I'm about 8 hours in and I'm at the point where I'm just forcing myself to complete it because I love the WH40K setting. Problem is their rule sets are almost universally trash for PC. Trash Optimization: I have a top DDR4 machine, fast SSD, 4090, etc. Need to heal party - walk through 2 loading screens, get to bridge, scripted event triggers loading screen to personal chambers, loading screen to go back to bridge, go through previous two loading screens to get to where I started. Each loading screen takes up to a minutes, congrats, getting healed took 20+ minutes. Overly complex, not particularly fun rule set: You know what was great about Baldur's Gate? Your warriors hit stuff with their swords, your rogues hit stuff with their daggers (occasionally going invisible) your rangers hit stuff with their bows, you only had to learn wizard spells to be successful and your melee/ranged classes just did their thing. The Rogue Trader rule set is convoluted AF, you HAVE to learn the skill trees of your entire party, or rely on youtube guides, it's way too easy to build your team into a corner where you can't proceed. They have 'recommended' traits at level up but they're universally useless and won't get you through anything but story mode. Player Trolling encounter design: Owlcat loves to bury high level encounters in newbie areas, fine. In one case, they buried the combat after a prolonged puzzle sequence, before the player has any idea that they're about to be reamed in the ---, it's a situation where you basically have to swallow the loss and reload 20 minutes back. Aside from that, the game is atrocious at conveying encounter information, and it absolutely loves having hidden conditions, such as 'these lanterns will heal your enemies every turn, you have to shoot them, but they respawn every turn, and they're in a corner so only one character at a time can shoot them, but no one character has the DPS or accuracy to actually kill it" type of encounters.
The atmosphere keeps me playing the game despite the mechanics, it's hard to describe but it's a weird russian/siberian mysticism hybrid. The game never spells anything out, but after a while things just *click* Things holding the game back: The townspeople are a bunch of Deliverance style yokels, and the game is very good at making you want to slaughter every single one of them, then severely punishes you for killing them by locking the player out of all trade except for with the children. At least the children are cool. The game throws waves of attackers at you and combat turns into a miserable moshpit, when you weaken an attacker they throw their hands up and try to back off, but since you're always surrounded by at least two other enemies you'll probably kill the guy backing off as you're flailing wildly trying to fight off the other two. You're not supposed to loot the guy you killed accidentally either, looting incurs an additional opinion penalty on top of the murder, if I already accidentally killed a guy at least let me take their stuff, game! The hunger/thirst/stamina mechanic isn't any less annoying than it is in other games. Player has to consume two goats and a gerbil daily, and most items that replenish health or energy deplete one of the other 3 meters. Stealth hasn't been explained to me in-game yet and it feels useless, you can't use it to stealth kill or steal stuff without an opinion penalty, seems to only be useful to sloooooowly meander past whatever you're trying to avoid, and this game doesn't need to be any slower. Overall; For the patient, I'd still recommend the game from a cultural/nerrative perspective as the story is fresh and the setting interesting, but there's alot of jank to overcome to like this game.
I avoided kickstarting the game because Japanese developers have a pretty poor record on crowdfunding, but the game turned out really well. The controls are tight, plenty of exploration with a large variety of environmentsk, and just the right amound of grind for a game like this. Game has a bit of fan service but could use more IMO. I'm docking 1 star because the game doesn't support OpenInput. It's a pet peeve of mine, but I don't have an xbox controller and not planning to buy one while I still have my perfectly function 15 year old rumblepad.
I remember having this game and getting really far in, but not having beaten it for whatever reason. It's still holds up and looks gorgeous (including Lizbeth Covenant, my longest running game waifu.) The only thing that doesn't hold up is the original Unreal engine movement. This is a game that relys on reverse jumps and circle strafing, but the player is way over prone to getting caught in corners, furniture, rocks and other parts of the environment. I've had more than a few reloads due to getting trapped between a corner and a monster.
To keep this short, I was pretty disappointed with every Isometric CRPG since the original Pillars of Eternity to the point where I didn't even bother to Kickstart this gem. Pillars of Eternity was kind of a throwback to the original Baldur's Gate/Icewind Dale games that didn't really do much to improve on the formula. Then the sequels and pretenders came and it was pretty obvious that these games weren't out to evolve, just to milk the cash cow. Then Pathfinder: Kingmaker came along. This is the best and most in-depth PC translation of a tabletop roleplaying system since Temple of Elemental evil (the game needs a bit of rebalancing though, some enemy levels and stats are way too high for their challenge rating.) If anyone rembers the keep management in Baldur's Gate II, this game blows it out of the water. There's a fair bit of Baldur's Gate style jank in this. Depending on your choices in the prologue you may end up with a pretty terrible party at the beginning of chapter 1. My Archaeologist bard ended up starting the game with a Warrior, undead elf, and a barbarian. No healing skills so all our income went towards health potions. Finally found a Cleric to recruit, who died a few days later. The game was nice enough to give me a raise dead scroll as a quest reward, but it was 2 levels before my character managed to increase his "use magic device" skill to use it... This is where gaming memories come from, folks. The game's a new release, and it took me a good 3 hours before I could start playing the game as the resolution settings kept bugging out until I found a stable setting. I've run across a few game bugs but nothing gamebreaking. The game will definitely be worth a playthrough after a few updates.
I was expecting more of a Tycoon game. But all Tycooning related activities are gated behind quests. Expanding the food menu is quest gated, building guest rooms is quest gated (they don't generate income, you just plop your sick or wounded heroes in there to clear debuffs for a day.) Supposedly you'll be able to buy gear to upgrade your adventurers eventually, because the quests barely drop loot. The game would be better if the quests dropped more loot and provided a macro storyline for the world outside the tavern. Instead, the game robs itself of any feeling epicness by wasting the adventurer's time fixing leaky roofs. The map has alot of settlements nearby, the prudent tavern keeper can probably find a day laborer to do it for a bit of gold... Overall, I was expecting a Recettear style game with shop anagement and questing elements. The current product more akin to a poor man's Darkest Dungeon... or cookie clicker. Will future updates resolve my issues? I doubt it, the current progress of the game is a good indicator of the design philosophy behind it, and it's not really what I was after.
