@@randomusernameCallin but a review is based on his experience with the game, so the choice is between not mentioning bugs and being dishonest VS mentioning them and maybe having the review become outdated down the line. so he made the objectively right choice
In the character section he kinda forgot the main thing of Abelard as a companion: he's a master at introducing you to strangers and incredibly satisfying to order around.
Right! I bring Abelard to every mission, even though he and my Rogue trader are very similar builds. People need to know who I am, and Abelard is going to be the one to tell them.
I have to say for me what makes it so compelling, is 1 the setting is more unique than usual sci-fi or fantasy settings, 2 your character is not a typical start from nobody become savior every time and these two for me really helped hook me vs other games lately.
Guess you've never heard of Nuns? They aren't exactly romanceable. Hell I don't see any of these companions being romanceable. Romance isn't really something in 40k.
@@TK-zd7ymI kickstarted Kingmaker back in the day. On release, I put 100 hrs into the game, exploring everything and doing every side quest I could find. And then a main quest that allowed me to visit a neighboring kingdom vital to continuing the story expired (there was no visible time limit, but I was busy doing side content and building my kingdom), permanently locking me out from continuing the story. Hard lock for failure and I didn't know when the quest expired or if I had a save file that far back. Put an awful taste in my mouth for their games. They are good games, but so horribly buggy and broken at launch every time I won't touch them for at least 6 months post release.
Agreed. Been soured too many times by bugs from playing RPGs at release. Seems like 6 months - 1 year after release is the best time to play games these days.
Just wait, the game is very good but unfortunately there are A LOT of game breaking bugs, i encountered several already. Even now after several patches i still got one during battle in act 3 where my char is stuck can't do anything and you need to re-do the entire battle which is very annoying. Tbh during my entire 15+ years gaming i never encountered any game with this number of game breaking bugs.
I know it's been said by many people, but I have to repeat it: it is amazing that you complete so many games so quickly. You are a machine. But more than that, your reviews are thorough and far more objective than most. Reviewers like you are few in number, keep up the great work!
Completing games in record time is easy. No side quests, focus on main quests and voila game finished in usually less than a week. My 16 year old son does it on a regular basis. Beat the main quest of Fallout 4 in a little over a week and Dragon Age Inquisition in a week. 😵💫 Really ticks me off - stopped buying him games - figured what was the point. Hell - I've been playing Skyrim since the day it released and am still finding new things to do - same with FO4. He doesn't understand that and I don't understand the way he plays. Each to his own I guess.🙄
I had to stop in early Act 4 because of the transition between Act 3 and 4 so I had to wait for patches. Luckily 2 weeks later it's finally fixed so I went back to my playthrough and I hope to finish it before the year ends. I know there's more bugs at the end of Act 4 and 5 but if it happens again then I will wait a month before going back to it. Thanks for the review Mort! I hope Owlcat can go back and make Pathfinder games now, since that's my preference, even though I really enjoyed Rogue Trader thus far (90+ hours in). PS: Since this video released 1 day before Christmas and on my birthday no less, I wanna wish you Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! :D
@@Panshea No. Chaos Gate is a Strategy turn based rpg (you don't move in the map as party and almost no dialogue choice); DoW 1 & 2 are RTS a completely different genre, you construct bases and troops in real time and try to destroy the enemy base. And are played in 1 secession per game. They only share the Warhammer IP.
My problem with the plot is one detail they miss with Yirilet In my opinion they should add the option, which would reward Player for been Benevolent and maintain good relationship with the character: One additional dialogue scene with Yirilet in the end od chapter two when our eldar companion would ask Rouge Trader about pieces of Craftworld that we have and our relationship to all of that - would be enough . Then, instead of luring us into the trap, she could tell Rouge Trader truth about Marajay offer. So now you travel to that system not in order "to save eldar", but to catch\deal Marajay...But Marajay being a cunning asshole as he is outsmart you (he predict possibility of Yirilet trembling) and you end up in Commora . Same outcome but very different contest
by the end of act 2 what have we really done for her? Maybe benevolently not slaughtered her people and gone to look through a bunch of Aeldari hulks? She should definitely trust us, the person who has a chunk of her destroyed home hanging up on the wall as a trophy.
Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I understood, IF you have normal / bad relationship with her, she lure you into a trap selling you to the DE and IF you have good relationship with her, she still conflicted so she doesn't tell you the full story about Malakai and ask you to come with her thinking it was probably a false lead (but not thinking it would lead for your capture). Doesn't change much gameplay wise but narratively speaking it makes a bit more sense.
For me, the game felt like they tried too much to port a ttrpg system into a videogame. the problem with that is the videogame lacks a dynamic DM that can create a story regardless of success or failure in skill checks. The game makes it clear quite early that if you want, you totally can kill people or fail questlines at any point, but I never felt like doing that was anything more than a fail state, removing content for myself later on. Where a human DM could take a failed skill check and use it going forward to build upon the story and progression just as much as a passed skill check, Rogue Trader uses them as hurdles forcing you have to constantly quick-save and minmax if you want to actually get the most out of your playthrough. The worst of this offense is definitely chapter 3. It amplifies everything and removes the crutches of items and party builds that at least made it bearable prior, and then punishes failed skill checks with losing half of your characters. I am currently struggling to get through it and honestly on the brink of simply dropping the game, which is a shame because I really have enjoyed it, especially through the free-roam of chapter 2.
Originally I felt like when watching videos about the game before and right up to release, I thought it looked complicated and overwhelming to pickup. In comparison to something like Xcom or Baldurs gate. But once I got my hands on the game, I fell in love. The reading is enjoyable due to the lore and the world it’s placed in. The combat is my favorite style so I’m biased, but I enjoy every battle. Compared to their other games, it’s certainly easier to jump into.
Hundreds of hours in beta and alpha and I loved it. Release...is going to be my favourite CRPG second only to Baldur's Gate...in six months time :) Toybox mod is crucial if you are keen to play now.
Gonna hold back on watching this because I'm worried of spoilers, just finished act 3 and going away to my family for 2 weeks now, I just wanna stay home and keep playing frankly. It's the first game since WotR that's been actively robbing me of sleep, sometimes playing into 5-6 in the morning when I gotta get up for work at 9. Man I love Owlcat, despite the less than perfect state of the game currently.
Currently playing through the game and i really like how deep they go into the W40K lore. I encountered one big bug so far which was a recurring one from Pathfinder games where somehow the fight effects/blood/area placed abilities end up on the campaign map/star map. At one point the whole solar system was littered with blood splatter. Difficulty wise some classes seem very dumb down compared to others so far. I have assassins struggling to kill one enemy where my snipers are stacking crits and Argenta with a flamer is just devastating whole Bosses in one turn.
@@spectralassassin6030Mostly is for close combat assasins. But it's from the fact that you can only hit in close line or single target where a character with a melta gun will clean the board effortlessly.
My biggest complaint is not having options to change companion convictions like in Wrath of the Righteous, where you could take them down the light or dark path so to speak. Especially since they give you multiple morality paths to follow, it felt like you just had to take the companions that pre-fit those paths rather than having them change along with you.
@@gusty9053 Sure but Wrath had similar things too. There's no way to turn character like Seelah, a paladin, or Ember down a dark path, and there's no way to turn characters like Wenduag or Camilla towards good. But just having a few whose perspectives get influenced by their relationship with you would've been more interesting IMO.
@@gusty9053 Look up the story of Goge Vandire, he was a High Lord of Terra that basically became a false prophet, claiming he acted in the Emperor's name and became a tyrant, and he had some orders of the sisters of battle fighting for him because they thought they were fighting for the emperor. It wasn't until the Custodians themselves came out and took some of their leaders to the Golden Throne that they realized they had been deceived. Taking a sister of battle down the heretical path doesn't neccessarily mean they are doing blood sacrifices and stuff, it can just mean twisting their faith to serve your purposes. Also, heresy is not the only path, having her become more softhearted and going towards the Iconoclast path could have been an option as well.
@@Jasta85 funnily enough in beta argenta felt more like the iconoclast (benevolentia back then) while Abelard was the Dogmatic (Imperialis) now they are switched and sometimes their actions feel disjointed
@@tortoiseoflegends4466 Even for Camilla and Wenduag you could influence them to an extent, not a complete 180 but at least get them to be different from when they started. You could reject Wenduag in the beginning but bring her back into the party later with some specific choices and have her be more compliant.
@@cathulionetharn5139 This is still the case at least as far as where I am (first leaving Footfall station in Act 2) and it's been driving me nuts. Like. Why is the Adepta Sororitas, who is statistically the MOST Dogmatic of us all at Tier 3, urging me to take the big Iconoclast option at the end of Chapter 1 while my ONLY Iconoclast companion, Abelard, is pragmatically telling me that the Dogmatic answer is the only correct one to take. It's bad enough that there's pretty much no variety in alignment so far, with 4 of my 6 available companions being Dogmatic (which makes sense for standard Imperium citizens but...I kind of figured we'd be recruiting more NON-standard Imperium citizens in a wild frontier of space), but the personalities aren't even matching their statistically stated alignments. At least in Wrath of the Righteous, you could chide Seelah for being unprofessional and eventually guide her toward being a more hardline Paladin, and Ember had three different paths where you could coax her toward stricter "not everybody can be redeemed" goodness or flat out Knight Templar "BURN THE WICKED", or just encourage her current beliefs, as I recall. The companion morality axes in Rogue Trader are baffling and I never know what to expect of these clown shoes I'm dragging to their collective doom.
If this does well, I could see Owlcat following up with a Inquisition game, though probably not Eisenhorn specifically. It'd also probably be easier to write companions for, since if they're like the retinue in Eisenhorn or Ravenor the power imbalance is even more stark and thus affecting major changes to personality or goals wouldn't be too insane. Or if they prove too resistant, daemonhost is always an option...
the game was Fantastic, for me this is the best way to depict Warhammer 40k so much story ,lore ,amazing plot excellent writing amazing characters despite the bugs the game was 10/10 for me and easily my favorite in 40k universe with Space marines Game is getting more and more stabilized after 1.0.89 patch
Same here. Everyone is saying that Act 4 and beyond are full of game breaking bugs, so I intend to just step away from the game once I get to Act 4 then come back to it in a few months when those game breaking bugs are all patched.
It's clear that they only performed serious QA on the acts available during the beta. The technical state of the game is a damn shame considering how much I was enjoying the story until bugs stopped me from progressing with the main quest line.
