Coming from developer Owlcat Games (Pathfinder: Kingmaker & Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous), Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is an upcoming turn-based cRPG currently in development with no official release date revealed. Recently the game made another warp-jump towards the launch, releasing the Rogue Trader beta version available to purchasers of certain game editions.
Compared to the previously available closed alpha that offered a large chunk of Chapter 2, this updated version features much more content and enhanced features, including but not limited to the Prologue, Chapter 1 & Chapter 3, updated character creation and progression, enhanced spaceship battles, a new Space Wolf companion and much more.
Of course, as any beta out there, it doesn’t provide the entirety of the planned content and cuts off at a certain point, some features and systems are not finished or missing entirely, there is a limited voice-over and a scattering of bugs of various levels of severity – from typos to more serious problems like crashes and abilities not working as intended.
If you are unfamiliar with the basics of Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, consider checking out our Alpha Impressions for the general overview of what the game can offer. There will be mild spoilers ahead, outlining certain situations that your Rogue Trader could face and naming companions, Convictions, etc. There are no spoilers to the main plot beyond the very premise of the game.
Ready to proceed? Then recite a prayer to praise the God-Emperor, and let’s dive into everything that Rogue Trader beta has to offer!
The first thing you will notice upon booting the game and deciding to hop into the Koronus Expanse is the new enhanced Character Creation. You can choose from three preset options or create your Rogue Trader from scratch by choosing a whole variety of options among the available categories. Let’s take a closer look at some of them. Note that this system will be further expanded by release.
Following the choice of a portrait, you get to customize your Lord Captain’s in-game model by choosing appearance (such as body type, skin tone and face), hair, tattoo, implants and voice. At the moment, the game only features Bold Male & Bold Female options but it will likely be expanded with additional choices in the following versions. From that point on, you proceed to choosing Homeworld and Origin. Both options have an effect on your gameplay by affecting your stats and even providing you with an extra ability or passive buff. Here is an example for each:
- Forge World – Analytics Implants gives you +5 to Intelligence, +5 to Toughness and -5 to Fellowship. This Homeworld option also provides the Analytics System passive which gives your character extra Critical Hit Chance;
- Origin: Noble introduces extra modifiers to Intelligence and Fellowship attributes as well as to Coercion and Persuasion skills.
Both can be mentioned in dialogues with NPCs and companions alike, and there are quite a few to choose from. Finally, that brings you to the Doctrines – Rogue Trader’s take on Classes. There are four primary Doctrines and another three secondary Doctrines that will unlock once you have finished leveling through your first one. Each comes with its own set of powers, active abilities, passives and even Ultimates. Your Companions will have access to those Doctrines as well, however they will also have some very unique abilities and options that are not available to the protagonist
- Primary: Fighter, Leader, Adept, Marksman
- Secondary: Assassin, Vanguard, Hunter
Unlike the alpha that simply dropped you off in the middle of the game, beta lets you go through the Prologue that will also serve as your introductory experience. To that end, beta also added the Tutorial system to help new players figure out various aspects of gameplay. It can be quite helpful, especially if you are new to cRPGs at large or the Rogue Trader system in particular. Something like the Wounds system was a bit strange for me at first despite my experience with many other cRPGs out there.
Another new impressive addition is the Convictions system that lets you make important decisions that will have lasting consequences. This is the game’s take on the Alignment chart, with the closest analogue that came to my mind being the Renegade/Paragon split in the Mass Effect series.
During certain gameplay beats, you will be able to make decisions that fall into a certain Conviction. There are three: Benevolentia, Imperialis and Hereticus. As comes from the names, very roughly they can be likened to Good, Lawful and, well, Heretical/Chaotic.
As a spoiler-free example, say your Rogue Trader stumbles on a dying Tech-Priest with no option of actually saving him. The Benevolentia option will be something along the lines of assuring the dying man that he served with honor and quickly, painlessly killing him. The Imperialis choice would be to turn the man into a Servo-Skull so that he continues to serve while the Hereticus is likely to watch the Adeptus bleed to death while taunting him.
You do not have to choose the Conviction option every time they come up, there is usually at least one neutral option in any situation much like it is with Alignment/Mythic Path options in Wrath of the Righteous. However, following a Conviction gives you experience in the chosen path and opens further tiers such as Imperialis – Adjacent or Benevolentia – Votary. Some extra dialogue options and gameplay choices require you to be of a certain standing in a Conviction in order to unlock them.
Throughout the Prologue and Chapters 1 to 3 there will be quite a few options to use those, from reigning in your companions or dealing with your servants and enemies alike to choosing fates of entire planets and their population. It is also a great way to learn more about your companions as their reactions and suggestions are not always what you’d expect.
How far does it go? Does following a Conviction potentially give you life-or-death options when it comes to companions and NPCs, say, like Shepard Paragon-interrupting Samara or using the Renegade option to shoot Mordin? At the moment, it is hard to say what the system will be like when you enter the endgame and reach the height of your chosen Conviction. But even in the available content you can use Benevolentia and Imperialis options to make NPCs stand down or snap out of whatever is going on with them and carry on in your service.
Chapter 3 also comes with a loud and furious addition: new companion Ulfar, a mighty Adeptus Astartes from the Space Wolves chapter. Sadly, he only joins you at the very end of the available content and so there are not many options to interact with him and watch him interact with others just yet. It is incredibly interesting to think about how he will settle among the Rogue Trader’s retinue, considering other characters it could potentially consist of at that moment. You can find the list by following the link to the official site – or ignore it, if you want to keep that for your own playthrough.
