WH40k: Rogue Trader - Launch Review

[Music] what's going on everybody morm here this time bringing you my launch review for Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader which is going up just about a day before the game itself launches courtesy of alcat games providing me with a review copy and while I typically do 100% reviews this is a big game so while I have had access to it since the 22nd of November it's still going to take me another week or so to finish out the 100% so as is the usual in cases like that I'm dropping this launch review for now as we still have quite a bit to cover and as it stands for right now I have currently completed the game one time and I'm coming up on the end of my second playthrough of what will likely be a total of three with that in mind before we dive into the review proper the last thing I want to mention here is that some of the achievements for the game at least in the review copy that I've had have been a little bit wonky that is to say things were unlocking when they shouldn't and I was able to verify that this was a problem with the review copy specifically so other reviewers will have encountered the same thing but for instance the achievement for exploring all of the solar systems actually pops right as you start act two which is before you've explored any solar systems just to give an example moving on from there though let's actually dive into this and talk about this game so what is Rogue Trader for those unaware this is the first crpg set in the Warhammer 40K universe and while that is a vast and deep Universe with all sorts of different things going on this particular game uses the tabletop RPG of the same name as a reference point for all of its systems and while it has been heavily adapted for a video game form since the ttrpg is well over 15 years old at this point that is nonetheless where a lot of this stuff comes from so while we are tackling the Grim darkness of the far future it is an RPG first and foremost so how we go about doing that will Define our playthrough with choices consequences all of which feed into the main narrative surrounding our Rogue Trader Empire but before we talk any further about that I do want to kick this review off with a discussion about the technical state of the game if you've played alcat games prior releases you know that they've been far from bug-free King maker was especially bad Wrath of the righteous was better but still had more than its fair share of problems so how is Rogue Trader fairing well I can say on the whole it has been better than Wrath of the righteous was on its release though to be fair this particular game has much less in the way of systems and options that have to mesh together I did nonetheless encounter some significant issues including one gamebreaking problem that was actually fixed with a patch about a week ago before the game even launched and then I was able to continue with that save file outside of that specific problem I also ran into issues where menus would just stop popping up for important things which means I would have to to load back and lose some progress to a point where those menus actually worked again and while those are the most serious issues I encountered I think the real story is with the variety of minor issues I would run into and while I would say none of them were really a genuine hindrance to an overall playthrough the number of them popping up and how repetitious it got could definitely get annoying after a while such as UI elements not displaying and then you would have to save and then reload that save to fix it or certain character's abilities just not working for a set amount of time for some reason so while I have played every release from alcat games and I can very much so say that this is the least buggy of their games I have played there are still a variety of minor issues that I think might get in the way of people's enjoyment here and there to be sure so definitely something to keep in mind though with that said the game was pretty stable it never actually crashed on me in any way moving on from there though let's talk about the story setup for this one and my thoughts on it we take on the role of a Rogue trador in this game as you might imagine and Rogue traders in the Warhammer 40K setting are people who explore and push the boundaries of the Imperium meaning that it is their job to go out manage all sorts of Worlds and the governance therein as they seek to both gain a profit and expand the Empire's influence so the game kicks off with you meeting your potential Mentor Theodora the current Rogue Traer early on in the opening she gets assassinated and we are left the so he to the Von valencius Rogue Trader protectorate having this new role thrust upon us we must then should we choose to accept it anyway go about restoring our Empire to its former glory getting things up and running but in doing so we run across a few threats common to the Warhammer 40K Universe which is to say servants of chaos cabals of cultists all of which are pulling the strings here in there and orchestrating a larger plot that then becomes the main story and while that's as far as I want to go just just to avoid spoilers as much as possible I did have a few General thoughts on the story now I've played both the alpha the beta a pre-release version this review copy and I can safely say that act three of this game is by far my least favorite and it's not even so much the actual Act of act 3 but rather how you get involved in act 3 is very railroad they really kind of force that on you and while they do set you up with that moment to then go bigger places it is kind of frustrating in the moment that it happens moreover while the story I think makes sense in the early game