Yeah I don't know how he can say this is their best release. Wrath on release was in a far, far better state. This game is in a horrendously bad state right now and I'm a big Owlcat fan.
same with all of these crpg that do early access. BG3 started to slip in act 2, then fell ofa cliff in act 3 when it comes to bugs and broken things. Divinity 2 before that. It obvious why, you can't replicate the sheer mass of testing/bug reporting with solely an internal team, but they don't want to reveal the entire game just to test it, so it's kind of how it'll be.
I couldn't finish Yrliet's questline cause of bugs, also another quest in act 2 (Nurgle in Footfall) did not trigger The rest of the bugs were manageable (I fixed Marazhai and Ulfar's quests with toybox) Overall a great game cause I'm huge 40k fan (read hundreds of books), they really did good research, I wish that some psyker abilities had animiations, like the Sword of the Emperor
It's strange that nobody talks about the skill system and character progression in Rogue Trader. In my opinion, it's way to expansive and convoluded. I was unfamiliar with the RT rule system, and found myself confronted with about two hundred skills to pick from, half of which I had no idea what they are supposed to do. Sometimes, less is more! I would have preferred fewer, more impactful and better defined skills, rather than spending hours reading through several dozens of skill choices that provide minor bonuses to this and that. I guess that some people enjoy crunching numbers and make notes figuring out optimal character builds...but as someone who just wants to enjoy the game as an experience; I am a little frustrated that I had to spend almost as much time pondering skill choices, as I have actually playing the game.
Levelling up feels like a chore honestly, and for a new player the "recommended" talents the game offers is down right sabotage. If you take the game's advice, you'll end up having a party of characters with inconsequential combat buffs that constantly fails skill checks and cuts you out of game content. For a tabletop RPG, that's fine, a DM can work around that, but for a linear videogame RPG, it doesn't work at all.
You look at it with the way 'sometimes, less is more'. Some of us like it to 'sometimes, more is options without forcing you to have one and the same build'. The problem with your suggestion is that the we, the others, wont have as much fun as we wouldve had the options to specify some builds whereas the way it is now is that while you can still build your same build, we, the others, can also do what we want. The options are there but you dont have to take them. The only downside is is that you have to read as much as we do before taking a skill. Imagine going to two different michelin restaurants where they serve the best steaks in town but one has 2 steak menus while the other has 8. Both serve the same steak. After going 2 times to the one with less menus, you will start looking at other restaurants while the second restaurant you can visit even after your 2nd visit because they also serve kebabs. In context of the game is that the story needs replayability which is where more diverse builds would be more interesting to have a totally different playstyle even when picking the same class.
great review. i personally think it is owlcats best game by far. i really didn't like certain things in pathfinder games, timed stuff, the side mini games were awful. the insane pre buffing. the way you could mess up ur build so easy and just the amount of stupid puzzles and general mechanics to slow ur game down and offer nothing like weight limits, fatigue ext. As a 40k fan , this game just nails the world so well. The companions are my fav in a crpg since pillars 1. There is not one companion i dont like, it was hard to choose who to bring with me. Some of the companion stories nailed it and i think they went as far as they could with the companions to stay in line with the lore of 40k. Gameplay , combat feels a lot more streamlined and enjoyable, faster considering its also TB and not RTWP. Dispite the bugs, which were also a huge issue in owlcats previous games this has been the best game i've played for awhile and honestly once it gets its own enhanced edition with dlc will probably be up there with my fav crpgs of all time. ps . do heinrix's romance story its great :P
i'm with you on this, best owlcat game and personnaly I had a better time than with BG3, The story and wold building is top notch and I found the companions very well done.
To me biggest flaw at the moment is that game does not communicate some limitations to player until it is too late to change them. Example being reputation system rewards, which you will not see in its entirety until you reach Act IV. Meaning, that you cannot consider beforehand which faction you should focus on, since rep rewards are limited and you will struggle to max one faction (not counting Imperial Navy) even if you focus on it at the expense of other factions. If you spread around to pick up rewards as you go, you are likely to lock out any high rep rewards. That should change- the game should give you a strong hint, that there will never be means to unlock several rewards. Second, rewards list should be complete for review once you unlock trading faction, so you could plan which route is the most optimal one for you. Right now, late December, you can easily set yourself for a failure on your first walkthrough.
Moral compasses in CRPGs usually serve to represent the player having flexibility in choices, but here it clearly encourages railroading your choices (I can see why your compare it to Mythical Paths). Whereas I would play a Rogue Trader as walking a fine line between dogmatic, pragmatic/benevolent and flirting with what could be considered heretical by some (though not helping outright Chaos). Oh well.
Great review as always. I should mention that, as someone who play on three different devices (desktop pc, laptop and steam deck) I never had any issues with my cloud saves. Also the performance on deck is alright at capped 30 fps with medium settings (shadows off though) on my OLED.
The biggest problem I've ever encountered was the memory leak due to the Unity engine. I have other Unity engine games, and the memory leak is in those, as well. It's not Rogue Trader, it's the engine itself.
Just finished first play through, took for about 130ish hours. Want to share my thoughts on it, spoiler warning for the people who care. It was my introduction to 40k(played dawn of war back in 2006 but it was a CoH clone-ish game) The story and the lore was enthralling, I now found out that I enjoy space RPGs a lot more. I agree with your comments about the difficulty, played on Normal and pretty much everything was face roll. TBH, only thing I've had problems was Aurora. I had played Wotr a lot(on normal and core playthroughs) but haven't been able to complete it. This game provided more sense of progression due to having overall more levels and the game being basically power fantasy. I felt pretty powerful, real early. This wasn't the case for Wotr and kingmaker. Still, Normal difficulty was a bit on the easier side. I would recommend Core. There were some game breaking bugs, I couldn't progress to act-5 but owlcat fixes eventually. Funny thing was, I haven't recruited Jae and in act 4 I had her quest in my log ? :) About the companions, I agree wholeheartedly. I mean Yrliet done something unforgivable. I simply forgave just so that I was wondering how it would progress. Argenta was a character, and so was Heinrix. They were extra bland. Pasqal was not very interesting(imo) The omnisiah stuff went way over my head, I still don't know what does cycle discontinue mean :) Ulfar and Cassia was okay and I felt I had them progress or gain some different perspective on their future. The Spacewolfs and Lone Wolf stuff was fun. With all being sad, I had a positive experience of the game. Again, the lore was amazing, story of a RogueTrader was interesting, OST was fantastic, I routinely listen them now. Tough with some bugs, game mechanics was much easier to comprehend and engage with, comparing to Pathfinder titles.
really enjoyed the review, only criticism is at least in the lore, eldar companions looking down on humans the ENTIRE time, despite even being honor bound, is completely within the lore. Khylon had a dark eldar blood ward who was exactly like that
I have 2 runs, both for now stopped because of bugs with companions quests in act 4 and 5. It is actually crazy that Drukhari is more loyal than Aeldari. I still don't know why I didn't shoot Yrliet... Henrix has not bad character development but you need to romance him for it. I love this game, I can't wait for a few more patches to finish it finally.
Can you tell Yrliet to leave your crew on account of her betraying you to drukhari after you have her join your team in commoragh or is it not mentioned if you tell her to leave?
@@cathulionetharn5139you can tell her to leave once you meet her in commorragh. And again at multiple opportunities during act 3. Also, you can always give her to the inquisition by speaking to Henrix at your ship.
@@cathulionetharn5139 You can tell her to leave at multiple points after the betrayal, or even outright kill her. And if you don't then at the start of the next act, once you are back home, your human companions will come to you as a group and demand you sentence her to death. Keeping her alive is a very conscious choice that pisses off basically everyone and, as Mortismal notes, is only going to happen to happen if you really want it to.
Perfect soundtrack for my errands adventure this morning. I've been enjoying the game and am at level 9 running a sanctioned psykker. Especially like the cyborg guy and the overall setting which I have zero familiarity other than knowledge you've dropped in content I've watched.
Funny enough, I read an article today that quoted one of the higher ups at owlcat. He was being grumpy about comparisons to BG3. Saying that no one has larians resources ect. I love owlcat and all three games of theirs I've played. I've played both divinity games and bg3. I've never lost a playthrough due to bugs in a larian game. Have never lost a play through to poorly thought out and more poorly explained kingdom management systems with larian. Getting the romance option I wanted didn't have me checking guides to make sure some act 1 dialogue didn't lock me out with larian. Like, I'm not asking for the fucking moon here owlcat, stop using customers as testers, and release a crpg I can finish without a bunch of patches. I do still support owlcat, but 2 companion quest bugging out in act 2 has really killed my hype. Argentas bugged out on me, but I didn't catch it until like literally walking around the area act 2 ends. Jae's also bugged. My new guy I play for an hour and just feel defeated by the next 12 hours of gameplay. Sure, it was an improvement over the other 2, that doesn't mean all 3 weren't below what should be their standard for release.
The faults with the companions and story to me see like a prime example of the control that Games Workshop has when they give out their IP. Usually it’s pretty good to protect the lore and give consistency across the board, but like you said, it makes this game feel flat in some places and railroaded.
@@jmmywyf4lyf except rpg's, unlike books, are founded on the agency of the player/reader. Warhammer is a setting in which characters rarely change, and agency is limited. They literally have to make you a rogue trader bc you wouldn't be allowed to do half the shit you do if you weren't. And even then, you can't really go around making friends with xenos n shit because it's Warhammer 40k
I wouldn't be so sure. I played Kingmaker and my main criticism (outside the asinine combat encounters) was that the companions were just boring. This seems more like the studio doesn't know how to write compelling characters, rather than someone meddling with them. Anyway, this is gonna be a skip. Owlcat seems like a C+ RPG developer that doesn't understand that most people play RPGs for the story and not for the complex systems.
@@jmmywyf4lyf Let's check the facts. Mass Effect and Baldur's Gate 3 are vastly superior to anything Owlcat has made. These RPGs focus on having interesting party members. Owlcat's focus is forcing you to spend an hour on character creation. That's appealing only to a small section of RPG players.
@@justjack1083 Wrath currently has an 83% on metacritic and consistent high review scores and sold over 1 million in Jan 2023. Lets not try sales numbers and reviews because it doesnt match what you say. Owlcat arent a big developer nor working on games by a widely known series. Larian was small too until BG3 started getting promoted.
I am playing a psyker pyro-bio following your build idea ^_^ I just got to Chapter 4 after 70 hours... perhaps I should wait for a patch before continuing because of what you told us here. Thanks for everything and enjoy Xmas with your son!
I bought the game because i want to support a studio that make amazing games like owlcat. Played like 8 hs but i will hold for now because i want to have a less buggy experience. Like akways, great review!
