Warhammer Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Fedora Master]

PC Gamer, 59/100: https://www.pcgamer.com/warhammer-40000-rogue-trader-review/

Review isn't really worth reading outside of this:

"I had to restart after a quest-blocking bug 18 hours in, and had characters insist I help them with problems I already solved or offer their services after being recruited. One enemy ran back to the beginning of the map on the first turn and hid there, meaning after dealing with his friends I had to trek back in turn-based mode to finish the fight. Allies sometimes don't act on their turns, and distant enemies sometimes take a full minute to decide what they're doing. The camera doesn't always move where it's supposed to when dialogue pops up during battles, meaning I have to read it in the log after. The log reverts to Russian when describing Perils of the Warp, and explains why I have to reroll successes by saying "%Reason%". Two of my combat abilities stopped working for a while, and the tech-priest's utility mechadendrites, which are supposed to give him a +10 bonus to Demolition and Tech-Use, instead give him a +1,020 bonus. I could go on."

Multiple ways to softlock yourself.

Half the abilities won't work correctly.

 

[Swen]

Owlcucks just keep on losing HHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!!!!!!!!​

Yeah, Lets trust a review that's one of main issues is , ''too many numbas ''

And the proliferation of abilities and passive bonuses to those abilities makes character progression a chore. Everyone levels up constantly, and making decisions for the six party members plus the three or so left behind who nevertheless need to rotate in for their personal quests is absolute tedium. You'll be staring at options like adding +((50 + 10 x Ballistic Skill bonus) / number of enemies in the area of effect)% damage with an additional +(10 + 2 x Ballistic Skill bonus)% dodge reduction to your next ranged area-of-effect attack, and wondering who thought making it all so bitty was a good idea.

And

Is this how the cope narrative will be from now on Owlkeks? "game journos opinion bad!"



fantadomat Vantiks are like Owlcuck, losing all the time

 

[Sarathiour]

Games journos opinion is utterly irrelevant to the quality of the product, if they didn't like it, it just mean the system is not braindead easy, not that it is good.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

https://www.ign.com/articles/warhammer-40000-rogue-trader-review

Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader Review in Progress​

Maybe the real grim darkness of the far future was the friends we made along the way…​

BY LEANA HAFER

POSTED: DEC 6, 2023 10:00 AM


Sitting at right around 65 hours into developer Owlcat's impressively deep and expansive Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, there are a few things I can proclaim with confidence: One is that this game is absolutely huge – I might only be crossing the halfway mark, based on where I am in its intricate but not too difficult-to-follow story. Another is that this is a glorious glimpse into the 40K universe, highlighting elements of it that often go underexplored and showcasing some of my personal favorite races and organizations. It's not without faults, and I have a lot more to see before I slap a final score on it, but Rogue Trader is already easily becoming my favorite of this studio's ambitious CRPGs so far.

Unfortunately, it’s also worth mentioning upfront that there I ran into a lot of bugs – enough to stuff a Space Hulk with. Missing tooltips, abilities that don't work correctly, invincible enemies, T-posing servitors, and even one case where my progress was blocked on a crucial quest. Like my grandiose, gothic voidship the Fortunatrix, it's not exactly polished to a mirror sheen. I've been playing on a pre-release build up to this point though, and we were promised a lot of fixes coming in the Day 1 patch that will be out by the time you're reading this. I made some test saves at a couple of vexing moments so I can go back and check if they're mended in the release version, and I'll update this review accordingly.

Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader Screenshots​

IGN's Twenty Questions - Guess the game!​

Welcome to 20 questions. Can you guess the game?