where you're basically just getting your footing and getting your trade empire together solving immediate problems the story didn't really come together for me at least until act five which is close to the end of the game I genuinely didn't know where they were going with this narrative or how it was going to piece together into something bigger overall though I was pretty satisfied with it I think it does a good job of presenting what Rogue Traders are supposed to be in this setting and if you want to learn more about that I actually made a lore primary are very recently talking about some of the key Concepts if you're a little bit lost now the other part of the story that I want to talk about is the choice and consequence or more specifically the convictions system like any good RPG we have tons of choices to make this includes a key story moments and while there are a generic set of options in any given situation a lot of them boil down to your convictions Rogue Traer features three of these either dogmatic iconic class or heretical basically you can either a true servant of the Imperium meeting out Justice to Heretics and Chaos alike or an Icona Class A person who is trying at the very best to preserve their own people and be a good leader if not a good person and then heretical is just outright embracing heresy and chaos and the Cults as you perform more and more of those decisions and lean into them you'll increase your rank for these which will both give you abilities but also give you access to other choices later on in the story which allow you to shake up and very your playthrough a good bit though admittedly not to the degree that something like Wrath of the righteous did which had 10 different Mythic paths to play through overall though in terms of the story and things like that I think they did a pretty good job I enjoyed it quite a bit the convictions in particular felt really good and when the story finally got around to wrapping everything up it did just that all the things that had happened up to that point suddenly came into perspective and I think they did a good job with it overall moving on from there though let's talk about the difficulty of the game a little bit or more specifically its modularity because while there are several presets ranging from story to unfair that you can choose from you can also change out individual aspects of the difficulty meaning that you can really customize your experience here which means kind of no matter how you want to play this you're very likely to find some aspect of this to adjust and tailor to your own preferences which is something I personally definitely like to see with that in mind however this game is not terribly difficult and it is not as much to learn as something like the Pathfinder series alcat is also known for those games using Pathfinder one's rule set are uh deep to say the least and honestly kind of difficult to jump into which is a problem that this game does not suffer from as much because while there is a lot to jump into most of it is pretty straightforward and as long as you're picking things that synergize together at least a little bit you're going to be fine on normal mode so difficulty wise much easier than their previous games though with that in mind unfair is still very difficult and if you don't know what you're doing you're probably going to be in for a rough time next up though we have character creation who our Rogue trador is is largely up to you and while I've made a full video breaking down character creation just to give you the spark notes here we're going to pick where are characters from what they did before they became a rogue Traer what their archetype or their class is as well as our starting ship all of these decisions are of course going to affect various things like our individual character stats Baseline features that they get right here at character creation as well as some options that are only available as they begin to level up probably the most not self-apparent thing here is the Triumph and Darkest Hours these are role playing choices that you'll make for your character that typically have small effects on your actual stats but mostly affect roleplay as well some of them will actually have moments throughout the story where they are specifically referenced but they are there mostly for role playing purposes another interesting thing about character creation for this game is that if you are familiar with the tabletop version of this game you might not necessarily see a lot of the classes represented via the archetypes and that is because most of that stuff has been transferred onto your companion specifically the ttrpg often focused on large groups of players assuming various roles in a particular party without really much in the way of overlap meaning that outside of these roles your companions actually take up roles of the other classes that typically would have accompanied you in the ttrpg what's more though many of the options here and your ability to create a character is much more I would say versatile than something like Pathfinder was where there were plenty of wrong options with this particular system in character creation there's a lot of stuff that synergizes pretty well or in ways you might not expect so it's harder to make a let's say wrong choice but even if you do you can Respec on your Void ship Bridge later so you don't have to be afraid of just messing everything up here now that's about as much as I want to say for character creation here but again I did do a pretty in-depth guide to all of these decisions what they were how they worked in a separate video if you want to check that out now moving right along let's talk a little bit about progression and how that works which mostly