OMG! thanks for that tip on the navigator insight and charting a new course! I had no idea that was a thing, and explains why I seem to be trapped in certain areas of the map
I like yrilet but I can see why people would be upset at her. She did get super by the druchari at least on my playthrough as she just wanted to save her people
Always appreciate your reviews, maybe it just my preference for long form reviews. Definitely agreed on the bugs being the biggest factor for people to buy now or wait months or a year later, giving their previous game, waiting for the definitive edition is a solid choice (if one is planned) if you are not a fan of 40k. I ran into a few bugs that soft lock me from progression. At this point, there is a part of me that drawing a parallel between Owlcat and old Bethesda, ambitious RPG developer that endeared their fan because of that ambition despite buggy as hell launches, hopefully Owlcat can avoid the fate of Bethesda. The ship combat is following the trend of non-crpg mechanics in their pathfinder games, good idea, need more time in the oven with the executions; although they are getting better with them, I definitely enjoy the ship combat more than the army combat in Wrath, my main gripe with it is the movement of the ship, which does not match the preview hologram half the time, and positioning is a major part of that section. It is really frustrating and I hope that is one of the big priority in their fixes. I had movement where the ship literally hop to the adjacent square, which is hilarious but also a kind of fuckery that make me miss my shots. If the point is to emphasize with the movement system is that these are big heavy ships, then that hopping is a big problem mechanically and immersion. Companion in this game is definitely an good example of the double edge sword of sticking with the lore/vibe of the IP; on one hand, fans of the IP expect the lore being represented well, while on the other, one note character can be a turn off when your game is on the long side (though for 40k fans, the one note is awesome enough that it would be ok, which is why I don't think many fans will complain about the Sister and the Wolf, even the elves really). This could just be personal preference, but I thought Yrliet had personal growths, maybe it only visible if you went with the romance route. The most boring one for me is the rouge archetype companion (Jae), fine in other rpg world, but very boring in 40k. My biggest complain about companion, and by extension chapter 3 really, is the depiction of the Drukhari. It is very uncreative. As it stand, the Drukhari is your typical chaotic evil race mostly blood, pain, and a bit of pleasure. They fit more as Khornites than people who try to staved off She Who's Thirst. I get that depiction of the pleasure aspect is a mine field for devs, but I expected living furniture and hats. An entire race devoted to never get bored should get more creative than blood sports and stabbings. I like that they leaning more into the turn-base side for combat, though I am not good with combat in CRPG and tend to build more for RP than efficiency. The only thing I can say about it is that it lean heavily toward action economy, and I can see unfair playthrough expect you to take all the advantage in that (i.e., lots of officer).
Ehh, I really liked all of the companions. They all served as methods of exposition for the universe, representing different groups. I do wish they had been developed more... but, I would bet Owlcat will reach a bunch of DLCs or free add-ons where they give extended side quests for the companions.
72+ hours in I'm loving the game, the only issues I've had is a noticeable difficulty spike at Chapter 4 so be aware of this. I play all games on the easiest difficulty as I enjoy the stories more and on RT I'm literally playing on the easiest, I turned everything down manually and STILL there's some fights that swamped me. Now I'm not very good at the combat side of things but keep that in mind if you're easily frustrated.
Yeah it's kind of amazing how difficult the game is at the easiest difficulty. If you know the system you can destroy the game on unfair, sure. But the easiest difficulty should be for people who don't want a challenge and simply want the story. You should be able to comfortably win encounters with simple attacking without thinking much about it. But that will absolutely get you killed in rt.
I am a total newbie when it comes to Warhammer, with my only exposure being Vermintide 2... which is I suppose a different slice of the Warhammer pie versus this Sci-fi variant. But yeah after this 100% review video I think I will give this a go soon. I recently beat Kingmaker and really enjoyed it! The ending wasn't my favorite, but otherwise everything up to the completion of Pitax and right before Nyrissa and the Latern King stuff really goes deep - absolutely loved it. Moving on after that I have already deep dived into Wrath of the Righteous where I just hit Act 3, aka post the Capture of Drezen. So far I have mixed feelings about WotR, but I do enjoy the QoL/Improvements that have been added since KM. Crusader Management is a lot more enjoyable than Kingdom Management (which honestly I didn't hate overall, it wasn't as bad as some say). While I know I still have quite a ways to go with WotR, Rogue Trader does look like a lot more of Owlcat goodness, especially with Starship Management and the the whole Galactic/Planet Management deal here. That with the new change of pace of turn-based combat versus Pathfinders looks really promising. Looking forward to checking this out relatively soon! Need to make it through this Wrath playthrough first though!
Heinrix is probably the best companion on the list for me. He's a nuanced take on an Inquisition acolyte, although a lot of his layers are hidden behind his romance, which is probably one of the best romances I've experienced in a game. Still, the way he treats Idira speaks for itself. The conflict between his moral compass and his duty. It's pretty jarring to Argenta, who is incredibly one-note in comparison
On Yrliet: Henrix straight up warns you about dealing with the xenos when she shows up. So I traded her to the Inquisition as soon as it was convenient. Glad I did after watching your review on the path not taken.
To be fair, Hendrix is an inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos. Yrliet's personal character and alignments have absolutely no sway over his disposition of her. His entire life's purpose is to spearhead humanity's goal of eliminating all xenos
I'm a couple of hours into Act II...and either I'm very lucky or I managed to get very timely patches, because I haven't seen a single bug yet! This game has been great so far, I went in knowing 0 of Warhammer 40k and I'm super immersed!
I'm a bit further in that chapter. Still nothing game-breaking but I've seen a few quests bug out and it looks like I'll never finish them. Nothing important yet.
act 1-3 are fine, you'll start seeing some in later stage act 3 and onwards. I had to restart in act 3 because act 4 was so bugged it wouldn't play an animation and i was softlocked
Thanks for this commentary. I'm up to Act IV (holy difficulty spikes batman). It's interesting to learn that about Yrilet; I actually had her executed just seconds after she helped me vs the Farseer on Janus. After all, she is a dirty Xenos. Having said that, usually I try to find peaceful solutions to the Aeldari funnily enough, like with that forest planet in Act Iv, or even with Cassia's Atlas. I agree that the companions are strange. I was a bit terrified about going Heretic beforehand because I thought I would be losing a lot of companions. Probably not. I think Heinrix along should be not as tolerant, but I suspect he's tolerant because they need the Rogue Trader's immediate resources, and while Heinrix probably can't kill the RT out of hand and not experience some sort of fallout (like immediately getting thrown out of the voidships airlock), Calzador (or whatever his name is) could - and doesn't. I agree that Act 3 feels really strange. Even the guy betraying you (in case Yrilet is not alive to do so) is strange. I think Yrilet betraying you as well because you had just sort of shown up to fight her species nemesis She-Who-Thirsts over the planet basically. There just doesn't seem to be consequences for their actions. I had Argenta in my party when she comes clean with her sins, and it basically amounts to either abandoning her there or taking her with you over the next couple of acts - but it doesn't seem (so far at least) that you can even mention it... I do like Act 3 except for a couple of things - it's kinda forced onto you via contrivence, - it's kinda short, - you don't really establish your own safe harbour (which is I imagine should be a priority in a place like Commoragh).
Hi Mortym! Just starting playing the game. My first deep dive into the WH40K universe. (I am more familiar with the fantasy setting.) Really looking forward to it!
I love the game. The battle system especially is just too much fun and building your characters makes a big difference. I also loved the companions but its true that they lack interactions. A bit more discussions and reactions after missions would have been great
Cassia + Argenta = Godly OP The last few combats in Chapter 4 and all of Chapter 5 were an absolute cakewalk just between those two. I would wipe the entire map with them in their first opening turns on Daring, lol. Even the end boss I was technically done in the first round. Second round just had two more hits with my RT Assassin and it was over.
Absolutely loved this game! My first time experiencing the 40k universe and I'm enchanted. I really want to dive into a few 40k novels now, anyone here recommend me a good starting point? Thanks a lot gang
The Eisenhorn trilogy (Xenos, Malleus, Hereticus) are probably the most similar to Rogue Trader in theme, and are arguably the best books in the Black Library. Gaunt's Ghosts as a series is also great, and has a more straight up military sci-fi thing going on. Anything by Dan Abnett is a good time, basically.
That is why I love reviews that go into details on both the pros and cons. I read a review of Just Cause 2 that perfectly described the exact kind of game I was looking for at the time but did so implying it was a negative.
@@Blasted2Oblivion Agreed! Although I do think owlcat in particular is "known" for these type of atypical companions you can't find in other games. It's definitely on brand imo.
9:22. I have to agree with Mortym here. The heretical playthrough is shoehorned into a narrative that really isn’t equipped to handle it. In-universe, the Imperium as a whole is very black and white with regard to Chaos and heresy. Rogue Traders’ vast powers give them a huge amount of latitude but this is not inexhaustible. The Inquisition is an equally formidable force and can destroy a Rogue Trader, especially one who has only just inherited the warrant and is not yet at the height of his/her influence. Once it becomes clear that the protagonist has forsaken the Emperor, the sector’s Inquisitor would declare him/her Excommunicate Traitoris and order Heinrix to purge the heretic. Argenta, per her vows, would no doubt assist, as would the rest of the Dogmatic characters- assuming that your Heretic did not preemptively have them killed first (as the repercussions of his/her actions would be easy to predict). That being said, it would be extremely difficult to properly portray a heretical campaign within the same game. There would have to be extensive rewrites and a major overhaul of the companions who would stand by you, if the story were to remain lore consistent. Owlcat instead chose a weak compromise, leading to the ludonarrative dissonance (i.e. story-gameplay segregation) that Mort describes.
Great review. I think I'm more lenient on the companion design and story and interaction quality than you though. I enjoyed most of the companions (Indira can go to hell though, but I genuinely liked interacting with Argenta, Cassia, Henrix, and my bro Abelard - the most badass grandpa in the Koronus Expanse!). Even with Yrliete (sp?) there were some interesting dialogue options and I liked her quest in general (thankfully it was not bugged for me). The romance options were limited and felt forced for the sake of "we need to include romance options because that's what players expect nowadays" and that was my biggest gripe about the companions. I do wish the space combat was either better or could be auto-resolved as it eventually got pretty tedious. I hear that the next big DLC will be addressing a lot of complaints about lacklustre voidship customization, combat and quests though. Overall, Rogue Trader gets a very solid 8/10 from me.
I'm sure this game will be incredible in a year or so. I did thoroughly enjoy playing it, I have about 100 hours played. Unfortunately it's riddled with bugs and a lot of companion side quests aren't being tracked/ triggered correctly.