When it comes to combat, the game also introduced the Combat Preparation Phase. Unless you were ambushed or can’t do so due to the story reasons, you get to select the initial placement of characters before the combat begins. Despite sounding rather mundane, it is a huge quality-of-life addition compared to alpha, especially when you are being invaded by a hundred of daemons during the warp travel.
No longer do you need to waste a turn or two trying to untangle Abelard or Pasqal that got stuck among all the ranged companions and can’t quite make it to the front line. It also lets you put squishier members of your retinue away from harm’s way or leave sections of the battlefield clear of allies to AoE without worrying about friendly fire. The only drawback so far is that it makes the battles feel more same-y than before since you almost always start in optimal formation and follow similar steps and routes to achieve victory.
Compared to the studio’s previous work, cRPG Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader features an increased level of verticality in its surroundings (a lot of which can also be destroyed). Due to it, prepare to rotate and swing the camera around to see the way to approach a ladder or an opponent hiding behind a cover.
Keeping in mind that the game is currently in its beta version, Rogue Trader will also likely make another few passes at its balance. At the moment, there are quite a few abilities (and characters) that seem rather overpowered while others are… somewhat less desirable.
Let’s put the amount of content into numbers: playing on Normal, it took me roughly 30 hours to finish the alpha (as in, Chapter 2) with as much exploration and Spaceship combat as I could find. Meanwhile, it took me roughly 50 hours to beat beta (Prologue and Chapters 1 to 3) while also playing on Normal and sticking mostly to the main story and the side quests and ignoring quite a lot of exploration. You can easily add about 10 hours on top for visiting all the nooks and crannies of the Koronus Expanse and participating in the space combat. Plus, my experience from alpha allowed me to shorten my stay in Chapter 2 significantly since I knew how to approach certain quests and no longer blindly poked around the map.
Speaking of exploration and ship combat, these features have received the biggest overhaul between the alpha and beta versions of the game. From new map visuals and updated UI (which also affects the main menu, dialogues, general look of the interface and much more) to the addition of upgrades to the Rogue Trader’s Voidship and a general space combat overhaul.
Ship management has received its own interface, where you can manage and upgrade the components of your ship and select new abilities as it levels up from all the pirate and xenos scum you defeat in space combat.
Quoting Owlcat Games devs themselves: “Space combat has received a massive update, including new space backgrounds, new HUD, shield UI, combat grid visuals, and a great number of balance and gameplay updates”. What it amounts to is that between the gameplay and the visual updates, the system is quite different from what it was like in the alpha.
The new Voidship abilities and Ultimates make combat more exciting and much less of a chore than it felt like in the alpha. There are still drawbacks, of course: space combat takes a noticeable amount of time, especially when you are fighting against multiple ships that sit in invisibility. Additionally, enemy AI sometimes breaks and just keeps flying in circles around the Rogue Trader’s Voidship instead of attacking. Last but not least is the fact that you cannot really avoid it as some main story quests require you to fight against enemy vessels to get to the designated planet/location.
On the other hand, one of the beta patches added a difficulty slider to space battles. If you are not interested in flexing your cannons at xenos and pirate ships, it might be worth it to drop it down a notch (or a few) just to get through it as quickly as possible. You can also use the updated Colonization system and get an extra AI-controlled ship to join your entourage and help you out in combat as well, cutting battles noticeably shorter and making it that much easier.
The overall Koronus Expanse exploration has been made more pleasant and stunning through the new system map visuals and new global map added in the beta. It might not seem like much, but a set of fresh new visuals, UI updates, quest objective markers and much more go a long way to make the feature feel complete. My favorite is the visual effect that occurs when your Navigator is exploring the new system and charting courses and you can see the warp rippling around.
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- Alpha
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- Beta
Other updates and enhancements include:
- Loot & Cargo UI Updates – now you can more easily move items between loot and cargo, especially when initially going through the spoils of battle;
- Reputation, Vendors & Profit Factor Overhaul – quoting Owlcats: “profit factor is no longer a regenerating resource, but a modifiable threshold instead. Along with reputation, it now determines which items are available to you from vendors”;
- Colonization system update – updated UI, new events, more choices. Works great in tandem with the profit factor & reputation overhaul but still obviously a work-in-progress;
- New Main Menu & Updated Dialogue UI – Dialogue UI has received new art, better font readability, and more space on the screen. The main menu also got a fresh coat of paint.
Of course, there are still bugs – both in terms of visuals and gameplay as well as performance. The earlier stages of the game run relatively smoothly, with a few quirks here and there, but the newly added Chapter 3 has a harder time. Hopefully, between now and the next version of the game the developers will manage to wipe out those pesky persistent problems with the help of the community’s vigilant bug reporting.
Don’t let me discourage you: the game is perfectly playable in its current version if your goal is to reach the coveted slider that lets you know that’s it. However, if you want to check out the magnitude of content offered in Rogue Trader and have the best possible experience, ripe with unexpected twists and turns and Warhammer’s general Over-The-Top approach, you might want to stick it out until the official release.
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader beta gives a taste of the gargantuan scope and the ambition of the latest Owlcat title. 50 hours are nowhere near to scratch the surface of everything the game has to offer even in its current state. If you were looking for a grandiose, larger-than-life cRPG to spend countless hours in, exploring the vastness of the map, interacting with companions and following an epic main quest – Rogue Trader has all of that and more.
Stay tuned to find out more once the devs are ready to share. The Emperor protects!
