WH40k: Rogue Trader - Review After 100%

Looks like the two bugged achievements are fixed with the latest patch!

I've been making my way through this game when I have time so I just made it to Act 3 and man is it awful. No spoilers, but why developers insist on making team based RPGs where you specialize each character in your party to do a specific thing and then will take that team and your equipment away is beyond me. Worse, they surround you with skill checks, most of which you blatantly aren't going to be able to do.

It's not hard, it's just tedious and counter to the design of the entire rest of the game.

To be fair, NO ONE enjoys being in Comorragh.

If it had a real time fighting system like Baldurs gate 2 I would instantly buy it. the time drag managing turn based especially in filler fights is just too much of a drag for me

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.

Hey @MortismalGaming Im not sure if you check these comments but do you know of any remedy to fix the stutters for rouge trader? I dont recall getting these on kingmaker or wrath and its kind of irritating. Thanks buddy. :^)

Played it twice, and got several bugs that required reloading, like:
- Two companions disappeared after their quest. Had to reload and do things differently.
- One companion who is bigger than the others, often got stuck (especially in places with ladders), and I couldn’t move from the area because the whole party had to be gathered.

Overall, an excellent game, but the major bugs along with the minor bugs, lower the score to 8 / 10

mid act 3 game started to freeze every time i mouseover any ability, only "fix" i found on the internet is to swap weapons with X..it has to be something about big numbers and shitton of modifiers i guess.

Leveling up is so frequent it causes me to get bored by the time I finish the first Act.

I also run into some bugs, some ugly ones. They tried to eat my face.

Maybe because I am playing the game on Xbox Series X but even as of Jan 13, 2024. All I have been encountering are game breaking bugs. Several side quests I still cant complete, charcaters gettin stuck in environments (especially Ulfar), and 14 times so far I have had to revert back to older saves in order to progress past the bugs and glitches. I just got to act 5 now and I feel like the most difficult part of the game are the too many glitches that is turning this game super frustrating. The fact that you have not encountered any game breaking bugs on your first playthrough is incredible wheras that seems to be the opposite for my playthrough. Maybe it is a platform issue but regardless this is my first and last time I ever buy an OwlCat game sadly.

my roque trader is better for humanity than the corpse emperor :)

gave up on the game for now . the amount of bugs that broke the fun for me is extreme . I will wait a few more months

I'm sorry to bother you with this, but you seem to be the only person who could answer this for me. I'm going for platinum, and there is a trophy called "Knee Deep in Chaos" and the trophy description says you need to surrender Eufrates 2. The only information online about Eufrates 2 is a walkthrough of the area on Neoseeker (but doesn't mention anything about any choices), and people of Reddit complaining about a difficulty spike in Act 4 in general. So I am hoping you can answer this. Does this trophy/achievement require you to be on the Heretical path, and if so, to what degree. For whatever reason, this was the only trophy on the list with no answers online.

But can you Slaanesh in this game?

the game's great - best 40k game so far imo. graphics, music, writing - superb, gameplay - okay, easy to cheese; also the game does terrible explanation of what is what and i had to mod my way later in the game to progress because i spent all my navigator points early; the bugs however - i got stuck in a way that i couldnt help with toybox in the last act on epitaph (barrier dialogue at entrance wouldnt start) and after 20 retries and reloads i gave up. The further u advance in the game the buggier it is and by the time i gave up i was already frustrated, so u can imagine how mad I was at the end.
Wait a year or so until they fix this piece of crap and then it will be easily 8-9/10 game

So I recently completed a play through of this game and well.... It felt kind of meh to me. I Like pathfinder WTOR a lot more.

This game the combat feels too constrained. Ive played table top 40k and had a painted army that i had fun building and I get this game was going for that kind of feel with the turn based. But the mechanics of everything just felt so repetitive. Every fight in the game felt like there was little different from the one before. Even most of the boss fights felt kind of redundant. Story i liked, and the characters i liked. But combat felt boring.