comes down to levels gear our trade Empire and our ship as we complete quests take on enemies in combat we'll of course be gaining experience and leveling up as we level up we'll be progressing along several different tracks of archetypes right at the beginning of the game you'll pick one of four archetypes the warrior officer op operative or Soldier each representing a specific type of game playay each one of these as you level them up has their own track in terms of abilities stat increases skill increases Etc and while most of them have a general sort of theme to them it does alter a little bit now each of these base archetypes right at level one has an option of one of three Advanced archetypes when they hit level 16 and the combination of your base and advanced archetype makes up the bulk of your class now much later in the game once you hit Level 36 you can pick up the Exemplar archetype which is effectively just a continuation of the previous two giving you an opportunity to pick up more and more abilities and things from the previous two but also gives you access to several Exemplar abilities that are just incredibly strong stuff and in fact the game has a bit of a reverse difficulty curve in that way because a lot of the stuff you get towards the end is so strong that the game gets pretty easy but outside of levels we also have of course gear progression I this is relatively standard each of our characters comes with all sorts of different slots that they can put gear into and it comes with all sorts of unique effects now something that they did I think that's pretty cool is that a lot of that gear will directly interact with your archetype abilities and some way meaning that some gear is very much so meant for specific sort of combinations of archetypes and what's more you actually need the proficiencies for a lot of this stuff which as you progress an archetype you'll be able to pick up which means that some alien technology your human character won't necessarily be able to use right out of the gate whereas other equipment is only available for your alien companions or perhaps your Space Marine companion so that's something to keep in mind but overall I think with the gear in particular they did a really cool job of diversifying what was available in terms of unique abilities and how it affects your potential in combat but probably the biggest thing to watch out for is the deflection armor and Dodge ratings deflection and armor are similar and they work together but they're different deflection is just flat damage reduction so if I have five deflection I have a reduction of five damage from any incoming attack whereas armor is a percentage reduction of the rest of the damage after deflection is taken into account so in many ways this will reduce something by like 50 or 60% potentially after deflection has taken its toll and presuming the enemy doesn't have some amount of armor penetration now the other side of that is Dodge because if you can't take a hit you might just want to avoid it Al together lighter armor typically allows you more chance to dodge whereas heavier armors come with penalties to your Dodge chance but even that can be worked around a little bit if you're using a melee weapon you can actually also have a chance to Parry something or at least other melee attacks of course so those are important stats to look out for another one is recoil on your ranged weapons many weapons are capable of firing burst attacks however every round after the initial round in a burst loses accuracy B based on the weapons recoil but beyond just those statistical things there's just a lot of really cool stuff you can do with both weapons and armor weapons come in all sorts of different things you've got LZ weapons solid projectiles melee weapons which have their own subcategory such as chain weapons Force weapons power weapons so there's just a lot of really cool ways you can build a character here and just about every weapon type has a substantial amount of them that you can find which brings us to the trading and our reputation another form of progression in this game being a rogue Trader is to build up our trade Empire this is done through profit Factor Rogue Traders are all inherently Super Rich they don't really keep track of how much money they have in the specifics because all of them own literal planets so rather they deal in profit Factor this is a general representation of how wealthy their protector it is now profit factor in this game is merely what you have and what you don't so it doesn't ever go away you reach minimum thresholds of profit factor and then you can buy something however in order to sort of time gate this if you will we have to trade the various goods and items we'll find by defeating enemies and exploring areas to the various factions of the coronis expanse because these people are only going to sell you the thing you want based on your profit Factor if they like you enough frankly which essentially just means trading them the things that they like now the other side of that is managing your colonies as you explore the solar systems of the expanse you will be running into different colonies that will come under your control and you can develop them with various projects that increase the general resources available to you and potentially your reputation with the other factions as your dealings with them in terms of your colonies and its development will have an impact on your reputation in fact you can get some of the best stuff in the game specifically from your colonies basically saying don't let your trade Empire go to waste now the last bit of progression I want to talk about here is your ship you will be in addition to ground combat engaging in void ship combat with your