Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader
That was a fun (and exhausting) 80 hours, and I'm left with mixed feelings. First, I should say that I know basically nothing about Warhammer, so I went into the setting blind and wasn't quite prepared for the extent of how grimdark it is. I've spent much of my Christmas break slaughtering people by the billions, and that was with the intention of playing a 'good' character. I frequently found myself making casual decisions that make Emperor Palpatine look tame, scouring planets clean of life from the merest hint of corruption and executing party members for becoming a nuisance. The dangers of warp travel resulting in thousands of my crew members being ejected into space as a precaution became a regular footnote of little consequence. The opportunities for being an unimaginably cruel space Hitler are endless, with planetwide genocide being commonplace, making my demonic playthrough of Wrath of the Righteous and even the likes of Tyranny pale in comparison at the scale of malevolence your Rogue Trader unleashes on a good day.
It gets a little wearying over time, especially as the only things close to levity are when you do something comically evil. The turn-based combat is reasonable, if a little dense in terms of mechanics and too focused on slowly piling buffs on your characters before unleashing one big hit. I do however love the naval space combat, which is a dance of ship manoeuvres and utilising every ship weapon and tool you have at your disposal in the most optimal way. The colony management invovles some interesting decisions but otherwise seems inconsequential, as does the odd trading system, which doesn't involve currency and is more about gifting loot to various trade envoys to unlock other loot which they gift in return.
If I'm honest, the last 15-20 hours were a slog. There is an unavoidable (I think) and unsignposted sojourn at one point which goes on for ages and is bloody tedious, and worst of all it commits the cardinal sin of party-based RPGs: that of temporarily stripping you of all equipment and then, upon recovering said equipment,
not re-equipping everything back where it was. ![Mad :x](./images/smilies/icon_mad.gif)
There is nothing more soul-draining in an RPG than enduring a classic prisoner section and then having to figure out where each item goes in 20-odd slots per character across 8-10 characters, especially after you've spent dozens of hours gradually gathering and optimising which equipment works best on which character. It's an instant mark-down from me. And the sad thing is that the remainder of the game is mostly a slog of overly-long, overly-difficult battles, with not enough emphasis on resolving the various narratives in a satisfactory way. Even the ending slides which sum up the fate of all the planets and people you've terrorised seemed to bear little relation to my actions, which is hugely disappointing.
I think it's fair to say this is Owlcat's weakest game of their three so far. Pathfinder: Kingmaker was an instant (and broken) classic for me, but I hesitate to recommend it to anyone who doesn't love traditional D&D-style RPGs and janky games in general. Wrath of the Righteous I have no hesitation recommending to anyone who likes RPGs, as it's a masterpiece. Rogue Trader, though... If you're heavily invested in Warhammer 40K, I suspect there is much you will love here; and if you want some grimdark, turn-based RPG action, it will absolutely meet expectations. For everyone else, it's a tough sell. A good game, not a great one.