Now then: Rogue Trader puts you into the shiny, step-on-me boots of a titular Rogue Trader, the heir to the von Valancius dynasty and a very powerful person in the Imperium. No matter how you envision them – with satisfying dialogue options that range from a snarky pirate to a sanctimonious servant of the Golden Throne – this character is a joy to roleplay. Your status allows you to get your way and command respect in many situations where your typical adventuring hero would be laughed off or forced to kiss a ring. You're so rich that your wealth is abstracted as a "Profit Factor," and buying common items like gear doesn't even make a visible dent in your coffers.
The writing really does steer the ship here, from the central quest to reclaim your protectorate and deal with a powerful Chaos cult, to terrifying encounters on desolate shipwrecks hidden away in the dark corners of the Koronus Expanse, to conversations with your diverse and multifaceted crew. If I had to pick three favorite factions in the 40K universe, they would be the Sisters of Battle, the Craftworld Eldar, and the Space Wolves. The fact that all three of those are represented by one of the Rogue Trader's recruitable companions probably wasn't done specifically to pander to me, but it sure feels like it was.
Combat takes a step forward from Owlcat's Pathfinder games.

“
Breaking away from the Pathfinder rule system Owlcat reproduced with almost self-defeating fidelity in its past two games, combat in Rogue Trader takes a step forward as well. It pays homage to some of the classic Fantasy Flight Warhammer 40K tabletop RPGs, but is really a new system built from the ground up. And that intentionality has allowed it to simply work better, from character build options to encounter design.
I will warn you that it is still a very crunchy system, though. If you're coming here straight from Baldur's Gate 3, Larian's interpretation of D&D will seem like a soft, gooey nougat that melts in your mouth by comparison. Ability descriptions in Rogue Trader can feel like reading an academic paper on differential equations, and the wordy, overly-detailed way the tooltips are presented doesn't do it any favors. I eventually got a handle on it and came to enjoy the depth it offers, but it's intimidating until you learn its visual language, and it never stops being kind of a chore to understand what a new talent actually does on first inspection.


One of my favorite elements of this combat system is how powerful support characters can be. I made my Rogue Trader avatar an officer who not only hands out buffs, but can also give allies free actions. This ends up making me the lynchpin of the entire party even when I rarely ever fire a shot or swing a chainsword myself. I have Yrliet, an ancient elven ranger with a sniper rifle, Argenta, a warrior space nun, and Ulfar, a freaking werewolf in power armor, in my party, after all. I'm never going to be as cool as any of them. So helping them do violence even better is a great niche to find myself in. Setting up a combo where Argenta empties a full bolter magazine directly into the face of a daemon or Yrliet one-taps the enemy commander from across the map is endlessly satisfying.
The galaxy of Rogue Trader looks great, from the cramped corridors of an imperial bunker to the wild expanse of an untamed jungle world. It manages to capture the harshness and moodiness of 40K without being constantly gloomy or depressing. There's a lot of deft use of color in every environment and on every model or portrait. Exploration is a treat, even if danger is usually just around the corner. The character designs rule, too. And while voice acting is limited mainly to a few, specific, companion-related quests, what is there is very good.
I still have a lot of Rogue Trader ahead of me, and hopefully the devs will be exterminating bugs as fast as I'm exterminating the enemies of humanity. So check back in the coming days for more of my thoughts as the story progresses, and stick around for the final verdict next week.

 

[Zboj Lamignat]

What is it? Mass Effect but isometric, dystopian, turn-based, and not that much like Mass Effect.

Modern "journalists" and their utter lack of any sort of exposure to their supposed subject matter. Name a more iconic duo.

 

[Fedora Master]

Games journos opinion is utterly irrelevant to the quality of the product, if they didn't like it, it just mean the system is not braindead easy, not that it is good.

They are but when even these people dislike it, there must be something up.

Does the game not SOLVE those stupid ability fomulas? Do you really have to do "target's dodge, parry, and armour by -(10 + exploits stacks x PER bonus)%" in your head?