spaceship if you will which is a separate turn-based battle mode as you participate in this combat your Void ship will level up which means you can pick more abilities for your companions to man the various posts of your Void ship with as you engage in that comat what's more one of the factions the Imperial Navy sells all sorts of parts and upgrades for your ship specifically to make it that much more deadly in combat so while you'll be pretty I would say exposed when you first start out by the time you get towards the end of the game your Void ship is all but indestructible now that pretty much covers it in terms of important progression systems at the moment but from here I want to talk a little bit about the game playay and world as I've already said this game is set in Warhammer 40K which is a pretty immense IP with a lot going on so you might be a little bit concerned about whether or not you'll kind of know what's going on there in terms of lore and again I've made a lore primer for those people who are a little nervous about jumping in but the game does come with an encyclopedia of terms it's also possible to Mouse over subjects as they pop up in conversation to get an idea of what they're all about so the game does a pretty good job of onboarding you to this in a way that's pretty natural and you don't have to just take my word for it they've more or less gotten the stamp of approval from several Warhammer 40K YouTubers who have taken a look at and played it for themselves because if you're familiar with the setting you might be asking yourself how the Rogue Trader manages to bring together companions from all walks of the Imperium so to speak in ways that probably shouldn't work and the answer is that Rogue Traders have a ton of privilege so technically they're within their rights to bring all these people together however how those characters feel about each other individually is where a lot of role playing comes in and how those scenarios play out in your involvement in them are exactly what a game like this will be examining and you'll get to play through for yourself now from a more practical standpoint moving around the world can be broken down into the I would say large world map of the Cor ronus expanse individual system maps and then of course your areas where you're actually on the ground running around in many ways I would say this is very reminiscent of Mass Effect 2 which I don't think is much of a surprise I'm pretty sure the developers are fans of the Mass Effect series but it takes a very similar approach where you'll often be jumping around solar systems and then going to specific relevant locations on certain planets where the action is which means there's not a ton of Superfluous running around now on the system level you'll be able to go around explore different planets potentially set up extractum to exploit resources for your colonies or just discover interesting things out and about as you explore that have nothing to do with the main story just optional side objectives things like that but outside of the system map we then have the coronus expanse map this is where we have to worry about warp travel which is effectively the setting's answer to faster than light travel allowing movement between different solar systems however traveling between the warp is dangerous and this is represented by different warp Roots those roots can be either green yellow orange or red with green being perfectly safe you'll have zero problems red meaning you'll have serious problems your ship can get damaged you might run into encounters that just outright kill you if you're not careful orange is a pretty much guaranteed fight but mostly pretty manageable and then yellow while generally unsafe and prone to events actually isn't that bad in fact most of the time you want to get the roots down to Yellow because yellow one still actually open open you up for interesting events as you warp travel that is to say random events some of which can be beneficial like giving you Navigator Insight that Insight is what you're going to be using to reduce the difficulty of Any Given warp route whereas taking something all the way down to green means it's perfectly safe and you don't run into any of those events anymore so certainly something to keep in mind now in doing all of that our ship our void ship somewhat becomes your main Hub at the same time the bridge of your ship is where you're going to be spending a lot of your time it's where you'll be talking to your individual companions as you pick them up throughout the game and they'll often give you quests and talk to you here alongside other things what's more many events as you move through the game can take you to different parts of your own ship which is like a Giant floating city so it's not exactly small as you deal with problems from the thousands of people who it takes to run your said ship and besides just being a place to run around and act as your main Hub based on your conviction choices throughout the game the aesthetic of the place will change based on what conviction you followed which I thought was a pretty cool touch as well but when it comes to examining the gameplay and world of this particular title A lot of it simply comes down to using your Void ship to travel between solar system scan planets get resources for your colonies Etc before traveling to individual locations to drop you and a team of companions to run around on the ground and do the leg workor involved in tracking down individual problems or simply explore and find out the my iies of the Galaxy out there and in that way I think they really nailed what the setting is all about that is to say the coronus expans in Rogue Traders exploring the unknown which serves as just a really