A super fair review. Im having issues with getting past how bland all the characters are. The pacing. The wind up in combat. It all is tedious. But i wanna reappraoch the game with a different expectation. I want to love it.
Thank you for your review, I will buy the game now - I had some...issues... with game mechanics in Pathfinder Kingmaker (mechanically I prefer Pillars of Eternity), so I'm glad this game is easier on this front.
I wish it had full voice acting or at least text to speech. Path Finder WOTR has a mod to add text to speech. Me personally I find it a lot more enjoyable it gets exhausting reading hundreds texts through types of games.
Mort! Just want to let you know that youre my most favorite Videogame Reviewer! Youre like the Completionist but more badass and less scammy! Stay cool brother! may your holidays be merry and may your new year be more bad ass as before. DUDE! please make achievement guides too. Pls! Pls! Pls! :D
I absolutely loved chapter 3! It's interesting to see the different opinions on each chapter put out so far. By far that was one of my favorites plot wise and gameplay wise. All the twists were so much fun to unravel.
That is an excellent review. I just finished Act 1, and I’m trying to decide how much time to put into the rest of the game. I appreciate the look ahead.
As a massive fan of WH40K since 2004 with Dawn of War, this is a mixed bag for me. I love the game, I love the setting, I love the RPG genre, and this is easily in the top 5 best WH40K games ever made. Unfortunately, I have to hold myself back from fully enjoying it because these bugs literally break my progress. Such a shame. Guess I'll play Darktide for another year while waiting for Owlcat to finish making Rogue Trader.
While im thoroughly enjoying being an abject sin to everything the God-Emperor stands for, many of the build defining talents like Psalm of Heroes and the Death World dodge talent (forgot the name) straight up not working as well as full cover animations causing some abilities to just not function at all puts a damper on what is a pretty fun game to me.
Definitely going to play this. I just picked up Aliens Dark Descent, Lamplighters League, Jagged Alliance 3, and Knight’s Tale on the Steam winter sale. By the time I get through those, I figure Rogue Trader will be sufficiently patched and be on sale. I’m currently finishing BG3. I’ve got a new 4090 laptop, a loaded steam library, and a couple weeks off. Time to play. Later bros.
The Games Workshop oversight is very apparent when it comes to the companions. Its especially obvious for the non romanceable ones where you have little influence over their personalities aside from one or two dialogue choices and their final quest. Still enjoy them for what they are since its very faithful to the source material and I was pleasantly surprised on how the Eldar comapanions were handled.
yeah as a 40k fan i think GW obviously had a hand in how this game was done when it came to feel , companions ext. i know they cutt some voice acting out because it didn't fit the theme. so if they did that then you can bet they limited what owlcat could with with certain characters. but honestly i think as a fan of 40k its probably for the best. the min you let someone do crazy stuf with a battle sister for example is the seconds you dilute ur ip and its rules. i loved the companions as a 40k fan. but if ur not a 40k fan with i think mort isn't then they do feel more ridged compared to a lot of fantasy crpgs., but thats just the way of 40k tbh
oh yeah sure, but of late i feel they have been much better with there ip. the last few years or so. the gw of old sure, they didn't give a shit, even more so when it came to games. new people in control now though so i feel some things have shifted.@@Zarkil
Depending on how you build her Sister Argenta can turn into a must have in any party, getting extra turns and cutting down oceans of enemies and then stacking free attacks with the flamer weapons. She is an absolute force to be reckoned with and it made me smile to see the prowess of a sister of battle portrayed properly.
After this Starfinder would be interesting. That would get around the IP restricting from GW anyway. I love both the pathfinder games and would love to see or try a starfinder game.
Being a Hardcore 40k fan since 97. I absolutly love it!!! While yes the mechanics and what each class does isn't really obvious and user friendly. The Lore, Ambiance and Atmosphere of the 40k-verse is ABSOLUTLY amazing and to a T. Even the very difficult and Moraly ambiguous decisions you'll have to make are really what this unforgiving and brutal universe is all about. *Chef's Kiss* to the Exterminatus...
Rogue trader is a cool setting but im really hoping for an inquisition crpg at some point. Black crusade would also be incredibly cool and all those ppl begging to be paid off for being evil could really dive in lol.
Even though I`m not a great WH40000 fan, I `ll certainly play this game as it might provide me the emotion and experience I don`t have since a proper Mass Effect. I`ll wait for a while tho, just to get additional patches as well ;) Thanks Mort for letting us know very interesting games in your personal deep way 😎
Ugh, I'm having a hard time with sustaining immersion in Act 4. For example, I hunter down a defeated the Elusive Combat pirate ship. But all the map markers for the previous fights are still there and won't complete. Even though the rumor is supposed to be.
This is one if my favorite games in recent memory. Played it on my steam deck and went hard on it, playing about 200 hours. Argenta I thought was pretty weak in the beginning, but she carried hard in parts of the end of the game, like soloing a defiler in act 4
I think I will pick up this game eventually, long time 40k fan so I really want to enjoy this game... But it sounds like the best bet is to wait a little while for bug fixes. I'll be keeping an eye on this.
I did not mind the kidnap event that much, except the part where I had to spend at least 30 minutes searching through my equipment and reequip everybody. It also felt odd that I had access to my cargo and hence could immediately equip myself with decent stuff without getting my own back.
Having actually finished the chapter 3, I must say I kind of like Yrliet. Sure, she is arrogant and did something stupid, but lets be fair, she is holding up a mirror for every dogmatic member of the team and you actually see her change through my iconclast playthrough. I am just a tad dissapointed I made my character a sniper before meeting Yrliet (and not wanting to respec), although there is something fun about seeing which one of the two is doing the single most damaging attack in a fight.
Thank you for the very in-depth review of the game. The visuals were what drew my attention, but they can be deceiving although in doesnt seem to be case here. In all honesty, if the biggest / most concering flaw of the game are the bugs that plague it, then those are some good news per se. Bugs can be fixed but can't just rewrite a poorly developed story. Overall and before even playing it, the game seems very pleasant to me! PS: It has been 3 months since your review so some of the bugs might be patched. Emphasis on "might"
I expected a sororitas to be totally one-dimensional. Not disappointed. I would've been annoyed if she was romancable. If it wasn't for missing-out-on-quests, I would've "spaced", Idira, Yrelet and Cassia.
Having just picked this up (and put it down because of bugs in Act 4) I completely agree with you on the points needed to go down trees on alignment. I tried to do a dogmatic run, but the amount of dogmatic options that just seem lawful-stupid made it really hard to not go iconoclast. I ended up 50/50 with both on stage 2 and with no herasy points. I however do see why the characters are how they are. Yrliet, despite betraying you I completely understood why. To me, it felt like a reasonable thing for her to do, but being able to make the Drukari a companion just feels very weird and out of nowhere. Was that something added by Kickstarter? I think that one of the biggest issues that the game has is a lack of feeling of time I don't know how long each jump takes, I don't know they year, it is always day so that doesn't even matter much. Most of the companions feel 40-50 years old, Abelard is something like 80(?) given he has a late-teen great-granddaughter. Most of the characters are old enough and experienced enough that they shouldn't be changed much by you.
glad to have waited a bit to buy the game, im about 60hrs into the game and havent found any pesky bugs of big note, maybe a few T-posing servitors but thats a common practice in the far reaches of the galaxy
![[#2024MAMA] BIGBANG (빅뱅) - 뱅뱅뱅 (BANG BANG BANG) + FANTASTIC BABY | Mnet 241123 방송](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EQsYfiPR9uM/mqdefault.jpg)
Looks like the two bugged achievements are fixed with the latest patch!
this uses same engine as pathfinder ?
Nice!!
the fact that you dodged game breaking bugs by "purging the heretics" sounds just like the emperor wanted it to be
Avoided the bugs by killing them, makes sense
It's not a bug..its a feature 😂
THe problem added bugs into a review is that those bugs may be gone later so make the review less accurate.
More like Blessed by the Omnissiah
@@randomusernameCallin but a review is based on his experience with the game, so the choice is between not mentioning bugs and being dishonest VS mentioning them and maybe having the review become outdated down the line.
so he made the objectively right choice
In the character section he kinda forgot the main thing of Abelard as a companion: he's a master at introducing you to strangers and incredibly satisfying to order around.
Having Abelard introduce me to everyone amused me much more than pretty much any other RPG dialogues in a long time
Right! I bring Abelard to every mission, even though he and my Rogue trader are very similar builds. People need to know who I am, and Abelard is going to be the one to tell them.
Haha, same here. Makes you really feel like an important guy when your seneschal announces your arrival
Abelard, Enlighten this rabble.
Occasionally, you can have someone else introduce you as well. Like Pasqal and the temple on the first hive world you visit.
Abelard is by far the best companion i love him so much
Yeah dude, up until Act 4 he was a one man army for me.
Abelard, upvote this comment.
@@Woogsiehe normally kills 60%of all enemies for me each fight so I agree
He is pretty good. For me, Argenta with a flamer is a squad killer. Run and fun and 2 hand flamer attacks = dead squad.
he literally solos and carries so damn hard. dodge everything purge everyone
I have to say for me what makes it so compelling, is 1 the setting is more unique than usual sci-fi or fantasy settings, 2 your character is not a typical start from nobody become savior every time and these two for me really helped hook me vs other games lately.
I don’t really like crpgs but what kept me so far is that there are actually things happening. Actively.
@@jasutinborchert4418As opposed to Baldurs Gate 3?
> Can't romance the sister of battle
Well, I got what I needed out of the review, thanks.
As soon as she joined my party, I googled how to romance her. Was quite disappointed in the answer, lol.
Mods are wonderful things
Why would you be able to romance a sister of battle, they have no desires for such. They only live for the emperor
Guess you've never heard of Nuns? They aren't exactly romanceable. Hell I don't see any of these companions being romanceable. Romance isn't really something in 40k.
she's married to... purging heretics!
Top tip you can turn of animations for non attack moves in combat so all the buffs and debuffs and random pointing gets cut out.
Omg ty I need to do this
You deserve a cape
I'm going to wait for a while, and it breaks my heart because this looks absolutely amazing. I'm sure it will be a masterpiece in a year or two
I'm waiting too.
Yeah let everyone else beta test this for the next year or so. Owlcat games are never worth buying at launch.
@@TK-zd7ymI kickstarted Kingmaker back in the day. On release, I put 100 hrs into the game, exploring everything and doing every side quest I could find.
And then a main quest that allowed me to visit a neighboring kingdom vital to continuing the story expired (there was no visible time limit, but I was busy doing side content and building my kingdom), permanently locking me out from continuing the story. Hard lock for failure and I didn't know when the quest expired or if I had a save file that far back.
