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It's like the goal is to have normal difficulty be a hardcore experience every single time with these guys, and throwing ARPG hordes at you at in slow and sluggish turn based combat.

Party. Sometimes, from the way they talk its about the 'challenge.' Other times they just didn't seem to realize that the way pathfinder (& D&D) works, they'd raise base attributes and secondary stats in a way that stacks, and the random number generator is still a d20.

Even on low difficulties, their templates and changes would bump a creature from +8 to hit to +16 to hit, and things would spiral. You've gotta do full buff stacks or just grow to love the load save button.
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With this one, I have no idea at all what they think the baseline is. Which is worrisome.

And they have basically made the system from the ground up, rather than it be a port into video game form of the FFG system.

Well, if you were to be super hopeful, you might believe that they at least have a better grasp of a system they came up with themselves.

But yeah, I'm not willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to this crew. Funny you should mention templates, Voss. I can't even remember the number of times I thought they took the baddest monster they could find, dip it in glue and roll it around in a box of templates to boost it even more like that's all it takes to design an encounter.

Doesn't even matter much if it's done for the challenge or out of incompetence, if they understand the game rules of Rogue Trader better, there's every chance they still make encounters a simple numbers game instead of trying to allow for tactical gameplay. Well, that's my concern anyway. I haven't looked too much into the actual game yet, but past performance certainly doesn't encourage taking that kind of interest.

Yeah that was a big turnoff from WOTR, I wanted to enjoy it, but once I hit the point where my all Cavalier/mounted party began to fight regular mobs that they had to hit on 20's, I just gave up. The Devs apparently expected everyone to roll out with magic and constant long term buffs and I am just not into that.

RT, at least, seem not to have as much reliance on those, from what I gathered, so there's hope that way.

It sounds as if they took inspiration from Baldurs Gate 2, and the way that enemy mages in that game all had contingency-based defensive spells that would snap into place the moment they entered combat, and then had to be slowly peeled away by your party mage's spells, and asked, "How can we make this even more frustrating and tedious?"

For WOTR, yes. For RT? Someone who played the Beta would know better

 Bobthehero wrote:
Yeah that was a big turnoff from WOTR, I wanted to enjoy it, but once I hit the point where my all Cavalier/mounted party began to fight regular mobs that they had to hit on 20's, I just gave up. The Devs apparently expected everyone to roll out with magic and constant long term buffs and I am just not into that.

RT, at least, seem not to have as much reliance on those, from what I gathered, so there's hope that way.

I've already heard some muttering (from the beta period) that buffstacks still exist (and may well be still mandatory, but not sure myself yet), but they're something you accumulate resources for in early turns and roll out en-masse mid-combat.

Especially as the game goes along, as you've got basic classes into advanced classes into a catch-all 'top level' class that reinforces your earlier choices.
Certain origins and backgrounds are also extremely important, so you've got 3-4 sources (origin, background, class, and advanced class) of abilities to manage for each character, and advanced class kicks in around the end of chapter 1. Some things synergize a lot better than others, so there's already a lot of 'best builds' floating around out there.

Geifer wrote:But yeah, I'm not willing to extend the benefit of the doubt to this crew. Funny you should mention templates, Voss. I can't even remember the number of times I thought they took the baddest monster they could find, dip it in glue and roll it around in a box of templates to boost it even more like that's all it takes to design an encounter.

Kingmaker left some scars. Tabletop-standard profiles were (at least at one point) the difficulty below 'normal' and still had templated champion skeletons (particularly the archers) that suddenly jumped to insane bonuses and 100 hp each.

Wrath on 'core' difficulty has the potential to snap the NPC companions in half during the prologue, with lots of one-shots to zero hp, which just seems unreasonable. No chance to customize, get better equipment or even pick spells, and the trash monsters can just roll right over the party.

My faith in the company isn't that high.

Working my way through the tutorial now, playing on the easiest mode, because I am a fluffing tourist after all. Still getting bombarded with a lot of info and keywords, but at least combat feels a bit more potent now, I am actually hitting and killing things for once, as opposed to the beta, where I couldn't even finish the tutorial due to how tough the daemon was. Though this is probably due to playing it in story mode hehe. Also nice the amount of options you get in character creation.

