- CommissarMega
- Nov 18, 2008
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THUNDERDOME LOSER
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I'm almost certainly going to get this but I feel vague qualms that the game style doesn't fit the fiction very well.
How is the alpha?
Gimme a sec, I wrote a very lengthy impressions post earlier.
EDIT: Here you go! Be warned, I go into some spoilers about the party members the alpha gives you.
And here it is!
All right, so I'm not even gonna hide the fact that even in its alpha state, with all its bugs and rough edges, I had a blast with Rogue Trader. The alpha's story, while not perfect, certainly drew me in, and from what I could see there were many chances and choices to be either faithful to the Imperium and its ideals, or to turn away from the God-Emperor's light and turn to darkness. I will say that I did hope for more insight into our characters, as right now each character only has one quest associated with them in the alpha, and apart from that you don't get a lot of unique interactions with them otherwise. Still though, this IS an alpha, and it's perfectly understandable that we'd have just enough to get a bit of a grip on each character while the mechanics gets the focus.
Anyway, onto my writeup. Just be aware that I'm  , and as such I won't really bother with spoilers unless they're really important.
GROUND BATTLES
Speaking of which, I do like how they've translated RT's mechanics to digital. They're not quite as doggedly faithful as the Pathfinder adaptations were, and I suppose that was for the best; I certainly think they worked quite well for the game. In terms of levelling your characters, from what I could tell you select a specialization every 15 levels, with each specialization having its own upgrade tree, so at level 17 one class might get a Characteristic increase, while another gets to pick a new feat, though from what I could tell you get mostly the same upgrades every Level X so you don't feel like one dude has a ton of Strength but no feats to utilize it and vice versa for another character. The Level 16-32 (the max level in the Alpha) classes feel good to use, and the 1-turn combat buffs didn't hinder me as much as I thought they would. That said, there are some issues I have with ground combat, which I'll get into below.
First off, is that each of your characters has their own initiative score and place in the initiative order, which can seriously wreck your strategy if you want/need one character to go before another. There were times when I had to use other characters before I could buff them or the areas they'd be fighting in with my leaders, which was not ideal to say the least. You will also be constantly outnumbered. Now, this isn't usually all that big a problem, but later on in the game there are quite a few bosses and midbosses mixed in with the fodder. It's not quite as rocket tag as the tabletop RPG gets, mind you (and when it does, it's usually in your favour-more on that way below), but it can still catch you by surprise now and then. Don't get me wrong, your characters are much, much tougher than most enemies, and they are capable of dishing out some serious hurt, but the game does expect you to be good at the combat system before you face the first fight of the alpha, which absolutely shredded me the first time I played it. Still, it's not quite as bad as the Pathfinder games, and once I did get the hang of combat, it actually turned out pretty fun!
Personally, I think the major factor to take into account is the Momentum system, which didn't exist in the tabletop game. Each character turn and every time you kill a dude you get Momentum, which can be used to activate 1/battle powers for each character. These can have some pretty devastating effects, especially when they essentially allow a kitted-out, high level character to have a whole second turn to themselves. Just be careful where and when you use them though, as the Momentum pool is shared between characters, so if you pop a Momentum skill, your other characters will need to build the bar up again. Still, a good use of a Momentum skill on one character can certainly help build the bar up for the next, and getting a good Momentum chain going is a thing of absolute beauty. I couldn't even tell you if enemies got those skills as well, as around the midgame my characters' Momentum chains, combined with my combat characters having a lot of +movement skills ensured that they were always in a position to utterly dominate enemy hordes before turning any bosses and midbosses into paint.