Put an awful taste in my mouth for their games. They are good games, but so horribly buggy and broken at launch every time I won't touch them for at least 6 months post release.
Agreed. Been soured too many times by bugs from playing RPGs at release. Seems like 6 months - 1 year after release is the best time to play games these days.
Just wait, the game is very good but unfortunately there are A LOT of game breaking bugs, i encountered several already. Even now after several patches i still got one during battle in act 3 where my char is stuck can't do anything and you need to re-do the entire battle which is very annoying. Tbh during my entire 15+ years gaming i never encountered any game with this number of game breaking bugs.
I know it's been said by many people, but I have to repeat it: it is amazing that you complete so many games so quickly. You are a machine. But more than that, your reviews are thorough and far more objective than most. Reviewers like you are few in number, keep up the great work!
He's 2nd to none.
Completing games in record time is easy. No side quests, focus on main quests and voila game finished in usually less than a week. My 16 year old son does it on a regular basis. Beat the main quest of Fallout 4 in a little over a week and Dragon Age Inquisition in a week. 😵💫 Really ticks me off - stopped buying him games - figured what was the point. Hell - I've been playing Skyrim since the day it released and am still finding new things to do - same with FO4. He doesn't understand that and I don't understand the way he plays. Each to his own I guess.🙄
I had to stop in early Act 4 because of the transition between Act 3 and 4 so I had to wait for patches. Luckily 2 weeks later it's finally fixed so I went back to my playthrough and I hope to finish it before the year ends. I know there's more bugs at the end of Act 4 and 5 but if it happens again then I will wait a month before going back to it.
Thanks for the review Mort! I hope Owlcat can go back and make Pathfinder games now, since that's my preference, even though I really enjoyed Rogue Trader thus far (90+ hours in).
PS: Since this video released 1 day before Christmas and on my birthday no less, I wanna wish you Happy Holidays and Happy New Year! :D
Thank you! Happy Holidays!
The first CRPG for 40K?
Is Chaosgate not a CRPG? Dawn of War II?
@@Panshea No. Chaos Gate is a Strategy turn based rpg (you don't move in the map as party and almost no dialogue choice); DoW 1 & 2 are RTS a completely different genre, you construct bases and troops in real time and try to destroy the enemy base. And are played in 1 secession per game. They only share the Warhammer IP.
My problem with the plot is one detail they miss with Yirilet
In my opinion they should add the option, which would reward Player for been Benevolent and maintain good relationship with the character:
One additional dialogue scene with Yirilet in the end od chapter two when our eldar companion would ask Rouge Trader about pieces of Craftworld that we have and our relationship to all of that - would be enough
.
Then, instead of luring us into the trap, she could tell Rouge Trader truth about Marajay offer. So now you travel to that system not in order "to save eldar", but to catch\deal Marajay...But Marajay being a cunning asshole as he is outsmart you (he predict possibility of Yirilet trembling) and you end up in Commora
.
Same outcome but very different contest
by the end of act 2 what have we really done for her? Maybe benevolently not slaughtered her people and gone to look through a bunch of Aeldari hulks? She should definitely trust us, the person who has a chunk of her destroyed home hanging up on the wall as a trophy.
Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I understood,
IF you have normal / bad relationship with her, she lure you into a trap selling you to the DE and
IF you have good relationship with her, she still conflicted so she doesn't tell you the full story about Malakai and ask you to come with her thinking it was probably a false lead (but not thinking it would lead for your capture).
Doesn't change much gameplay wise but narratively speaking it makes a bit more sense.
@@Dream146 Well, if you make things right , she basicly say that you are different from other humans and teach you basis of eldar meditation
Please start comment with SPOILER.
@@robsonez This is 100% review video full of spoilers itself
For me, the game felt like they tried too much to port a ttrpg system into a videogame. the problem with that is the videogame lacks a dynamic DM that can create a story regardless of success or failure in skill checks.
The game makes it clear quite early that if you want, you totally can kill people or fail questlines at any point, but I never felt like doing that was anything more than a fail state, removing content for myself later on. Where a human DM could take a failed skill check and use it going forward to build upon the story and progression just as much as a passed skill check, Rogue Trader uses them as hurdles forcing you have to constantly quick-save and minmax if you want to actually get the most out of your playthrough.
The worst of this offense is definitely chapter 3. It amplifies everything and removes the crutches of items and party builds that at least made it bearable prior, and then punishes failed skill checks with losing half of your characters. I am currently struggling to get through it and honestly on the brink of simply dropping the game, which is a shame because I really have enjoyed it, especially through the free-roam of chapter 2.
Originally I felt like when watching videos about the game before and right up to release, I thought it looked complicated and overwhelming to pickup. In comparison to something like Xcom or Baldurs gate. But once I got my hands on the game, I fell in love. The reading is enjoyable due to the lore and the world it’s placed in. The combat is my favorite style so I’m biased, but I enjoy every battle. Compared to their other games, it’s certainly easier to jump into.
Hundreds of hours in beta and alpha and I loved it.
Release...is going to be my favourite CRPG second only to Baldur's Gate...in six months time :)
Toybox mod is crucial if you are keen to play now.
Gonna hold back on watching this because I'm worried of spoilers, just finished act 3 and going away to my family for 2 weeks now, I just wanna stay home and keep playing frankly. It's the first game since WotR that's been actively robbing me of sleep, sometimes playing into 5-6 in the morning when I gotta get up for work at 9.
Man I love Owlcat, despite the less than perfect state of the game currently.
Get your sleep!! 😁
You don't want spoilers? Too bad. Darth Vader is Luke's father.
What kind of moron watches the story section of a 100% review and expects not to be spoiled?@@Corusame
Currently playing through the game and i really like how deep they go into the W40K lore.
I encountered one big bug so far which was a recurring one from Pathfinder games where somehow the fight effects/blood/area placed abilities end up on the campaign map/star map. At one point the whole solar system was littered with blood splatter.
Difficulty wise some classes seem very dumb down compared to others so far. I have assassins struggling to kill one enemy where my snipers are stacking crits and Argenta with a flamer is just devastating whole Bosses in one turn.
To be fair planets literally bleeding on the star map is pretty on brand for 40k, especially if Khorne is involved
My sniper IS an assassin and she does fine. Melee assassins do seem to really struggle though you are right.
If your assassins are struggling then you might have built them wrong. My assassins were dishing out crits left, right, and center.
@@spectralassassin6030Mostly is for close combat assasins. But it's from the fact that you can only hit in close line or single target where a character with a melta gun will clean the board effortlessly.
My biggest complaint is not having options to change companion convictions like in Wrath of the Righteous, where you could take them down the light or dark path so to speak. Especially since they give you multiple morality paths to follow, it felt like you just had to take the companions that pre-fit those paths rather than having them change along with you.
@@gusty9053 Sure but Wrath had similar things too. There's no way to turn character like Seelah, a paladin, or Ember down a dark path, and there's no way to turn characters like Wenduag or Camilla towards good.
But just having a few whose perspectives get influenced by their relationship with you would've been more interesting IMO.
@@gusty9053 Look up the story of Goge Vandire, he was a High Lord of Terra that basically became a false prophet, claiming he acted in the Emperor's name and became a tyrant, and he had some orders of the sisters of battle fighting for him because they thought they were fighting for the emperor. It wasn't until the Custodians themselves came out and took some of their leaders to the Golden Throne that they realized they had been deceived. Taking a sister of battle down the heretical path doesn't neccessarily mean they are doing blood sacrifices and stuff, it can just mean twisting their faith to serve your purposes. Also, heresy is not the only path, having her become more softhearted and going towards the Iconoclast path could have been an option as well.
@@Jasta85 funnily enough in beta argenta felt more like the iconoclast (benevolentia back then) while Abelard was the Dogmatic (Imperialis) now they are switched and sometimes their actions feel disjointed
@@tortoiseoflegends4466 Even for Camilla and Wenduag you could influence them to an extent, not a complete 180 but at least get them to be different from when they started. You could reject Wenduag in the beginning but bring her back into the party later with some specific choices and have her be more compliant.
@@cathulionetharn5139 This is still the case at least as far as where I am (first leaving Footfall station in Act 2) and it's been driving me nuts. Like. Why is the Adepta Sororitas, who is statistically the MOST Dogmatic of us all at Tier 3, urging me to take the big Iconoclast option at the end of Chapter 1 while my ONLY Iconoclast companion, Abelard, is pragmatically telling me that the Dogmatic answer is the only correct one to take. It's bad enough that there's pretty much no variety in alignment so far, with 4 of my 6 available companions being Dogmatic (which makes sense for standard Imperium citizens but...I kind of figured we'd be recruiting more NON-standard Imperium citizens in a wild frontier of space), but the personalities aren't even matching their statistically stated alignments.
At least in Wrath of the Righteous, you could chide Seelah for being unprofessional and eventually guide her toward being a more hardline Paladin, and Ember had three different paths where you could coax her toward stricter "not everybody can be redeemed" goodness or flat out Knight Templar "BURN THE WICKED", or just encourage her current beliefs, as I recall. The companion morality axes in Rogue Trader are baffling and I never know what to expect of these clown shoes I'm dragging to their collective doom.
I’m still begging for a mass effect style eisenhorn game. Dan Abnett wrote those characters so wonderfully that I still go back and read them
If this does well, I could see Owlcat following up with a Inquisition game, though probably not Eisenhorn specifically. It'd also probably be easier to write companions for, since if they're like the retinue in Eisenhorn or Ravenor the power imbalance is even more stark and thus affecting major changes to personality or goals wouldn't be too insane. Or if they prove too resistant, daemonhost is always an option...
Well, there is *that* Eisenhorn video game...
the game was Fantastic, for me this is the best way to depict Warhammer 40k
so much story ,lore ,amazing plot excellent writing amazing characters
despite the bugs the game was 10/10 for me and easily my favorite in 40k universe with Space marines
Game is getting more and more stabilized after 1.0.89 patch
I'm having so much fun with this game, more than I've had in a long time and I'm absolutely terrified of a game ending bug
Always a good idea to keep plenty of backup saves
@@DietersYT That is certainly bad news, I hope a patch comes to fix that sooner rather than later
Same here. Everyone is saying that Act 4 and beyond are full of game breaking bugs, so I intend to just step away from the game once I get to Act 4 then come back to it in a few months when those game breaking bugs are all patched.
It's clear that they only performed serious QA on the acts available during the beta. The technical state of the game is a damn shame considering how much I was enjoying the story until bugs stopped me from progressing with the main quest line.
