Warhammer 40k- Rogue Trader Makes Players Fear Future Royalty
Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader starts with the player learning they’re going to become heir to an empire. It quickly becomes one about carving out your own place while unraveling a traitorous plot. The game’s focus on growing wealth and influence over coins for purchases makes this something that immediately affects the game, instead of a stat that gets ignored. There are so many skills by the endgame ignoring some stats, or skipping re-specing altogether, becomes a necessity. Unless scrolling over your teams’ character screens for long periods of time would actually be enjoyable.
Anyone looking for a game they can really sink their teeth into, this is it. There are hundreds of hours of content between a few routes your character can take: Dogmatic, Heretic, or Iconoclast. Those who want to embrace the grim darkness of 40k will probably enjoy the first two options. If you’d like to be “good” in Rogue Trader, the Iconoclast route may suit you better. All of the abilities help characters feel different enough, if you decide on multiple playthroughs. Though the game does explain each in surprising depth so buckle in. This is probably the best entry to the franchise as every phrase or terminology will be explained. There’s some voiced dialogue that truly stands out when it’s there, but getting through the encyclopedia could be a huge chunk of time in itself.
The good thing about all these abilities is any team will run over enemies about halfway through. Rogue Trader has flexible difficulty scaling, the player character will still feel overpowered. At least in ground combat. Ship battles are manageable, but involve mostly turning the ship to line up shots. It feels slow even by turn based standards. Since enemies usually outnumber the player, battles can still have some tension to balance any frustration from waiting in a battle that’s already won. There’s more than enough variables on how abilities can work together or against each other in combat.
Rogue Trader has some bumps along the way but, if you get past remaining bugs, there’s a story rich and detailed world to be explored. Though the open world parts can be tedious to traverse. On top of all the other moment to moment information players will need to comprehend, it’s a lot to take in. So Rogue Trader’s linearity is welcomed. It feels bloated at times, especially when forced to find loot for trade, but even that feels authentic to a franchise that excels at cramming in as much it can into every single moment. Owlcat Games even manages to slip in some companion romances though all relationships feel business-like throughout the game. It’s still an intriguing experience for new and old Warhammer fans.