SHIP COMBAT
Boy howdy is my opinion on this mixed. Again, you're often outnumbered, but your characters have enough skills and talents to tip the balance in your favour in all but the most unfair battles. Which is when it doesn't work and you get kicked in the balls so hard and so many times you turn to Slaanesh or Nurgle to make the pain bearable. And it's so often a case of numbers- some battles you're just plain outnumbered 6-1 (not exaggerating) and sometimes the enemies' ships are just plain not fun to fight. Seriously, if you weren't space-racist towards the Aeldari/Eldar before, you will be after this game. Maybe I was doing something wrong, but not only do their ships do god damage with near-pinpoint accuracy, but they also have respectable (if somewhat low) hitpoints, excellent agility (seriously, I reloaded a battle several times just in case the RNG was kicking my rear end- but nope, they dodge like 7 out of ten shots) and okay shields. In my dinky little frigate, where ship customization hasn't been implemented yet, it was torture. I won't lie, I broke out Cheat Engine to get past Aeldari ship battles, which I never needed to do with Chaos or the Drukhari/Dark Eldar. About the only good thing I can say about Eldar ship battles is that they're very infrequent. There's also cases where sometimes, a Chaos ship would just sit there and do nothing for around a minute at a time before ending its turn, which I suppose is just a case of broken AI. Don't get me wrong, this is not really an issue I have at the moment (being an alpha and all), just something to watch out for in case you want to get into the game.
But like I said, when it works, it plain works. Rag on me all you like for saying this, but a good space battle in RT put me in mind of when Dark Souls finally clicked for me, and I stopped trying to play it like Devil May Cry. It's a constant near-literal dance of trying to engage a single enemy at one time while avoiding getting double or even triple teamed by another, and like the ground-based combat the game expects you make to most of all the skills it's trying to teach you. You've got a lot of skills to even the odds and you're bloody well going to use them, buddy. Oddly enough, my favourite shipborne opponents were the Dark Eldar, which I thought would seriously piss me off the first time I faced them. First, most of the Drukhari ships I fought have shadow fields, which makee the ship untargetable for 1 turn, and which automatically activates on both the first turn, and the first time each ship is damaged each turn. Also, they have rapid-firing, high damage and accuracy weapons. As annoying as this may sound, it actually worked here, as each fight against them was a deadly ballet of special powers and frantic maneuvering, especially since they didn't have bullshit Aeldari defences, not even shields, which meant that when you hit a Drukhari ship they loving feel it. Not gonna lie, while I think Owlcat needs to take another pass at Chaos's AI, and tune down Eldar ships, the Drukhari seem just fine where they are from where I stand.
COMPANIONS
I'll be going through these guys in ascending order of how much I like them, as well as providing my opinion on both their gameplay and story impact.
8: Jay Heydari, Cold Trader
UGGGGHHHHH. Gameplay-wise, she feels like she was supposed to be a hybrid melee/ranged character, but ends up being a master of none. She might have been salvageable if she had psyker powers, but nope, none of that. About the only use I got out of her was a chance to spend AP on grenades. Those are useful, make no mistake, but the other characters have item slots too, as well as talents to use when grenades aren't the answer. That said, like Idira below I didn't really use her much, so it's entirely possible I'm missing out on something.
Storywise? Also UGGGGHHHHH. I mean, I get that this is an alpha, and that we won't really see what's going on with the characters yet, but by the Emperor is she boring. The only companion mission she gets is the one where you recruit her, and that just tells us that she's a Cold Trader who thinks that poo poo's okay, likes using foreign words in her speech, and also has a fondness for pretty people. Now, to be fair, there are some hints that there's a lot more to her than she seems, which is fine, but as things stand story-wise, she's really kind of bleh.
7: Idira Tlass, unsanctioned psyker
One of your starting characters, Idira is quite useful early on. She's got a multi-target chain lightning which is quite useful at wrecking hordes of weak generics and decent Ballistic Skill, so you might want to keep her as a long-ranged. Here's the problem: first, her chain lightning can do friendly fire. Which doesn't sound like a problem at first, just keep your melee dudes away from the groups you want to target, right? And hey, maybe you can make it work for you, but it didn't for me. See, when an character tries to move away from, or use a non-pistol ranged weapon next to, a melee character they suffer an attack of opportunity. One of the best ways I've found to shut down ranged opponents is to just move a melee dude next to them, and Idira's chain lightning just gets in the way of that. Second, the range of her chain lightning, while generous, can still prevent her from being a proper sniper. Don't get me wrong, she is a force of devastation, especially if you kit her up with rifles, but she still kind of falls behind other more specialized characters. However, as I said her battlefield role doesn't really mesh well with my own playstyle, and I didn't really use her much, so take what I say with a block of salt.