Yeah I don't know how he can say this is their best release. Wrath on release was in a far, far better state. This game is in a horrendously bad state right now and I'm a big Owlcat fan.
Owlcat games - where bugs and unfinished content is a feature
I actually stopped playing midway through act 4 because of bugs
same with all of these crpg that do early access. BG3 started to slip in act 2, then fell ofa cliff in act 3 when it comes to bugs and broken things. Divinity 2 before that. It obvious why, you can't replicate the sheer mass of testing/bug reporting with solely an internal team, but they don't want to reveal the entire game just to test it, so it's kind of how it'll be.
@@stanislavkimov2779 You make valid points, but you made them in such a shitty way im going to disagree and call them shit takes just to spite you.
I couldn't finish Yrliet's questline cause of bugs, also another quest in act 2 (Nurgle in Footfall) did not trigger
The rest of the bugs were manageable (I fixed Marazhai and Ulfar's quests with toybox)
Overall a great game cause I'm huge 40k fan (read hundreds of books), they really did good research, I wish that some psyker abilities had animiations, like the Sword of the Emperor
I thought something was off with nurgle. I just started to fight nurgle in random encounter.
@@jacobtaylor7506thats the destroyed ship, where you will fight a horde of zombies and nurg's kids
It's strange that nobody talks about the skill system and character progression in Rogue Trader.
In my opinion, it's way to expansive and convoluded.
I was unfamiliar with the RT rule system, and found myself confronted with about two hundred skills to pick from, half of which I had no idea what they are supposed to do.
Sometimes, less is more!
I would have preferred fewer, more impactful and better defined skills, rather than spending hours reading through several dozens of skill choices that provide minor bonuses to this and that.
I guess that some people enjoy crunching numbers and make notes figuring out optimal character builds...but as someone who just wants to enjoy the game as an experience; I am a little frustrated that I had to spend almost as much time pondering skill choices, as I have actually playing the game.
Levelling up feels like a chore honestly, and for a new player the "recommended" talents the game offers is down right sabotage. If you take the game's advice, you'll end up having a party of characters with inconsequential combat buffs that constantly fails skill checks and cuts you out of game content. For a tabletop RPG, that's fine, a DM can work around that, but for a linear videogame RPG, it doesn't work at all.
You look at it with the way 'sometimes, less is more'. Some of us like it to 'sometimes, more is options without forcing you to have one and the same build'. The problem with your suggestion is that the we, the others, wont have as much fun as we wouldve had the options to specify some builds whereas the way it is now is that while you can still build your same build, we, the others, can also do what we want. The options are there but you dont have to take them. The only downside is is that you have to read as much as we do before taking a skill. Imagine going to two different michelin restaurants where they serve the best steaks in town but one has 2 steak menus while the other has 8. Both serve the same steak. After going 2 times to the one with less menus, you will start looking at other restaurants while the second restaurant you can visit even after your 2nd visit because they also serve kebabs. In context of the game is that the story needs replayability which is where more diverse builds would be more interesting to have a totally different playstyle even when picking the same class.
great review. i personally think it is owlcats best game by far. i really didn't like certain things in pathfinder games, timed stuff, the side mini games were awful. the insane pre buffing. the way you could mess up ur build so easy and just the amount of stupid puzzles and general mechanics to slow ur game down and offer nothing like weight limits, fatigue ext.
As a 40k fan , this game just nails the world so well. The companions are my fav in a crpg since pillars 1. There is not one companion i dont like, it was hard to choose who to bring with me. Some of the companion stories nailed it and i think they went as far as they could with the companions to stay in line with the lore of 40k. Gameplay , combat feels a lot more streamlined and enjoyable, faster considering its also TB and not RTWP. Dispite the bugs, which were also a huge issue in owlcats previous games this has been the best game i've played for awhile and honestly once it gets its own enhanced edition with dlc will probably be up there with my fav crpgs of all time. ps . do heinrix's romance story its great :P
i'm with you on this, best owlcat game and personnaly I had a better time than with BG3, The story and wold building is top notch and I found the companions very well done.
To me biggest flaw at the moment is that game does not communicate some limitations to player until it is too late to change them. Example being reputation system rewards, which you will not see in its entirety until you reach Act IV. Meaning, that you cannot consider beforehand which faction you should focus on, since rep rewards are limited and you will struggle to max one faction (not counting Imperial Navy) even if you focus on it at the expense of other factions. If you spread around to pick up rewards as you go, you are likely to lock out any high rep rewards. That should change- the game should give you a strong hint, that there will never be means to unlock several rewards. Second, rewards list should be complete for review once you unlock trading faction, so you could plan which route is the most optimal one for you. Right now, late December, you can easily set yourself for a failure on your first walkthrough.
If Rogue Trader gets polished up like Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous did with their enhanced editions, it'll be fantastic
DUUUDE iv'e waited for that review for so long (I follow your steam profile).
Thanks!
Moral compasses in CRPGs usually serve to represent the player having flexibility in choices, but here it clearly encourages railroading your choices (I can see why your compare it to Mythical Paths). Whereas I would play a Rogue Trader as walking a fine line between dogmatic, pragmatic/benevolent and flirting with what could be considered heretical by some (though not helping outright Chaos). Oh well.
Great review as always. I should mention that, as someone who play on three different devices (desktop pc, laptop and steam deck) I never had any issues with my cloud saves. Also the performance on deck is alright at capped 30 fps with medium settings (shadows off though) on my OLED.
The biggest problem I've ever encountered was the memory leak due to the Unity engine. I have other Unity engine games, and the memory leak is in those, as well. It's not Rogue Trader, it's the engine itself.
Just finished first play through, took for about 130ish hours. Want to share my thoughts on it, spoiler warning for the people who care.
It was my introduction to 40k(played dawn of war back in 2006 but it was a CoH clone-ish game) The story and the lore was enthralling, I now found out that I enjoy space RPGs a lot more. I agree with your comments about the difficulty, played on Normal and pretty much everything was face roll. TBH, only thing I've had problems was Aurora. I had played Wotr a lot(on normal and core playthroughs) but haven't been able to complete it. This game provided more sense of progression due to having overall more levels and the game being basically power fantasy. I felt pretty powerful, real early. This wasn't the case for Wotr and kingmaker. Still, Normal difficulty was a bit on the easier side. I would recommend Core. There were some game breaking bugs, I couldn't progress to act-5 but owlcat fixes eventually. Funny thing was, I haven't recruited Jae and in act 4 I had her quest in my log ? :) About the companions, I agree wholeheartedly. I mean Yrliet done something unforgivable. I simply forgave just so that I was wondering how it would progress. Argenta was a character, and so was Heinrix. They were extra bland. Pasqal was not very interesting(imo) The omnisiah stuff went way over my head, I still don't know what does cycle discontinue mean :) Ulfar and Cassia was okay and I felt I had them progress or gain some different perspective on their future. The Spacewolfs and Lone Wolf stuff was fun.
With all being sad, I had a positive experience of the game. Again, the lore was amazing, story of a RogueTrader was interesting, OST was fantastic, I routinely listen them now. Tough with some bugs, game mechanics was much easier to comprehend and engage with, comparing to Pathfinder titles.
really enjoyed the review, only criticism is at least in the lore, eldar companions looking down on humans the ENTIRE time, despite even being honor bound, is completely within the lore. Khylon had a dark eldar blood ward who was exactly like that
I have 2 runs, both for now stopped because of bugs with companions quests in act 4 and 5. It is actually crazy that Drukhari is more loyal than Aeldari. I still don't know why I didn't shoot Yrliet... Henrix has not bad character development but you need to romance him for it.
I love this game, I can't wait for a few more patches to finish it finally.
Can you tell Yrliet to leave your crew on account of her betraying you to drukhari after you have her join your team in commoragh or is it not mentioned if you tell her to leave?
@@cathulionetharn5139you can tell her to leave once you meet her in commorragh. And again at multiple opportunities during act 3.
Also, you can always give her to the inquisition by speaking to Henrix at your ship.
@@cathulionetharn5139 You can tell her to leave at multiple points after the betrayal, or even outright kill her. And if you don't then at the start of the next act, once you are back home, your human companions will come to you as a group and demand you sentence her to death.
Keeping her alive is a very conscious choice that pisses off basically everyone and, as Mortismal notes, is only going to happen to happen if you really want it to.
@@Zkdub4 nice
I'm currently waiting for some more patches and considering whether or not wait for the dlc, but it's good to know
Perfect soundtrack for my errands adventure this morning. I've been enjoying the game and am at level 9 running a sanctioned psykker. Especially like the cyborg guy and the overall setting which I have zero familiarity other than knowledge you've dropped in content I've watched.
Funny enough, I read an article today that quoted one of the higher ups at owlcat. He was being grumpy about comparisons to BG3. Saying that no one has larians resources ect.
I love owlcat and all three games of theirs I've played. I've played both divinity games and bg3. I've never lost a playthrough due to bugs in a larian game. Have never lost a play through to poorly thought out and more poorly explained kingdom management systems with larian. Getting the romance option I wanted didn't have me checking guides to make sure some act 1 dialogue didn't lock me out with larian. Like, I'm not asking for the fucking moon here owlcat, stop using customers as testers, and release a crpg I can finish without a bunch of patches.
I do still support owlcat, but 2 companion quest bugging out in act 2 has really killed my hype. Argentas bugged out on me, but I didn't catch it until like literally walking around the area act 2 ends. Jae's also bugged. My new guy I play for an hour and just feel defeated by the next 12 hours of gameplay.
Sure, it was an improvement over the other 2, that doesn't mean all 3 weren't below what should be their standard for release.
"I really did not enjoy act 3" .... so did we man 😂😂
Thanks as usual for the great review Mortym !
The faults with the companions and story to me see like a prime example of the control that Games Workshop has when they give out their IP. Usually it’s pretty good to protect the lore and give consistency across the board, but like you said, it makes this game feel flat in some places and railroaded.
@@jmmywyf4lyf except rpg's, unlike books, are founded on the agency of the player/reader. Warhammer is a setting in which characters rarely change, and agency is limited. They literally have to make you a rogue trader bc you wouldn't be allowed to do half the shit you do if you weren't. And even then, you can't really go around making friends with xenos n shit because it's Warhammer 40k
I wouldn't be so sure. I played Kingmaker and my main criticism (outside the asinine combat encounters) was that the companions were just boring. This seems more like the studio doesn't know how to write compelling characters, rather than someone meddling with them.
Anyway, this is gonna be a skip. Owlcat seems like a C+ RPG developer that doesn't understand that most people play RPGs for the story and not for the complex systems.
