Owlcat’s ‘Rogue Trader’ Is An Amazing Warhammer 40K Game
Rogue Trader completely nails the 40K universe. Here’s what we think of Owlcat’s latest!
Last week the long anticipated cRPG Rogue Trader had its full release. The game is the first of it’s kind, a massive sprawling party and turn based RPG set in the world of Warhammer 40,000. Owlcat, who developed the two popular Pathfinder games, was well situated to make a great game of this type, and give players something they’ve been wanting for a while. After getting on our hands on the game, we can say that they totally nailed the 40K aspect. With that said, let’s dig into our review.
Rogue Trader Gets 40K Right
The most important thing about a 40K game is getting the 40K right. And Rogue Trader does. The game, both in its plots, its visuals, and its writing, really nails the feeling of 40K. It’s Grim Dark yes, but also monumental and arcane. You can try to play a straight up hero sure, but it likely won’t go well, this is a game where there are often no “good” choices. The game gets all that, and it feels perfectly 40K. Other games have done this well too, but what really sets Rogue Trader apart is both its details and understanding of scale.
The game is full of small details, from the language used, to the background setting to minor interactions that really make this feel 40K-y. The text, even if it can be a bit overblown at times, fits 40K well, and it just all comes together to work really well. This isn’t some generic setting with a quick Grim Dark overlay on top – it’s 40K to its bones. In one playthrough I found myself digging through a pile of flesh and bodies on a prison world and I wasn’t sure if this was the work of dark cultists or just your… standard for an Imperial prison world- which is a hella 40K idea.
The Scale
The game also just gets the monumental feel of 40K spot on. Everything is huge here. Your Warrant of Trade, the document that marks you as a Rogue Trader, for instance, isn’t some small bit of paper, its a massive building-sized writ. Again and again, the game hammers home the scale of things. Your ship, small by 40K standards’, houses thousands, who live and die within it and have their own cultures and issues, and the game brings that home like few others. If you like 40K, and like it a lot, this alone will likely win you over.
Solid Gameplay, You’ve Seen Before
So it gets the setting right, but what about the rest of the game? Well, Rogue Trader has some solid gameplay. However, it’s not really breaking much new ground. The game is a pretty standard for this kind of cRPG. Indeed, if you’ve played Owlcats Pathfinder games, you’ll find a lot of things very familiar. You run around a map picking up items and talking to people. Sometimes you fight people (or things from beyond the pale). You level up. As with the Pathfinder games, you eventually unlock some nation-building/managing sub-games and get to do things on a grade scale. Everything is pretty solid and works. But if you’ve played these games before I don’t think you’ll be blown away.
Running around the world maps is the least fun part of the game. Now it looks great, and there are plenty of fun details to be seen, but there is not always a ton to do. Mostly, you just go around with a tab pressed down to highlight all the things you can loot and occasionally talk to a person or something. Most of the loot you find can’t even be used as anything other than money. You might run into a trap. Traps, not just of RT, but in most cRPGs are just the worst. Here they really don’t do much. The game auto-pauses and you send someone to disarm it. Normally they do, but they might fail, and you take some damage, which normally is healed right away. It’s just a boring waste of time with little stakes and no choice. Bah!
Combat Brings The Fun!
Combat, on the other hand, as it often is, is the most fun part of the game. Its got some nice tactical options and isn’t too complicated. You can use cover and terrain, and the maps are mostly pretty interesting. Most of the time, your characters have a few options of things to do each turn, and you can build good parties and nice synergy. People and weapons also feel like they are different things and can stand out. There are a wide array of weapons and abilities to use. Vaporize people with a lasgun, maul them with a chainsword, and make their heads explode with the warp. Those are really just your starting options!
Screenshot provided by Owlcat Games
By far, the most fun thing I’ve found to do in combat is full auto. This is a common option for a lot of weapons. You basically just shot a bunch of shots in a rough cone. It’s both effective and fun. What makes it so fun, and what helps make combat fun, is that the shots don’t just have a simple hit/miss change. They might miss one target but hit another, or blow something up, or bounce around and hit something you were never aiming at at all! It’s a kind of semi-controlled small-c chaos that is just super fun to watch. Did I mention your bullets make people explode?
Final Thoughts, and Overall Verdict
Rogue Trader nails the combat, the setting, and feeling of 40K. Past that, most of the game is just solid, but not amazing. It’s also a very dense game. The dense lore might be great if you love 40K, but it could be a turn off for new players. Character building and progression is another area that could turn people off. The game has a pretty robust character builder, at least when it comes to rule options some of the visual options are limited. However, much like the Pathfinder games, it can be hard to understand what’s going on. As a new player, you are asked to make a lot of choices, often without any real context for what they do or how the game plays. This could be an issue or those new to the Grimdark.
Progression and leveling up can also be a bit of a pain. You’ve got a bunch of classes (archetypes) to go through with a huge variety of abilities and combos to work with. Most of these upgrades give you a pretty complicated boost. It’s common to get a % based on some combo of stats/parts of stats boost to something. Incense X’s damage by 10 + (BS bonus/2)% for instance. What does that mean, what benefit am I really getting from this. Who knows. between the beta and the full release, I’ve played 40-50 hours of the game, and I still don’t know what all these things do, nor can I be really bothered to care that much. It’s a crunchy game.
Still, if you are a 40K fan, this is a game for you. It’s got a lot of good things going for it. The gameplay is generally solid. It looks decent. And it’s very, very, very 40K. If you want to really dig into the Grimdark and explore some cool stuff – yeah this is the game for you!
Full disclosure. Owlcat provided us with free beta access and a free review copy of the game. However, the opinions above are our own.
Let us know what you think about “Rogue Trader”, down in the comments!