 

[kangaxx]

PC Gamer, 59/100: https://www.pcgamer.com/warhammer-40000-rogue-trader-review/

Review isn't really worth reading outside of this:

"I had to restart after a quest-blocking bug 18 hours in, and had characters insist I help them with problems I already solved or offer their services after being recruited. One enemy ran back to the beginning of the map on the first turn and hid there, meaning after dealing with his friends I had to trek back in turn-based mode to finish the fight. Allies sometimes don't act on their turns, and distant enemies sometimes take a full minute to decide what they're doing. The camera doesn't always move where it's supposed to when dialogue pops up during battles, meaning I have to read it in the log after. The log reverts to Russian when describing Perils of the Warp, and explains why I have to reroll successes by saying "%Reason%". Two of my combat abilities stopped working for a while, and the tech-priest's utility mechadendrites, which are supposed to give him a +10 bonus to Demolition and Tech-Use, instead give him a +1,020 bonus. I could go on."

The review says, "In the Pathfinder games, which had D&D's alignment system, Owlcat tended to interpret Lawful alignments in a "we should kill goblin babies because they'll probably grow up evil" kind of way, which made playing a paladin a jarring experience."

Isn't that quite literally the way it's meant to be interpreted?

 

[CaesarCzech]

Games journos opinion is utterly irrelevant to the quality of the product, if they didn't like it, it just mean the system is not braindead easy, not that it is good.

They are but when even these people dislike it, there must be something up.

Does the game not SOLVE those stupid ability fomulas? Do you really have to do "target's dodge, parry, and armour by -(10 + exploits stacks x PER bonus)%" in your head?

Owlcat_Eyler i seem to recall that game is supposed to give you concrete value of the formula in release version, were you not able to do that in time or did the journalist get wrong version ?

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Does the game not SOLVE those stupid ability fomulas? Do you really have to do "target's dodge, parry, and armour by -(10 + exploits stacks x PER bonus)%" in your head?

The game's does the formula for you, you just have to do if you want to plan ahead.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

The review says, "In the Pathfinder games, which had D&D's alignment system, Owlcat tended to interpret Lawful alignments in a "we should kill goblin babies because they'll probably grow up evil" kind of way, which made playing a paladin a jarring experience."

Isn't that quite literally the way it's meant to be interpreted?

That's textbook example of a Lawful Evil character.

 

[Fedora Master]

Does the game not SOLVE those stupid ability fomulas? Do you really have to do "target's dodge, parry, and armour by -(10 + exploits stacks x PER bonus)%" in your head?

The game's does the formula for you, you just have to do if you want to plan ahead.

Well then fuck those journos.

 

[Desiderius]

I'm fine with fuck the journos, but only a vatnik could then be stupid enough to hire a community manager who wants to fuck the grognards too, and programmers who don't play the game so everything has to be recoded in the following months.

 

[Owlcat_Eyler]

Games journos opinion is utterly irrelevant to the quality of the product, if they didn't like it, it just mean the system is not braindead easy, not that it is good.

They are but when even these people dislike it, there must be something up.

Does the game not SOLVE those stupid ability fomulas? Do you really have to do "target's dodge, parry, and armour by -(10 + exploits stacks x PER bonus)%" in your head?

Owlcat_Eyler i seem to recall that game is supposed to give you concrete value of the formula in release version, were you not able to do that in time or did the journalist get wrong version ?

The game gives you the actual number, the formula is seen only if you click in the number itself.

 

[Vasya]

PC Gamer, 59/100

Body types are clearly not enough in 2023. Should've shown gay bear sex in the opening cutscene.

 

[Galdred]

Games journos opinion is utterly irrelevant to the quality of the product, if they didn't like it, it just mean the system is not braindead easy, not that it is good.

They are but when even these people dislike it, there must be something up.

Does the game not SOLVE those stupid ability fomulas? Do you really have to do "target's dodge, parry, and armour by -(10 + exploits stacks x PER bonus)%" in your head?

All these "journo reviews" seem to confirm that it'd be better waiting 1 year or so to get the game, but none seem to be pointing at real core flaw of the game. Also, hoping Bioware would have come with anything remotely interesting automatically voids the review...

 

[gongal]

PC Gamer, 59/100

Body types are clearly not enough in 2023. Should've shown gay bear sex in the opening cutscene.

