Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader

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3.7/5

( 120 Reviews )

3.7

120 Reviews

English & 7 more

Posted on: December 15, 2023

inscrutablehorse

Games: 427 Reviews: 5

Critically broken. Buyer, beware!

First thing first, I own the game on Steam, not GOG :( Second, this is not a game you should buy on impulse, if you think it's going to be based on the actual Rogue Trader TTRPG. It's only superficially so; more like a 40K skin pulled over a Pathfinder core. Third, the game is clearly nowhere near finished. It's very buggy, with bugs ranging from cosmetic to game-breaking, with the bugs becoming increasingly severe the longer you play and progress in the game. Many talents don't work as advertised, or just don't work at all. Additionally, the UI is woefully clunky and inadequate, feeling barely a step above the UI in Fallout 1, a game more than 25 years old. But what about the game itself? Apart from boss battles, combat is a painfully boring slog, with each encounter dragging on for ages; and as soon as you finish an encounter, you are often tossed right into another one. The story and writing aren't bad, but are unfortunately tacked onto a game that is. Stay away for at least a year.

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Posted on: August 22, 2024

5urre4l

Verified owner

Games: 37 Reviews: 2

Great atmosphere, some problems

I'm a huge fan of Owlcat Games, I actually consider Pathfinder:WotW as the greatest cRPG ever made. And while I liked Rogue Trader, it is definitely not on the same level. The Pros + The atmosphere, tone and art design of the Warhammer universe is captured quite well + I encountered no major bugs, only some minor inconveniences like localization errors, so the main criticism at release is gone + The companions are good (including the voice acting), I'll remember Argenta and her field of burning heretics for a long time The Cons - Beginning with Act 3 and especially Act 4 the game feels rushed. Less attention to detail, less explaining links in the texts, more "filler quests" etc. Also the companion quest lines often end in an unsatisfactory way. - In general the fights are way too easy (high difficulty). For me, who values the Pathfinder games for their complexity and challenge, this was probably the most dissapointing point. There were exactly two difficult fights: Yremeryss and Uralon (the latter being on the other extreme, in my first try my group was dead before the first turn of my first (!) character had ended) - Adding to this, the overall balancing is one of the worst I've ever seen in an RPG. The efficiency of builds can change dramatically over the course of the game. Soldiers and Psyker are pretty weak in the first half and more than one Psyker in your party is suicide. On the other hand, melees are basically useless in the second half. A lot of talents are underpowered, some (like Jaes origin talents) are broken. And then there's sweet Cassia. My first half of the game can be summed up with: If Cassia survives until it's her turn, I've won the fight. All in all, a 7-8/10 game, for Warhammer fans and people who play every decent RPG under the sun. For the rest there is always Baldurs Gate 3.

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Posted on: February 10, 2024

Weyen

Verified owner

Games: 2338 Reviews: 12

Probably my favorite Warhammer 40k game

Gog doesn't allow review editing, so I'm writing this on the ASSUMPTION that at some point, the devs get the bugs ironed out. The devs have a reasonably good track record with this kind of thing, or else I wouldn't be bothering to write this, but I can absolutely understand people who played it at launch being frustrated with the technical state of the game. It's not great. The game is full of bugs and glitches, with non-functional abilities, immortal enemies, uncompletable quests, buggy AI, and more. I found it playable, but as with all technical issues, your experience may be very, very different. That aside, it's probably the most fun Warhammer game I've played. They do a great job of setting up the atmosphere and the tone of the world. By setting the player as a Rogue Trader, essentially a regular human with lots of political power, you're able to show the star players of the IP (Space Marines, evil cults, various aliens, etc.) as massive threats to normal people, while still giving the player a plausible way to beat them (you are, after all, hiring the best companions with the best gear). It also helps the writing, because as a Rogue Trader, you have a lot more freedom than most Warhammer 40k characters, leading to a story that has a lot more versatility than most 40k fiction. You're not just whipping out a chainsword and screaming "FOR THE EMPRAH" every time you see someone like in most Space Marine stories, you're actualy engaging with various political factions and trying to figure out how to resolve a situation in a way that you want. Some people might find that kind of thing tedious, but I really enjoy it, and it's where this game shines. The combat system is a bit unintuitive at times, but the learning curve mostly matched the difficulty curve in my play through, with the exception of a few mid-game bosses which utterly stomped me a time or two. Overall, great game, hope they fix it, would happily buy a sequel or DLC. In a year or two.

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Posted on: January 8, 2024

Spiix

Verified owner

Games: Reviews: 1

Starts off strong, tapers off

The game starts off strong, really strong but as you progress through the polish wears off and it becomes more barebones and buggy. The difficulty gets more and more inconsitent as well. In addition, the leveling system is very obtuse making levelling up feel like a chore instead of something fun. I honestly put off spending level ups because it was just too much of a hassle to grind throught he menus and read all the badly explained options for 5 characters one after the other. Useful gear is very rare, I averaged about 1 gear upgrade per character per 'act'. I'd say this game has the makings of something great, but it needs a bunch of extra work to get it there

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Posted on: April 28, 2025

ShinGnosis

Verified owner

Games: 46 Reviews: 14

Not only for Warhammer fans

Rouge Trader may be set in the 40k universe but you can definitely tell this isn't Owlcat's first game, all their experience with the Pathfinder RPGs have been put to good use. You don't even have to think of Rouge Trader as a "40k game" if you don't want to, it's just as much a "complex CRPG set in the 40k universe". The overall story definitely has some big moments with shock and awe (it's Warhammer), but there's also a surprising amount of nuance and intrigue. One moment you can be killing aliens on a frozen planet, the next you're called home to lead a detective investigation into a court intrigue plot. The game should have something for everyone. The combat is turn-based and not entirely unlike XCOM. It's quite fun when you get the hang of it and there are lots of viable builds. If you're familiar with these types of games normal difficulty shouldn't pose much of challenge, but that's why there's a difficulty slider. There's also ship to ship space combat, it's had some mixed reactions but personally I loved it. Nice little mini-game where you think strategically and upgrade your ship etc. As for drawback there are still a few bugs, but nothing game breaking during my run. It's a big and complex game so I think some bugs can be forgiven. The level up system also isn't great, it's overly complex and pretty convoluted. You have lots of options but probably half of them could have been automatic or omitted. Then there's the writing, sometimes it's too verbose and convoluted. Rouge trader is great when it does "show don't tell", but sometimes it does quite a lot of "tell don't show". It can be good in small doses but when you're forced to read the second "large fan fiction essay" inside of an hour it can get a bit much. A lot of the text could have been cut in half and still delivered the same message and emotional impact. So the game isn't perfect, but overall this is a big, epic and original CRPG. Absolutely worth playing.

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