great sort of General template to jump into the Imperium of man and the Warhammer 40K setting at large so in that regard I think they did a great job I think it's very friendly and open to new players which is about all you could ask for with a game like this now with all of that said I do finally want to turn my attention to a little bit of the com combat of this game as it is a not insignificant portion of it as we're doing all that running around and exploring we're bound to run into all sorts of enemies who would quite frankly like us dead as it is the Grim darkness of the far future and all and combat in this particular game is a purely turn-based system that uses action and movement points when combat starts based on whether or not you ambushed or not you'll have a potential preparation phase where you can set your characters within a distance of where they started combat at to to set the battlefield after which initiative is rolled initiative is rolled via groups of enemies and groups of allies to try to spread things out a little bit as you can often be outnumbered and the game tries to prevent the enemy from just rolling over you as soon as the combat starts via just overwhelming action economy Advantage but on your turn each individual character will be able to move a certain degree and use a certain amount of actions now generally speaking attacking will take away all of your movement points and you won't be able to attack against but can still use abilities now there are however a variety of other abilities that will get around this and allow you to make multiple attacks per hit which is what a lot of the gameplay itself revolves around because this is not a combat system that focuses on things like healing really it's about doing as much damage as possible and maximizing your effect on the action economy which means things like the officer's abilities that give you just Flatout extra turns are incredibly high value which really plays into the game's momentum system you see each individual archetype has a heroic act which takes momentum to activate as you perform in combat kill enemies take turns Etc you'll be gaining momentum when it hits a certain threshold you can activate your heroic act or ultimate ability which can have all sorts of effects but largely depends on the archetypes available to individual characters but can be things like the Warriors daring breach which allows them to make multiple melee attacks as basically as much as they have action points to make or the officer's ability called finest to that just gives people an extra turn with no limit on attacks so all of that together makes for a system that is much more deliberate than the Pathfinder games they put out there which had a lot of trash mobs thanks to its Real Time with pause system Etc pretty much every encounter you can have in Rog Trader here is a curated encounter where there is a purpose to it but the catch to that is because of the momentum system there are often a lot of small enemies whose intent is to be basically killed in one hit to gain momentum with as you start to take on thear larger enemies and because of this there are definitely encounters where you're up against like 20 or 30 enemies and there's only six of you which means often times combat can be just kind of slow while you're waiting for enemies to take their turn and while they have grouped up smaller enemies in a sort of swarm AI situation it still can absolutely drag combat out because of the turn-based nature of it so while I mostly enjoy the combat system a lot my main drawback for it would simply be that sometimes it is just painfully slow due to mostly just the number of enemies on screen overall though from a zoomed out perspective I really do enjoy it if you're curious about some of the finer details of this system I have once again made a video on that subject but for now we're going to move on to ship combat the other side of combat is of course our void ship combat and your Void ship is particularly interesting because each of your companions is Manning a particular post on the ship which allows them to use abilities that are relevant to that post based on if you've unlocked them or not and you also have a variety of weapons on your ship every single turn your ship takes you can use one of all of your weapons and each one of your officers and your posts can use one of their abilities meaning that with the proper planning your Void ship can be just devastating in combat though there are a few other Oddities that you should be aware of in this particular mode you have to take all of your movement every single turn so where you're going to be positioned at the end of your turn is important and something you have to keep in mind which is also true of enemies though so where they're going to be especially if you're trying to hit them with Torpedoes or something is something you want to think about though while the game itself can be difficult in this regard towards the beginning of it once you get some equipment under your belt for your Void ship you'll just be wiping the floor with tons of enemies at once because you just have so much action economy with your like basically single unit that they just don't ever really have a chance now before I start moving to wrap this up there is believe it or not quite a bit that I'm leaving out of this review in in particular the companions I want to to see how some of their quests and things wind up what their romances look like Etc but there are a variety of companions will get access to many of which represent some aspect of Warhammer 40K everything from a member of the Inquisition down to an unsanctioned psycher but I will cover those much more in depth in the 100% review which is much the same for