Owlcat Games delivers on a very specific experience with their games- a high fidelity representation of a beloved TTRPG experience. They excel at translating tabletop mechanics into a videogame experience and Rogue Trader is no exception.
The 40k universe has an ocean of content to support it ranging from various TTRPG systems, dozens of novels focusing on a range of 10k years of empire history, countless youtube videos and channels, etc, etc. It would be hard to cram all of that into a single videogame, but they manage a laudable amount. The feel is great, the style is great, the tactical battles are great.
What I really like about this game is how many viable builds there are to explore. Its like you have to make a bunch of intentional sub-optimal choices in order to be bad, and even then you're still probably a badass. The ship combat is great and has a huge amount of swing- early on before you upgrade your ship, you have to make a lot of hard choices on when to fight and how to battle, otherwise you will be locked forever in spending all your scrap on repairs instead of upgrades. But it feels amazing once you've bulked yourself up and you just blast through whole armadas.
I have a few critiques, but they're relatively minor. Cut scenes use the same engine as the game, which is great for top-down interactions, but less good for close ups as faces don't move and it seems a bit blocky close up. Owlcat has fallen into an odd trap with the recruitable NPCs, which is granting essentially all of them some sort of unique bonus that the MC doesn't have access to. Jae is a 'Cold Trader' which is bonkers powerful, your seneschal starts with heavy armor pro, the religious gal has power armor pro, Indira starts with two disciplines, basically all of them have starting choices unique to them which feels... meh, don't love it. There are many skill checks that scale difficulty, which feels a little like pre-5e DND where the difficulties go up just because the party has a higher capacity to pass them. But it essentially means that you need to bulletshape your skill builds. Its not the end of the world, since the whole party tests using the highest skill and they all pass if the skill-holder does (not everyone needs Athletics to jump across a chasm, just your one athletics guy can do it). It just leads to weird party dynamics.
These are extremely minor gripes. This game is a lot of fun, and the DLCs add a wealth of content. These aren't small updates and paying for them doesn't feel bad. They include new characters, new build options (like the Bladedancer and Arbiter origin), new archetypes (Overseer), in addition to lengthy plot chains. Not just a single mission, but a series of them.
tl;dr- Well worth the buy. Well worth the Season Pass. Strongly recommend.
