➤ Latin videoudico 🎮

Nicolas Eymerich, Inquisitor: The Plague is the first chapter of a tetralogy starring the Dominican inquisitor Nicolas Eymerich, controversial historical figure made famous by the pen of Valerio Evangelisti in a series of highly successful novels. The TiconBlu by Ivan Venturi, an old acquaintance of the Spanish videogame world (remember Simulmondo?), Together with Imagimotion, took care of the literary work trying to videogame some key dynamics among those most appreciated by the readers.

The first thing you notice while playing it is that for now La Peste is only available in two languages: Italian and Latin. In general, this is an original idea, although not usable by everyone, but it helps to better enter the atmosphere. Of course, we note the lack of English, the only one able to guarantee the product a certain worldwide diffusion, but we are sure that it will soon be implemented. The game is available for several platforms, namely PC, Mac, iPad and soon Android tablets. The version we tested is the PC version. Having made the necessary premises, we warm up the mouse and go straight into the adventure.

Sono Eymerich, Nicola Eymerich

Nicolas Eymerich, Inquisitor: The Plague is a classic graphic adventure, with a contextual point and click interface (the cursor icon changes according to the selected hot-spot, with the left mouse button used to recall the various available actions) that sees the player in the the role of the gruff inquisitor, a complex character with a character that is not exactly easy to decipher. At the beginning of the adventure, ours arrives in the abbey of Carcassonne where he receives an assignment from the slimy abbot who governs it: to find a missing inquisitor in a village in southern France, where it seems there are strange activities going on. Without being able to discuss the orders, Eymerich must work to prepare the trip, in the meantime getting the most precise idea possible of the powers he will face.

The player's aim is therefore to do some research inside the abbey, discovering its innermost secrets, and then head to its final destination. Inside the stone walls of that austere place, plagued by physical and moral corruption (imagine us with pointing finger and a random holy book in hand, a copy of Playboy is fine too, which we don't want to be too blasphemous), Eymrich will find heresies and will discover strange happenings, all of which can be dealt with by clicking the mouse. In this sense, we tell you without further ado that we are talking about a classic graphic adventure, with more or less logical puzzles to solve and elements of great interest. The fans of the genre will be happy, also because some are really fun to solve. It is true that in various cases the solutions are not very obvious, but we are talking about a graphic adventure, so we may have to think for a few minutes about how to unblock the situation.

Eymrich for everyone
Nicolas Eymerich, Inquisitor: The Plague, and we also imagine the following chapters, has several interesting options that really allow everyone to end the adventure. Starting the game you can choose between two modes, namely the adventure, in which you have to solve all the puzzles, and the so-called Interactive Novel, which allows you to follow the story without worrying about the puzzles (you advance in the story by clicking on the mouse). Obviously the second greatly shortens the duration of the game. Another interesting option is the Audiogame mode which also allows blind people to enjoy the story. It is probably one of the first video games to have full support in this regard.

Penance

One of the best elements of La Peste is certainly the setting, that is the care taken in the construction of the sets and narrative elements. For example, it is very nice to open and leaf through the pages of the book with Eymrich's notes, or to convince you we can quote you an enigma built around historical facts that proved to be particularly profound to solve, not so much in the dynamics, as in the implications. In short, the first factor for liking Eymerich is not so much weighing his characteristics, as being passionate about his background, including the protagonist. Eymerich itself deserves a separate discussion. This is not the typical video game protagonist all brawn and no brains, but a cultured churchman with often irritating and questionable attitudes. The good Nicolas is rude, sometimes even cruel in the peremptory nature of his sentences towards those in front of him, but it is precisely this otherness that puts him above many of the characters who have alternated on our videogame screens. His way of approaching other human beings makes dialogues an experience in itself. You may be thinking that much of Eymrich's appeal is owed to Evangelisti more than to the developers, but we doubt that this is the case. In the world of video games we have often seen works taken from films or novels trivialized beyond belief, as we have seen works transformed into non-video games for fear of losing the contents of the originals. It would be enough to remember that Paulo Coelho also wrote a graphic adventure that turned out to be very little to give Eymerich's writing the value it deserves.

The holy inquisition

Unfortunately Eymerich also has its nice flaws. The most obvious is certainly the dubbing, which is not exactly exceptional. We solved it by putting the lyrics in Spanish and the dubbing in Latin ...

so who knows how to recite in Latin? Another problem, deriving from the multi-platform nature of the game, is that graphically the work of TiconBlu has several uncertainties. Some sacrifices in terms of graphic detail will probably have been necessary to squeeze the game into mobile platforms, where in fact Eymerich offers its best from this point of view, but in the PC version some problems are evident. Another issue is longevity. We finished Eymerich in about five hours, which we consider a fair time for the price it costs (you can buy it in digital version or in box version, the latter slightly more expensive), but some may not think so, especially by virtue of the fact that to follow the whole story it will be necessary to buy four chapters. In reality we are in the average times of Telltale games, the reference model for episodic titles.

Comment

Version tested: PC Official site Price: € 14,90 on PC; from € 5,90 on iOS Resources4Gaming.com

7.8

Readers (14)

7.2

Your vote

Nicolas Eymerich, Inquisitor: The Plague is a very good graphic adventure. Not without flaws, it is certainly to be taken into consideration for its contents and for the general construction. Keep in mind that this is only the first episode of a series. Consequently, in case you are passionate about it, you have to consider the expense to be incurred to purchase the following chapters. We advise you to do it because it deserves.