the steam deck normally I cover the steam deck in my reviews but I haven't had much of a chance to check it out on that platform just yet though I can confirm that it runs so expect to deeper dive into those things with the 100% now from there let's talk positives and negatives before we wrap this thing up now on the positive side of things I would mostly say for me it was the RPG options making choices declaring your convictions interacting with Companions and dealing with how they interact with each other even that's when the game is at its strongest and it really feels like you're interacting with the world and having an impact on it be that either establishing your trade Empire dealing with dangerous zenos who want you dead rooting out cultists Etc the game really Shines on that side of things and given its Reliance on the Warhammer 40K setting and lore all of that is very enjoyable as well so if you like Warhammer 40K you'll probably enjoy this at least in that regard and what's more I thought the story was really cool I like how they pieced everything together especially towards the end in ways that I really wasn't expecting and while I doubt it's going to blow anybody away I thought it personally was pretty cool now that does bring us to the negative side of things now for me the negatives of this game mostly have to do with the pacing which are issues that I haven't quite brought up yet but basically in the early game you're likely to run into challenges early on based on the solar systems you're traveling to because they're the ones that are closest to you that you're frankly not ready for so you're going to run into these challenges that you'll probably try and then fail realize at some point you should probably just come back to them later which is what you'll do which also goes for things like void ship combat some of the ones early on in the game near the starting point are just way too strong for you which is a similar situation for combat in the early game you have to be a little more thoughtful with combat because you are a little Limited in terms of options but in every single one of those cases I just mentioned towards the mid to late game you'll just be dominating them to the point that they don't really offer much in the way of a challenge anymore and while some people I'm sure will really enjoy that just overall power curve I do think the game could use some work in terms of its overall pacing because to me it just feels a little bit off other negatives are the combat is just inherently slow because of the number of enemies you're fighting which while certainly not new for turn-based games is a little egregious here because again sometimes you're fighting like 20 or 30 enemies and then last but not least the Myriad of just small bugs all over the place nothing really gamebreaking the game didn't really crash on me much I like I mentioned only had one or two really serious issues and those were pretty quickly dealt with but there were a lot of minor bugs that just over the course of a playthrough really start to wear on your patience which can certainly be frustrating but all of that brings me to my my conclusion for Warhammer 40K Rogue Traer overall I would say in many ways this has ow cat's fingerprints all over it it definitely takes much of what I enjoy about their previous work with the Pathfinder series and adapts it to a new setting that I had to learn all about just to bring you this review to be honest as I didn't know much about Warhammer before I started this and in that way I think they did a really cool thing where they brought people like myself to a new setting and they also did that setting Justice and really let you explore what it means to be in a certain position within that setting alongside all the nuances and relationships let's say between various factions and that combined with a story full of choice and consequence makes for a game that I enjoyed quite a bit but definitely stumbles in a few places but all in all if you like crpgs if you like Warhammer then I think this is definitely something you should check out as the pros vastly outweigh the cons that said I don't have exact pricing information for you it is not available to me though some leaks did come out recently recently so I believe it is going to be around $50 us and given that I've already played it over 100 hours at the time of this review and plan on playing it for at least probably 50 60 more for me the game easily justifies that price I think the main thing I would say as general advice is whether or not those bugs slower combat pacing and the lack of full voice acting are things that are going to bother you or dig into your experience just frankly a little too much overall I enjoyed my time with this game quite a bit which is where we're going to leave this video off so I certainly hope you enjoyed it but by all means let me know what you think about this game down in the comment section below which of course means to like comment subscribe all that YouTube jazz but regardless of any of that truly just thank you so much for watching I really do appreciate it may you wander and wisdom and have an amazing [Music] day

Channel: Mortismal Gaming

Views: 305,632

Keywords: Mortym, Mortismal Gaming, rogue trader, rogue trader trailer, rogue trader 40k, rogue trader character creation, rogue trader gameplay, rogue trader review, wh40k rogue trader, wh40k rogue trader gameplay, wh40k rogue trader beta details, wh40k rogue trader companions, wh40k rogue trader romance, wh40k rogue trader game, wh40k rogue trader rpg, wh40k rogue trader owlcat, wh40k rogue trader review, warhammer40k rogue trader review

Id: guTGVnpurXM

Length: 30min 58sec (1858 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 06 2023