But the game is still missing a fair share of art assets it seems, ability icons are still missing, some characters, like the rogue trader who you are the heir to, are not voiced. I can see why they would only voice some parts of the game, but it's weird that the lady in charge is unvoiced, while deck officer L-86 does get voiced lines.

Played for a few hours so far and have some thoughts.

Combat is deadly, you will need to be very careful with your decisions and use cover. But the inverse is also true, the enemies are generally also very squishy and they are just as likely to mow their own dudes down when shooting as your own guys. AOE attacks are very useful, always have someone with a shotgun.

I'm not sure how I feel about how they handle heroes going down. On the one hand, you don't need to worry about healing between fights since everybody just gets back up with traumas that go away when you go back to the ship. On the other, sometimes it is very annoying to not have the normal ability to just use a heal to get downed characters back up that most games would have(unless those abilities come later maybe?.??)

Only had 1 bug so far. One fight had about 15 enemies spread out over a very large area, large enough that I don't think it meant to draw them all in. I think it was intended to be a couple seperate fights, but it got globbed together. Anyway some enemies seemed bugged out and wouldn't animate or do anything other than move, and some would take about a minute to pass their turns for each enemy. Bug resolved after I had killed a few of them and moved closer together. Fortunately it seems there is some time-out thing that passes the turn if an enemy does nothing for about a minute so you could at least move forward eventually.

A season pass is also available, offering two new companions:

1. Void Shadows
(coming June 2024)

The first major story expansion is all about the Rogue Trader's voidship, the life of its crew, and the threats lurking in its holds. Dive into a new epic story integrated into the main narrative, battle new enemies, and recruit a new companion — a death cult assassin. Explore new decks of your voidship, unlock new upgrade options, and master the mechanics of void combat. Meet new members of your crew on the bridge, such as the Astropath, the chirurgeon, and others.
The events of this story will be reflected in the game's epilogue.

This expansion offers 15 hours of gameplay.


2. Lex Imperialis
(coming December 2024)

The second major story expansion sees the Lord Captain join forces with a new companion — a member of the Adeptus Arbites. As the past of House von Valancius begins to present itself in a new light, the Rogue Trader faces difficult decisions that may affect the future of the entire Koronus Expanse.
Over the course of this story, you will get a chance to learn more about the collection of the Imperial Tithe, otherwise known as the Grand Harvesting. Interfere with this fundamental process of the Imperium at your own peril. Discover new areas, game mechanics, and archetypes — and of course, encounter new horrors of the Immaterium.

This expansion likewise offers 15 hours of gameplay.

Yeah, that clinches it. I'm just going to wait until next year, pick it up complete at a discount.

Base game has a pretty tight companion roster, and I'd rather have a broader selection, as well as time for bug fixes.

I just killed the Chaos Spawn that seems to be the tutorial boss fight. Pretty fun so far.

Also: keep getting achievement notifications for dodging 500 attacks and another one for getting 500 critical hits. Weird

Apparently, a lot of the achievements are bugged and triggering not when they are supposed to. Both of those are triggering on your first dodged attack and first critical hit. The exploring all the planets one is also triggering when you explore your first planet.

I also got the exploration achievement triggered way too early, still in the starting sector and I already got it. I think the dodge and crit achievements keep popping up because they are in progress. Normally this shouldn't happen unless there's a progress tracker visible on the achievement itself, whenever you hit a milestone, 100/500 or so, it may pop up to show you your progress. But no such thing here.

But fun so far, some things feel a bit off fluff / description wise, the number salad that comes with each skill is a confusing mess, but other things hit just right or go places you don't see normally, like having Navigators be proper mutants like in the older fluff instead of just being a baldie having a third eye on the forehead. Cassia doesn't just have a pale skin and red eyes, she weeps blood, has freakishly elongated limbs and visible gills. Also, her trying to describe warp travel is another chef-kiss to older fluff. 👌🏻

Its been fun so far.

Challenging for me on normal difficulty.

Baldurs Gate 3 and their narrator absolutely spoiled me though. There’s a lot more reading in this game!

Skills were confusing at first, but I’m getting the hang of it now and will probably respec all of my characters once I get the Navigator follower.

I just wrapped up the prison planet, didn't fare too poorly there but the next planet/starport was tougher (on normal difficulty). I ran a noble officer, which to me felt the most natural. I had to restart a few times, unlike in BG3 where I knew I wanted to play a healing cleric.. however in this game I had no idea what I was trying to accomplish building my character.

