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Game subthread.
Review of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader in the child comment here. (if putting it like this, let the mods remind me of not doing this)
I've spent last two months playing the roughly 2 year old CRPG Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader.
TL;DR: "What if X-com was an RPG, had a personality, Doom levels of gore, brain-melting amount of builds and a few waifus that drop you if you flub one dialogue option?" (also husbandos, ranging from nice chekist to a sadistic serial killer elf)
I really, really enjoyed it. I'm not 100% sure of it, but it seems to me to be almost as enjoyable as classics like Jagged Alliance 2 or Baldur's Gate 2.
Short review, no spoilers here:
It's an A production game, so the budget was probably <20 million$. There is one DLC -it's a must have, seamlessly integrated, makes the game better, very high quality. There'll be more later I'm told. The story is pretty simple: you are a distant relative of a Rogue Trader, and because said relative learned that you're a fairly capable individual, recruited by the same to act as a middle manager for someone who is basically a dictator of a fairly large tributary empire. Something like 40 billion people over five planets. Yes, in the grim darkness of far future, it's tributary empires all the way down.
Fans of the setting say that lore wise, the game stays pretty true to the setting. I enjoyed it bigly. I'd say moreso than BG3, perhaps almost as much as I enjoyed BG2 or Jagged Alliance 2 when I first played those absolute classics. If you liked either, I think you'd like this one, so don't read the spoilers here!
Looks pretty nice - almost as nice from tactical view as BG3, but character models are much less detailed up close, there's no face animations etc and it's almost always drone's PoV. The explosions, magic effects and blood look just fine. The only thing that's missing is human/ xenos torches but the game has a 'T' rating which is really funny as it's, at times, very grisly and a heretical playthrough requires doing stuff that makes Auschwitz look like a tea party. Generally the really grisly stuff is only in dialogue / decisions so, off screen. Indeed, being in charge of a large starship, there are gigadeath decisions at times.
It's a combination of tactical combat, two layers of it - personal(95%) and ship (5%), the personal part being pretty much like BG3 or X-com, though more convoluted if not greatly more complex and of a fairly decent RPG with ..lots of text and pretty good writing. And also has a light 3x layer, where you manage planetary development. That part is almost completely optional.
It's no Disco Elysium but it's actually quite good. I'd say it's easily on par with BG2, perhaps better at times. It has a three variable alignment system, with the axes being dogmatic, iconoclast and heretic. Iconoclast here means being a bleeding heart do gooder, too good for the setting.
There are romances, and they're notably well more done than in BG3. E.g. there's a few horny characters who will make advances, but generally the romance options are believable. E.g. the noble lady will drop you like a bad transmission if you violate propriety, the attractive religious fanatic has no time for romance, the century old magical chekist is of course straight and an option but it'll take time. The incredibly arrogant (optional) eldar party member sees people as little more than animals and has a hilarious sequence of complaining about having had advances made toward them. etc.
Overall, the party members are well written, generally not annoying, sorta believable and in some cases incredibly voice acted. If the game has any weaknesses, it's mostly technical - the engine is not well optimized, there's sometimes 20 second loading times on a PC that can run C2077 in RTX at 4k / 40 fps. There are a few bugs still, there were a lot on release.
After playing through it, I discovered that with the exception of voice acting, it was written entirely by Russians. Coded too, ditto for graphics iirc. That explains the refreshing paucity of marvelesque dialogue and cringe, something that marred by enjoyment of Baldur's Gate 3.
Tried it, hated the combat. "Use a dozen skills to completely cheese the action economy, then stack a million buffs on your guys and pulverize the enemy in one turn. Else, die.", repeat ad nauseum for every fight.
..there were some exploits like that early but it's not like that now. Seems to me, based on what I've read. People said something about infinite turns.
You can extend everyone's turn by 50% now using the officer class. But not more, because after being targetted, the beneficiary gets 'overxerted' for 1 round. Unless you use a heroic act right out, but that's only doable late game with a specific build. Then you can have 2.5 turns for one character. There's a few other abilities but I don't think any is equally powerful.
Certain psykers also can take slightly more turns by time related fuckery but it's like 3 turns when others have 2 and also a mid to late game thing.
The big problem I noticed was that it took forever to fight battles bc buff animations are turned on by default. Once I turned it off, it got a lot smoother.
If it's like that you can just up the difficulty. It was getting like that for me on my first playthrough towards the end unless it was a boss fight.
But it's not unfair to say that the tactical gameplay is often
The problem with that is that by upping the difficulty, you shift the balance so that instead of merely being able to break the game with cheesy overpowerd builds, you are required to do so.
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