Are (((body types))) present in this garbage?

 

[Tyrr]

The review says, "In the Pathfinder games, which had D&D's alignment system, Owlcat tended to interpret Lawful alignments in a "we should kill goblin babies because they'll probably grow up evil" kind of way, which made playing a paladin a jarring experience."

Isn't that quite literally the way it's meant to be interpreted?

That's textbook example of a Lawful Evil character.

But it says "chaotic good".

 

[Kem0sabe]

Progression wiping bugs, constant reloads because menus are fucked... yeah, fuck you Owlcat for being incapable of releasing a working game.

 

[Swen]

So uuuuhh Owlcuck losers, should I wear my armor or not tomorrow when I receive my GOTY?

https://twitter.com/LarAtLarian/status/1732371508658344369

 

[Jaedar]

The review says, "In the Pathfinder games, which had D&D's alignment system, Owlcat tended to interpret Lawful alignments in a "we should kill goblin babies because they'll probably grow up evil" kind of way, which made playing a paladin a jarring experience."

It was lawful evil in motb.
But that too, is lawful.

Progression wiping bugs, constant reloads because menus are fucked... yeah, fuck you Owlcat for being incapable of releasing a working game.

I'm happy I already decided I won't be playing this on release.

I wish that this game would threat romances more than merely fan service. For eg, dating an Eldari being a real romance, nto only ""platonic"" and should come with serious consequences, like nobles finding it out and trying to blackmail the MC, the most fanatical inquisitors even trying to kill the MC depending on what he does.

Any dealings with the Eldar are heretical. I don't think that fucking one is any worse than having one on your crew in the first place, as far as the Imperium is concerned.

Actual romance will make the inevitable betrayal more painful, it's always risky to get emotionally involved with xenos.

Imperials frequently have somewhat peaceful dealings with eldar, often ending with one backstabbing the other. They both hate/fear chaos, nids, etc more than they hate each other.

 

[CaesarCzech]

Games journos opinion is utterly irrelevant to the quality of the product, if they didn't like it, it just mean the system is not braindead easy, not that it is good.

They are but when even these people dislike it, there must be something up.

Does the game not SOLVE those stupid ability fomulas? Do you really have to do "target's dodge, parry, and armour by -(10 + exploits stacks x PER bonus)%" in your head?

Owlcat_Eyler i seem to recall that game is supposed to give you concrete value of the formula in release version, were you not able to do that in time or did the journalist get wrong version ?

The game gives you the actual number, the formula is seen only if you click in the number itself.

You might want to talk to that journalist then.

 

[Swen]

PC Gamer, 59/100

Body types are clearly not enough in 2023. Should've shown gay bear sex in the opening cutscene.

"I..ii..iitt's becuz we have no bear sex and not becuz rogue trader is just a pile of garbage!!! REEEEE!!!"

Keep the cope coming boyos, entertain me

 

[Junmarko]

PC Gamer, 59/100

Body types are clearly not enough in 2023. Should've shown gay bear sex in the opening cutscene.

"I..ii..iitt's becuz we have no bear sex and not becuz rogue trader is just a pile of garbage!!! REEEEE!!!"

Keep the cope coming boyos, entertain me

Reviewed by "Jody MacGregor"....

Pronouns on X profile.

...so yes, you might be right on that one Swen.

 

[ArchAngel]

PC Gamer, 59/100

Body types are clearly not enough in 2023. Should've shown gay bear sex in the opening cutscene.

"I..ii..iitt's becuz we have no bear sex and not becuz rogue trader is just a pile of garbage!!! REEEEE!!!"

Keep the cope coming boyos, entertain me

You do know that this is the Codex and we do not care what Journos think?

 

[Shaki]

I didn't have high expectations, but that PC Gaymer review made me really optimistic. If a game journo gives a low score whining about too complicated systems, it probably means the gameplay is great, and there wasn't enough woke shit to make up for the systems being too hard on journo's brain. Best possible endorsement.