It would've been cool to get a Votann/squat companion, the two season pass companions sound cool but hopefully we get 1 or 2 more after those.

Playing as a Commissar / officer class and somehow I managed to pick the right skills / whatnots so that she, alongside Cassia (also an officer), both have the ability to give other characters a full activation when inspired, which ought to feel a bit broken, but I quite like how with the right stuff, an inspired Abelard can run up to, then hack & slash several opponents in a single activation, severely cutting down the enemy numbers and the slowdown they create during combat. Already had twice that there were so many enemies in the encounter that it broke the camera.

Also, so many friendly-fire incidents, or an encounter opening with an enemy spraying full-auto, only to kill one or two of their own.

But keeping it spoiler-free, I am hooked by what breadcrumbs I've been fed so far plot-wise. Still in the first system, but the locations have been fun and interesting.

I'm keen to pick it up when it goes on sale, glad that people are saying it's reasonably fun.

It's making me seriously play a CRPG for the first time in a long time again, minor gripes aside such as missing assets and skills being a mish-mash of math, this game gets a lot right and while it uses an established setting (Koronus expanse), it's doing its own thing with it instead of re-treading material from the source books.

It's been a good year for 40k games (Boltgun and a slew of Darktide updates) and Rogue Trader makes me feel I'm ending 2023 on a high note 40k-wise. I look forward to Mandalore Gaming doing a review on this one a year from now.

Completed the first chapter. Pretty tense, even on normal difficulty.



So much satisfaction!

This game is pretty solid.

One thing I do notice is that the writing is all over the place sometimes when it comes to player dialogue. At times you talk in a refined tones, while some of the options are blunt "what's a rogue like me got to do to get a drink around here, my dogs are barking!"

And wahey, unlocked space travel properly, some fun exploration and choices ahead.

Don't try to go back to the Calixis sector.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Don't try to go back to the Calixis sector.

thaty was the first thing you tried wasn't it?

I’m of the opinion this game is pretty excellent. Didn’t really follow this game during development because I was all in on BG3 hype so didn’t know what I was getting into. There is a lot more substance to this game then I had expected.

Combat and Space battles can get challenging if you are careless. Story is pretty wild too. From the beginning I thought’d be just Chaos vs. Imperium but its been pretty diverse.

Finally finished chapter 2, had somewhat soft-locked myself due to not having enough navigator points to travel to sealed off systems, so that took a LOT of travelling through orange and red routes to get more points..

But loving the enemy variety so far, they've not been holding back at all! Most games only have daemons to one chaos god in there, but here we get all of them.

Happy unintentional side effect of constantly being boarded by daemons is that my party has been levelling quite a bit, making them pretty good at dealing with fights with minimal hassle so I can more fully focus on the story. Abelard in particular has become a melee beast in my party, easily smacking the gak out of both mobs and solos in a single turn.

 BrookM wrote:
Finally finished chapter 2, had somewhat soft-locked myself due to not having enough navigator points to travel to sealed off systems, so that took a LOT of travelling through orange and red routes to get more points..

But loving the enemy variety so far, they've not been holding back at all! Most games only have daemons to one chaos god in there, but here we get all of them.

Happy unintentional side effect of constantly being boarded by daemons is that my party has been levelling quite a bit, making them pretty good at dealing with fights with minimal hassle so I can more fully focus on the story. Abelard in particular has become a melee beast in my party, easily smacking the gak out of both mobs and solos in a single turn.

Had similar conundrums. I misinterpreted how the Navigator accrued the points and ended up wasting them on trival stuff.

And speaking of wasting stuff. Got bored with the constant demon infestations and such that I started to arm up the crew with weapons/relics from cargo and then exhausted my cargo... :( .

Soft-locked myself into the administratum now, either a clerk isn't spawning in or it is a feature to accurately depict the futility of the system.

 BrookM wrote:
Soft-locked myself into the administratum now, either a clerk isn't spawning in or it is a feature to accurately depict the futility of the system.

The bug is a feature

 Grey Templar wrote:

 BrookM wrote:
Soft-locked myself into the administratum now, either a clerk isn't spawning in or it is a feature to accurately depict the futility of the system.

The bug is a feature

What did you expect? That the allmighty bureucracy wouldn't grind you to dust just because you got a warrant of Trade?!