@@jmmywyf4lyf Let's check the facts. Mass Effect and Baldur's Gate 3 are vastly superior to anything Owlcat has made. These RPGs focus on having interesting party members. Owlcat's focus is forcing you to spend an hour on character creation. That's appealing only to a small section of RPG players.
@@jmmywyf4lyf Look at the sales number and the review scores. Owlcat makes RPGs for the wargaming crowd, which is a small group.
@@justjack1083 Wrath currently has an 83% on metacritic and consistent high review scores and sold over 1 million in Jan 2023. Lets not try sales numbers and reviews because it doesnt match what you say. Owlcat arent a big developer nor working on games by a widely known series. Larian was small too until BG3 started getting promoted.
Glad to see your take on this game overall. Thank you. Merry Christmas.
I am playing a psyker pyro-bio following your build idea ^_^
I just got to Chapter 4 after 70 hours... perhaps I should wait for a patch before continuing because of what you told us here.
Thanks for everything and enjoy Xmas with your son!
I bought the game because i want to support a studio that make amazing games like owlcat.
Played like 8 hs but i will hold for now because i want to have a less buggy experience.
Like akways, great review!
Great review (as always). I'd love to see that list of places we should avoid until we've leveled up a few times.
OMG! thanks for that tip on the navigator insight and charting a new course! I had no idea that was a thing, and explains why I seem to be trapped in certain areas of the map
I like yrilet but I can see why people would be upset at her. She did get super by the druchari at least on my playthrough as she just wanted to save her people
Always appreciate your reviews, maybe it just my preference for long form reviews. Definitely agreed on the bugs being the biggest factor for people to buy now or wait months or a year later, giving their previous game, waiting for the definitive edition is a solid choice (if one is planned) if you are not a fan of 40k. I ran into a few bugs that soft lock me from progression. At this point, there is a part of me that drawing a parallel between Owlcat and old Bethesda, ambitious RPG developer that endeared their fan because of that ambition despite buggy as hell launches, hopefully Owlcat can avoid the fate of Bethesda.
The ship combat is following the trend of non-crpg mechanics in their pathfinder games, good idea, need more time in the oven with the executions; although they are getting better with them, I definitely enjoy the ship combat more than the army combat in Wrath, my main gripe with it is the movement of the ship, which does not match the preview hologram half the time, and positioning is a major part of that section. It is really frustrating and I hope that is one of the big priority in their fixes. I had movement where the ship literally hop to the adjacent square, which is hilarious but also a kind of fuckery that make me miss my shots. If the point is to emphasize with the movement system is that these are big heavy ships, then that hopping is a big problem mechanically and immersion.
Companion in this game is definitely an good example of the double edge sword of sticking with the lore/vibe of the IP; on one hand, fans of the IP expect the lore being represented well, while on the other, one note character can be a turn off when your game is on the long side (though for 40k fans, the one note is awesome enough that it would be ok, which is why I don't think many fans will complain about the Sister and the Wolf, even the elves really). This could just be personal preference, but I thought Yrliet had personal growths, maybe it only visible if you went with the romance route. The most boring one for me is the rouge archetype companion (Jae), fine in other rpg world, but very boring in 40k. My biggest complain about companion, and by extension chapter 3 really, is the depiction of the Drukhari. It is very uncreative. As it stand, the Drukhari is your typical chaotic evil race mostly blood, pain, and a bit of pleasure. They fit more as Khornites than people who try to staved off She Who's Thirst. I get that depiction of the pleasure aspect is a mine field for devs, but I expected living furniture and hats. An entire race devoted to never get bored should get more creative than blood sports and stabbings.
I like that they leaning more into the turn-base side for combat, though I am not good with combat in CRPG and tend to build more for RP than efficiency. The only thing I can say about it is that it lean heavily toward action economy, and I can see unfair playthrough expect you to take all the advantage in that (i.e., lots of officer).
By the way, Happy Holidays and I hope you reach 300K subs! You deserve it.
Happy holidays!
Ehh, I really liked all of the companions. They all served as methods of exposition for the universe, representing different groups. I do wish they had been developed more... but, I would bet Owlcat will reach a bunch of DLCs or free add-ons where they give extended side quests for the companions.
I have to say, the UI and the way the candles cast light onto it is a very nice touch. Great game so far
for a wh40k game is pretty good and I was mostly interested because of 40k
72+ hours in I'm loving the game, the only issues I've had is a noticeable difficulty spike at Chapter 4 so be aware of this. I play all games on the easiest difficulty as I enjoy the stories more and on RT I'm literally playing on the easiest, I turned everything down manually and STILL there's some fights that swamped me. Now I'm not very good at the combat side of things but keep that in mind if you're easily frustrated.
Yeah it's kind of amazing how difficult the game is at the easiest difficulty. If you know the system you can destroy the game on unfair, sure. But the easiest difficulty should be for people who don't want a challenge and simply want the story. You should be able to comfortably win encounters with simple attacking without thinking much about it. But that will absolutely get you killed in rt.
Another great review. Thanks for your efforts.
I am a total newbie when it comes to Warhammer, with my only exposure being Vermintide 2... which is I suppose a different slice of the Warhammer pie versus this Sci-fi variant.
But yeah after this 100% review video I think I will give this a go soon.
I recently beat Kingmaker and really enjoyed it! The ending wasn't my favorite, but otherwise everything up to the completion of Pitax and right before Nyrissa and the Latern King stuff really goes deep - absolutely loved it.
Moving on after that I have already deep dived into Wrath of the Righteous where I just hit Act 3, aka post the Capture of Drezen. So far I have mixed feelings about WotR, but I do enjoy the QoL/Improvements that have been added since KM. Crusader Management is a lot more enjoyable than Kingdom Management (which honestly I didn't hate overall, it wasn't as bad as some say).
While I know I still have quite a ways to go with WotR, Rogue Trader does look like a lot more of Owlcat goodness, especially with Starship Management and the the whole Galactic/Planet Management deal here. That with the new change of pace of turn-based combat versus Pathfinders looks really promising.
Looking forward to checking this out relatively soon! Need to make it through this Wrath playthrough first though!
Heinrix is probably the best companion on the list for me. He's a nuanced take on an Inquisition acolyte, although a lot of his layers are hidden behind his romance, which is probably one of the best romances I've experienced in a game.
Still, the way he treats Idira speaks for itself. The conflict between his moral compass and his duty.
It's pretty jarring to Argenta, who is incredibly one-note in comparison
totally, his romance stuff nails his character and his position in the world
On Yrliet: Henrix straight up warns you about dealing with the xenos when she shows up. So I traded her to the Inquisition as soon as it was convenient. Glad I did after watching your review on the path not taken.
To be fair, Hendrix is an inquisitor of the Ordo Xenos. Yrliet's personal character and alignments have absolutely no sway over his disposition of her. His entire life's purpose is to spearhead humanity's goal of eliminating all xenos
I'm a couple of hours into Act II...and either I'm very lucky or I managed to get very timely patches, because I haven't seen a single bug yet! This game has been great so far, I went in knowing 0 of Warhammer 40k and I'm super immersed!
I'm a bit further in that chapter. Still nothing game-breaking but I've seen a few quests bug out and it looks like I'll never finish them. Nothing important yet.
Act 2 is pretty much fine, even act 3 is mostly working fine as well but act 4 onwards is a fucking disaster
act 1-3 are fine, you'll start seeing some in later stage act 3 and onwards. I had to restart in act 3 because act 4 was so bugged it wouldn't play an animation and i was softlocked
Omg yes, I've been waiting!!!
Thanks bro ❤.
Thanks for this commentary. I'm up to Act IV (holy difficulty spikes batman). It's interesting to learn that about Yrilet; I actually had her executed just seconds after she helped me vs the Farseer on Janus. After all, she is a dirty Xenos. Having said that, usually I try to find peaceful solutions to the Aeldari funnily enough, like with that forest planet in Act Iv, or even with Cassia's Atlas.
I agree that the companions are strange. I was a bit terrified about going Heretic beforehand because I thought I would be losing a lot of companions. Probably not. I think Heinrix along should be not as tolerant, but I suspect he's tolerant because they need the Rogue Trader's immediate resources, and while Heinrix probably can't kill the RT out of hand and not experience some sort of fallout (like immediately getting thrown out of the voidships airlock), Calzador (or whatever his name is) could - and doesn't.
I agree that Act 3 feels really strange. Even the guy betraying you (in case Yrilet is not alive to do so) is strange. I think Yrilet betraying you as well because you had just sort of shown up to fight her species nemesis She-Who-Thirsts over the planet basically. There just doesn't seem to be consequences for their actions. I had Argenta in my party when she comes clean with her sins, and it basically amounts to either abandoning her there or taking her with you over the next couple of acts - but it doesn't seem (so far at least) that you can even mention it...
I do like Act 3 except for a couple of things - it's kinda forced onto you via contrivence, - it's kinda short, - you don't really establish your own safe harbour (which is I imagine should be a priority in a place like Commoragh).
Hi Mortym! Just starting playing the game. My first deep dive into the WH40K universe. (I am more familiar with the fantasy setting.) Really looking forward to it!
I love the game.
The battle system especially is just too much fun and building your characters makes a big difference.
I also loved the companions but its true that they lack interactions. A bit more discussions and reactions after missions would have been great
Cassia + Argenta = Godly OP
The last few combats in Chapter 4 and all of Chapter 5 were an absolute cakewalk just between those two. I would wipe the entire map with them in their first opening turns on Daring, lol. Even the end boss I was technically done in the first round. Second round just had two more hits with my RT Assassin and it was over.
Absolutely loved this game! My first time experiencing the 40k universe and I'm enchanted. I really want to dive into a few 40k novels now, anyone here recommend me a good starting point? Thanks a lot gang
Would appreciate that too.
The Eisenhorn trilogy (Xenos, Malleus, Hereticus) are probably the most similar to Rogue Trader in theme, and are arguably the best books in the Black Library. Gaunt's Ghosts as a series is also great, and has a more straight up military sci-fi thing going on. Anything by Dan Abnett is a good time, basically.
Yrliet and Marazhai are my favorites for those exact reasons you listed as cons lol. To each their own.
That is why I love reviews that go into details on both the pros and cons. I read a review of Just Cause 2 that perfectly described the exact kind of game I was looking for at the time but did so implying it was a negative.
@@Blasted2Oblivion Agreed! Although I do think owlcat in particular is "known" for these type of atypical companions you can't find in other games. It's definitely on brand imo.
9:22. I have to agree with Mortym here. The heretical playthrough is shoehorned into a narrative that really isn’t equipped to handle it.