Loading screens where a bit more obnoxious then pathfinder as well. One other thing I dont like is how some things scale. By time I beat the game i was no where near max level, my dogmatic conviction score was only up to level 3 despite choosing every dogmatic option i came across. And as far as i can tell companions conviction scores NEVER change. So no raising it up to max rank or say going heretic and convincing your party members to switch to being heretic. So yeah thats a bit of a negative.

Also like you mentioned about the leveling i agree it's a mess. The talent menu should be divided up more like all ranged weapon talents, and all melle, talents for instance instead of all of them under offensive. And yeah, need some disclaimers on those talents, maybe even some examples of how some of them might be used to play off each other.

If your a fan of 40k i think youd like it and I'd probably still recommend it with a disclaimer. But if your not a 40k fan, i dont know that you'd like this game and I can't recommend it.

From the most recent comments I've seen, I'll have to wait. I only have the Steam deck to play with so I'll wait for some bug fixes. Maybe in about 3 months it will be better

i did get the uncover the ice, so its not bugged but i dont know the requirements that allowed me to do it so i cant help there

Imagine a wh40k game about space pirates that has no playable drukhari. Thats a hard pass.

Cassia best girl
Yrliet close second
Abelard best bro

Its disappointing if the companions are like you described. I will take a second opinion on them, maybe watch some videos, but I might skip the game if keeping the companions being illogical.

Thanks for the review.

Yea Rogue Trader has been placed in the play in a year bin.

A lot of love went into this game but the QA and QC just aren't there. There are way too many bugs to even notice. A lot of interactions between player and NPC straight up won't happen and either cause a quest to bug due to no winstate, or never start another series of event. For example romances - although they're wildly useless both narratively and in terms of gameplay in Rogue trader - sometimes just don't happen because reasons.
Space combat is straight up bugged at its core and weapon upgrades don't work, the balance of the game is wildly out of control. 99% of the game is too easy and a couple of fights will straight up demolish you (eldar turrets, eldar rangers, URALON)
The game will probably be amazing in a year or two when everything is ironed out and the DLCs are out (We are getting an assassin DLC and another one about Deldar I believe?) it will be great.
For now, the game is just too janky.

I loved both, pathfinder games but after playing BG3, I can't play non fully narrated games... I do too much reading for work to keep reading when I play as well.

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.

I hope that they make a second warhammer 40k game soon. This felt like kingmaker in the sense that it was good but really sets the tone for wotr.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

Does the combat get fun at some point? I'm only on the 3rd or so planet after the tutorial and I really find a lot of the combat bland. If a character isn't in the perfect position to unleash their arsenal its like "move, attack, done"

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

this game looks like that movie rebel moon. sort of.

if I got age of wonders 4 and realms of sigma. and i’m a newbie to it all should i get this. i’m overwhelmed in age of wonders 4 but find it interesting.

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.

cassia is the one i want to kill right away but wont let me. I hate the fact its so hard to try and figure out what you are supposes to do in missions like no markers at all.

how good is it for a newbie to warhammer. it looks endlessly fun with super long gameplay and future dlc.

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...

Only issu3 i have is the real fucky voices lines

Like how a character will go.from voiced to not for like to dialogue bits thrn voiced again

They are patching like crazy. I’ve only had a couple of glitches so far, just visual stuff.

worst part of combat is animations, feels like they did only 5-6 of them, and applied to every action and attack. Need to buff your ally? point finger! Need to cast warp fire? Point finger! About to taunt an enemy? Point finger!

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.

This game needed a bit more time in the oven.

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.

After two last Pathfinder titles, RT looks so much easy
Tho not gonna try 'unfair' till some big bug fixes or even EE version

Ah I see. That ice planet thingy is bugged 🙃

This is the most fun in a game ive had for some time. Im a huge warhammer fan in general and im loving the game.
Bugs are being fixed at a decent rate which is promising.
I was going to hold off buying it, but im glad i got it the other day.
Your actions have real genuine consequences and the world building is insane and it is so engrossing. Brilliantly done

The combat being slow is very true. Towards the end I starting using the Toybox mod to speed up the trash fights.