Storywise, she sets my teeth on edge. Not only is she an unsanctioned psyker, she's perfectly fine with it. And hey, you might say 'if it works for her, who cares', right? Thing is, early on there is An Incident Tee Em (TM)™ caused by her unsanctioned powers going haywire, and you'd best believe that if I hadn't wanted to see if there was more to her story, I'd have burned the witch and spaced her ashes. I admit, I'll keep her alive for my first playthrough just to see where things go, but if it's not satisfying enough, out the airlock she goes.
6: Abelard Werserian, Seneschal
A physical powerhouse, Abelard if your defensive melee character, and damned good at it too, even out of the gate. Once you have the proper talents and kit, he can be the immovable object some of your strategies can revolve around. Not only does his Momentum skill boost his defences, but if you spec him out as a Vanguard (one of the 16-32 classes I mentioned above), he can get a skill that gives him a chance to attack on a successful Parry, which is great for drawing in enemy melee for the slaughter. About the only bad thing I have to say about his combat skills is that he might be a little too defensive (though that might have been me just speccing him badly), especially since the one taunt skill I could find can only be used after you kill a dude, so until you get a good 2-hander his utility is (only) somewhat limited.
Such a pity that we don't really get much out of him storywise. The personal quest we get in the alpha is kind of interesting, centering around his unsubtle and perhaps excessive use of force onboard your ship, but it doesn't really have all that much impact (though once ship mechanics have been implemented, it might prove more so). There are also hints that he might have cared for your predecessor more than he should have. Apart from that, we don't really get much more out of Abelard other than he's turned serving you into a family business. Still, there's hints that the local nobles don't really respect his family's lineage or exalted position, having come from Navy stock instead of noble blood, so the might be a lot more conflict there. it's just that Abelard seems like the kind of character events happen around, and not 'to' or 'about'.
5: Yrliet Lanaevyss, Ranger
Your first (and best) dedicated sniper. Give her a good las weapon (more on that later) and spec her as an Assassin, you're welcome. She's probably been sniping for centuries, and definitely shows it. The only reason she's so low on the rankings is that, well, sniping is all she can really do. She doesn't have psyker powers, being a Ranger, nor does she have the weapon skill or strength to be good at melee. That said, ranged characters have a lot of movement-enhancing skills, so it shouldn't be too hard to instead give her a good lasgun (again, you'll thank me for this) and have her go mid-range. Once you can, spec her as an Assassin and have her take down bosses. I usually take her and Cassia along as snipers, and they can synergize quite well together.
Storywise, she's certainly arrogant, but no more so than you'd expect an Eldar to be. Surprisingly reasonable too; she joins your crew out of a desire to shoot Chaos, and that is certainly a goal I can get behind. Apart from that though, nothing really stuck out for me, but at least she's inoffensively boring like Abelard, unlike Jae, and much less dangerous in-story than Idira. You might also annoy some of the more strait-laced characters if you speak to them with her in your party too, which might be a plus for certain people.
Heretics. I'm talking about heretics 
4: Cassia Orsellio, Navigatrix
Your dedicated buffbot, and not bad at it either! Her basic Leader skills have a short range which limits her at first, since she doesn't really have the stats for the mid-range, or Emperor forbid, up close and personal. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure she can be built for that approach, but between the fact that her Lidless Stare takes up her attack action for the turn and does friendly fire, you might want to wait for the full release to properly spec her with the skills and initiative she will need to be fully effective in that role. Besides, in my experience, once you've made her a Strategist (one of the 16-32 classes) and given her a few talents from that tree, doing damage with Cassia becomes secondary to her buffing skills, and I only used her if I really, REALLY wanted some sumbitch dead, and was willing to risk using her somewhat low Ballistic Skill and one attack per turn to attempt that. Better to use her buffs (1/turn, but no limit to how many you can use apart from your Action Points) to create favourable combat zones for your characters, and/or to give those around her extra movement or a single action point. It's why pairing her with Assassin Yrliet was so effective; Assassins have a skill which lets them shoot twice with a lower hit chance, but Yrliet's chances are so good she doesn't suffer all that much with it, and having Yrliet essentially have four sniper shots a turn thanks to Cassia makes bosses and midbosses sad (at least, until they become dead).