In-universe, the Imperium as a whole is very black and white with regard to Chaos and heresy. Rogue Traders’ vast powers give them a huge amount of latitude but this is not inexhaustible. The Inquisition is an equally formidable force and can destroy a Rogue Trader, especially one who has only just inherited the warrant and is not yet at the height of his/her influence. Once it becomes clear that the protagonist has forsaken the Emperor, the sector’s Inquisitor would declare him/her Excommunicate Traitoris and order Heinrix to purge the heretic. Argenta, per her vows, would no doubt assist, as would the rest of the Dogmatic characters- assuming that your Heretic did not preemptively have them killed first (as the repercussions of his/her actions would be easy to predict).
That being said, it would be extremely difficult to properly portray a heretical campaign within the same game. There would have to be extensive rewrites and a major overhaul of the companions who would stand by you, if the story were to remain lore consistent. Owlcat instead chose a weak compromise, leading to the ludonarrative dissonance (i.e. story-gameplay segregation) that Mort describes.
Great review. I think I'm more lenient on the companion design and story and interaction quality than you though. I enjoyed most of the companions (Indira can go to hell though, but I genuinely liked interacting with Argenta, Cassia, Henrix, and my bro Abelard - the most badass grandpa in the Koronus Expanse!). Even with Yrliete (sp?) there were some interesting dialogue options and I liked her quest in general (thankfully it was not bugged for me). The romance options were limited and felt forced for the sake of "we need to include romance options because that's what players expect nowadays" and that was my biggest gripe about the companions. I do wish the space combat was either better or could be auto-resolved as it eventually got pretty tedious. I hear that the next big DLC will be addressing a lot of complaints about lacklustre voidship customization, combat and quests though. Overall, Rogue Trader gets a very solid 8/10 from me.
I'm sure this game will be incredible in a year or so. I did thoroughly enjoy playing it, I have about 100 hours played. Unfortunately it's riddled with bugs and a lot of companion side quests aren't being tracked/ triggered correctly.
A super fair review. Im having issues with getting past how bland all the characters are. The pacing. The wind up in combat. It all is tedious. But i wanna reappraoch the game with a different expectation. I want to love it.
waiting for this review after 100% :D
Thank you for your review, I will buy the game now - I had some...issues... with game mechanics in Pathfinder Kingmaker (mechanically I prefer Pillars of Eternity), so I'm glad this game is easier on this front.
I wish it had full voice acting or at least text to speech. Path Finder WOTR has a mod to add text to speech. Me personally I find it a lot more enjoyable it gets exhausting reading hundreds texts through types of games.
Mort! Just want to let you know that youre my most favorite Videogame Reviewer! Youre like the Completionist but more badass and less scammy! Stay cool brother! may your holidays be merry and may your new year be more bad ass as before. DUDE! please make achievement guides too. Pls! Pls! Pls! :D
I used too, they do very poorly though, so I just contribute to the occasional guide on steam now here and there when Ive sorted something out first
Brilliant, been waiting for this video, appreciate you mort!
I absolutely loved chapter 3! It's interesting to see the different opinions on each chapter put out so far. By far that was one of my favorites plot wise and gameplay wise. All the twists were so much fun to unravel.
That is an excellent review. I just finished Act 1, and I’m trying to decide how much time to put into the rest of the game. I appreciate the look ahead.
As a massive fan of WH40K since 2004 with Dawn of War, this is a mixed bag for me. I love the game, I love the setting, I love the RPG genre, and this is easily in the top 5 best WH40K games ever made. Unfortunately, I have to hold myself back from fully enjoying it because these bugs literally break my progress.
Such a shame. Guess I'll play Darktide for another year while waiting for Owlcat to finish making Rogue Trader.
While im thoroughly enjoying being an abject sin to everything the God-Emperor stands for, many of the build defining talents like Psalm of Heroes and the Death World dodge talent (forgot the name) straight up not working as well as full cover animations causing some abilities to just not function at all puts a damper on what is a pretty fun game to me.
😂
Definitely going to play this.
I just picked up Aliens Dark Descent, Lamplighters League, Jagged Alliance 3, and Knight’s Tale on the Steam winter sale. By the time I get through those, I figure Rogue Trader will be sufficiently patched and be on sale. I’m currently finishing BG3.
I’ve got a new 4090 laptop, a loaded steam library, and a couple weeks off. Time to play. Later bros.
Have fun
The Games Workshop oversight is very apparent when it comes to the companions. Its especially obvious for the non romanceable ones where you have little influence over their personalities aside from one or two dialogue choices and their final quest. Still enjoy them for what they are since its very faithful to the source material and I was pleasantly surprised on how the Eldar comapanions were handled.
@@Zarkilexactly, only GW is allowed to seriously fuck with their own lore
yeah as a 40k fan i think GW obviously had a hand in how this game was done when it came to feel , companions ext. i know they cutt some voice acting out because it didn't fit the theme. so if they did that then you can bet they limited what owlcat could with with certain characters. but honestly i think as a fan of 40k its probably for the best. the min you let someone do crazy stuf with a battle sister for example is the seconds you dilute ur ip and its rules. i loved the companions as a 40k fan. but if ur not a 40k fan with i think mort isn't then they do feel more ridged compared to a lot of fantasy crpgs., but thats just the way of 40k tbh
oh yeah sure, but of late i feel they have been much better with there ip. the last few years or so. the gw of old sure, they didn't give a shit, even more so when it came to games. new people in control now though so i feel some things have shifted.@@Zarkil
Abelard and Cassia were my favorites , abelard is a parry dodge monster and Cassia is an absolute menace with her aoe and curses
Letssssss goooo Mort my man , gonna be sipping some fine wine as a rewatch this review a few times
Damn how have I been sleeping on your reviews! Subbed ~
Depending on how you build her Sister Argenta can turn into a must have in any party, getting extra turns and cutting down oceans of enemies and then stacking free attacks with the flamer weapons. She is an absolute force to be reckoned with and it made me smile to see the prowess of a sister of battle portrayed properly.
Merry Christmas, Mort, happy holidays to you and your family.
been playing this a lot recently and honestly if it werent for act 3, this would *easily* be my favorite owlcat game
Thanks for the review. With a pretty full game slate from an amazing year of games I think I'll wait till the bugs are fixed like I did with Wrath.
After this Starfinder would be interesting. That would get around the IP restricting from GW anyway. I love both the pathfinder games and would love to see or try a starfinder game.
Being a Hardcore 40k fan since 97.
I absolutly love it!!!
While yes the mechanics and what each class does isn't really obvious and user friendly.
The Lore, Ambiance and Atmosphere of the 40k-verse is ABSOLUTLY amazing and to a T.
Even the very difficult and Moraly ambiguous decisions you'll have to make are really what this unforgiving and brutal universe is all about.
*Chef's Kiss* to the Exterminatus...
Good review. For me at least so far this is the best CRPG I've ever played. But then again Im only on chapter 2 so let's see haha
Rogue trader is a cool setting but im really hoping for an inquisition crpg at some point. Black crusade would also be incredibly cool and all those ppl begging to be paid off for being evil could really dive in lol.
Even though I`m not a great WH40000 fan, I `ll certainly play this game as it might provide me the emotion and experience I don`t have since a proper Mass Effect.
I`ll wait for a while tho, just to get additional patches as well ;) Thanks Mort for letting us know very interesting games in your personal deep way 😎
The combat being slow is very true. Towards the end I starting using the Toybox mod to speed up the trash fights.
its by far better than kingmaker and wotr. they actually made a fun game for once. one thats enjoyable from the start for new players.
Ugh, I'm having a hard time with sustaining immersion in Act 4. For example, I hunter down a defeated the Elusive Combat pirate ship. But all the map markers for the previous fights are still there and won't complete. Even though the rumor is supposed to be.
This is one if my favorite games in recent memory. Played it on my steam deck and went hard on it, playing about 200 hours. Argenta I thought was pretty weak in the beginning, but she carried hard in parts of the end of the game, like soloing a defiler in act 4
I think I will pick up this game eventually, long time 40k fan so I really want to enjoy this game... But it sounds like the best bet is to wait a little while for bug fixes. I'll be keeping an eye on this.
I did not mind the kidnap event that much, except the part where I had to spend at least 30 minutes searching through my equipment and reequip everybody. It also felt odd that I had access to my cargo and hence could immediately equip myself with decent stuff without getting my own back.
Having actually finished the chapter 3, I must say I kind of like Yrliet. Sure, she is arrogant and did something stupid, but lets be fair, she is holding up a mirror for every dogmatic member of the team and you actually see her change through my iconclast playthrough. I am just a tad dissapointed I made my character a sniper before meeting Yrliet (and not wanting to respec), although there is something fun about seeing which one of the two is doing the single most damaging attack in a fight.
Abelard commend this man for completing the game 100 percent
Thank you for the very in-depth review of the game. The visuals were what drew my attention, but they can be deceiving although in doesnt seem to be case here. In all honesty, if the biggest / most concering flaw of the game are the bugs that plague it, then those are some good news per se. Bugs can be fixed but can't just rewrite a poorly developed story. Overall and before even playing it, the game seems very pleasant to me!
PS: It has been 3 months since your review so some of the bugs might be patched. Emphasis on "might"
The last patch fixed a ton of stuff so I know it's already in a better state than it was here, not to say there wont be any issues though
Thanks for the update! @@MortismalGaming
Must be stressful to have to 100% a game before reviewing it. I respect the grind
I expected a sororitas to be totally one-dimensional. Not disappointed.
I would've been annoyed if she was romancable.
If it wasn't for missing-out-on-quests, I would've "spaced", Idira, Yrelet and Cassia.
Having just picked this up (and put it down because of bugs in Act 4) I completely agree with you on the points needed to go down trees on alignment. I tried to do a dogmatic run, but the amount of dogmatic options that just seem lawful-stupid made it really hard to not go iconoclast. I ended up 50/50 with both on stage 2 and with no herasy points.
I however do see why the characters are how they are. Yrliet, despite betraying you I completely understood why. To me, it felt like a reasonable thing for her to do, but being able to make the Drukari a companion just feels very weird and out of nowhere. Was that something added by Kickstarter?
I think that one of the biggest issues that the game has is a lack of feeling of time I don't know how long each jump takes, I don't know they year, it is always day so that doesn't even matter much. Most of the companions feel 40-50 years old, Abelard is something like 80(?) given he has a late-teen great-granddaughter. Most of the characters are old enough and experienced enough that they shouldn't be changed much by you.
glad to have waited a bit to buy the game, im about 60hrs into the game and havent found any pesky bugs of big note, maybe a few T-posing servitors but thats a common practice in the far reaches of the galaxy