are all for different things.

After a few brief missions that act as a tutorial of sorts, you’ll arrive at your home base after each mission. Here you can talk to a few NPC’s that you’ve found and unlocked during your journey, a personal shared bank for your characters, a crafting system, and a lot more that would take me many paragraphs to explain. Missions are chosen at your will, all varying in difficulties with a shown level range. You don’t necessarily have to only work on campaign missions, as there’s plenty of side missions to work on should you want, a necessity for grinding, leveling and finding gear. Kind of like Mass Effect, you’ll choose the sector of space you want to go to, then what system, and finally the planets or stars will show you the missions at each that are available. It’s a little cumbersome at first, but eventually you’ll find the better hotkeys to select it via menu rather than actually exploring the star map.

Combat works quite well on console with a controller in hand. Depending on your gear you’ve chosen, this will alter how you attack, what specials you have and more. For example, for my Psyker class there’s a big difference between Force and Warp rods/staves. A force rod is a small single handed weapon that shoots rapid fire, so naturally having one in each hand was a lot of run to rapid fire enemies that were coming towards me. Then I found the Force staff, a 2 handed weapon that is basically a railgun that can shoot through anything in a straight line, but is slower. Different weapon types have completely different attacks as well, as another type of Warp weapons instead acted like a typical shotgun, or having a flame based staff. There’s so much variety and you can freely swap between two weapon loadouts based on the situation you find yourself in.

The same went for my Tech-Adept, as I of course focused on my constructs when it came to abilities, but choosing a type of weapon that was quicker and more rapid fire gave me more success than a slower sniper-like type of weapon. It really does come down to gear preference, not just your weapons, but the skills and abilities you choose to improve as your rise in levels.

Let’s be honest, the main reason many enjoy ARPG’s like this is because of the loot. There’s something exciting about picking up a whole backpack of loot that you get to sift through once you get back to base after a mission, usually with an upgrade or two if you're lucky. The first 50 levels or so I was constantly upgrading my gear with a piece here and there, though it took some figuring out to determine what was better or not, as I used to go simply my rarity or level, but now I tend to instead focus on the stats on the gear as I’m now nearly indestructible with ‘HP on hit’ gear equipped. With a number of different rarities of gear, you’ll quickly upgrade your starter gear into blues, then greens (why green is higher than blue I’m not sure), purple and even relics.

Eventually gear will also start to have socket slots and you’ll be able to improve or craft gear if you have the credits and materials necessary. I’ll be honest, there’s a lot thrown at you at once and it was actually quite overwhelming at first, as I wasn’t sure what I should be focusing on. Do I sell gear for credits or salvage for components? Do I choose a piece of gear I like and spend a ton to improve its stats, level or even add socket slots, or grind out more to get a better piece instead? I’m still figuring all this out, even after many hours into the game, but there’s surely a ton here to dive head first into for those that really want to min-max their characters.

While perfectly fine as a single player experience, Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr Ultimate Edition is best alongside some friends where you can all grind and do missions together. This can be online or locally with couch co-op. Up to four players can get together to grind missions and you can even make a Cabal, essentially a Guild, to work towards other rewards and gain perks. The menu and inviting system for multiplayer is quite cumbersome though and took some time to figure out, but once you have a group leader that knows how to do so quickly and has some Tarot Cards that are essentially modifiers for missions, you can have a lot of fun together going through missions with a good group of buddies.

Having missed out on the original release, I’m glad I got to play this Ultimate Edition, as I got a ton of extra content and a much improved version visually. While 4K/60 was normal, there were times where this dipped in multiplayer when a lot was going on screen at once. Even for an ARPG, there’s a good amount of detail if you do zoom in to see your character and abilities, though the destructible environments were the most impressive. Cutscenes were quite high in quality and best yet, the voice acting across the board was quite well done. There’s plenty of explosions and heavy sounds when in constant combat and I never felt I needed to mute the soundtrack even when grinding a dozen missions back to back.

If you’ve been looking for a Diablo or Path of Exile alternative, you want to check this one out. Don’t let the Warhammer 40K setting steer you away, as even a very casual fan myself, I found myself addicted to the ARPG gameplay. There’s a ton of content included, and while it does a poor job of slowly introducing each element or teaching you a lot of things, there’s a surprising amount of entertainment to be had regardless of your playstyle or class choices.

**Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr Ultimate Edition was provided by the publisher and reviewed on an Xbox Series X**

Overall: 8.0 / 10
Gameplay: 8.5 / 10
Visuals: 8.0 / 10
Sound: 7.5 / 10

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