In terms of story, Cassia is one of the characters along with Pascal who've gotten just a little extra attention for the alpha release (as evidence by the fact that they have additional dialogue after their personal quests, which haven't been translated from Russian yet). Characterwise, she reminds me of Liara from Mass Effect; a sheltered, naïve ingenue exploring the galaxy for the first time, and maybe waiting for a tall, dark and handsome Rogue Trader to sweep her off her feet (so maybe a little Arueshalae from WotR too). I'm not joking- every time my (male) RT complimented her, she got all blushy, started stammering, that kind of cheesy romance novel stuff. It almost makes you forget that she thinks you should cut off your servants' tongues just because that's how House Orsellio did things back home, and that her personal quest seems to be going along the lines of 'hey, maybe poo poo like that's a little hosed up even for the Imperium'.
2: Sister Argenta, Sororitas
I think Sister Argenta might be what having a waifu is like. Not only does her class (Soldier) have not one, but TWO +movement skills in a game where positioning is important, not only does one of those skills not provoke an Attack of Opportunity, but another lets her move and have a free shot (albeit with lower accuracy)! And that's not counting her Momentum skill, which basically turns her into a heavy bolter! Seriously, I gave her a hot-shot lasgun and a backpack which increased the burst fire of any equipped weapon by one, and let me tell you- when I say she brought the God-Emperor's light to the Koronus Expanse, I'm not speaking figuratively. There's nothing like watching one character melt two Bloodletters in a single turn with the aforementioned lasgun and judicious skill use- except that it was magnificent.
Storywise, her character quest is one you get right after you talk to her at the beginning, and one that you can do while on other story-related business, so there's that for convenience. It's also surprisingly short and has some intriguing hints that Argenta might not be able to trust her memories, which is an interesting hook. And finally, it involves purging a den of irredeemable heretics, which is always a major plus for me. All in all, a very satisfying, short and sweet personal quest. No bullshit puzzles, no massive levels with barely anything to do (looking at you on both counts, Nenio from WotR), just a bunch of heretics and a Pink Horror at somewhat close range. Here's to hoping this doesn't change for the full release and I don't end up eating my words.
Anyway, Sister Argenta is good and cool and real and also my friend.
2: Heinrix van Calox, Interrogator
Yes, there are two Number 2's on this list, it's not an error. Heinrix is perhaps the best CQC companion I've found so far (let's face it, the Space Woof is probably going to take that crown once the rest of the game comes out), thanks to his respectable stats, his own psychic abilities and finally, his Momentum skill. Don't get me wrong, you won't be getting the Big Numbers you got with Argenta's damage (at least, not until you get some good 2-handers), but that's not really Heinrix's primary role. Instead, you use him to halt enemy shooters and force them to move. You whack enemies with his his main psychic power, which has a chance to knock them down. If you need extra movement, he has a Charge that can move him past his maximum movement and even cause a free attack on any enemy in the way. Just pay attention to the Charge skill's movement squares- I'm an idiot and have wasted more Charges than I care to admit because I didn't really pay attention to where Charge's movement squares were telling me where Heinrix or my RT would actually go.
But all that pales in comparison to his Momentum Skill, which restores his movement points and Action Points. But wait, there's more! While it does not reset toe cooldown on his powers, it DOES allow him to use BOTH melee and ranged weapons as long as he's got the AP to do so, as opposed to how it usually works, which is one weapon attack and as many special powers as you've got the AP for per turn. This means that it's entirely possible for Heinrix to kill one dude with the free attack from his Charge, kill another dude with a ranged or melee attack as usual, and then pop his Momentum skill and absolutely go to town on anyone within movement range. Oh, and did I mention that this berserker mode doesn't remove all your movement points as a usual weapon attack does? This means that after you kill a dude, anyone else within movement range is still under threat. But what if you fun* out of movement range, yet still have AP left? Well guess what? This apparently melee-only skill lets you use those leftover AP for shooting as well! BLOOD FOR THE EMPEROR! SKULLS FOR THE GOLDEN THRONE!
In terms of character, Heinrix starts off as your typical hardcase Puritan, but doing his personal quest (which is conveniently part of your main quest) reveals that he has the potential to turn away from that path, especially since it involves usage and production of forbidden knowledge which could, on the face of it, be used to fight the enemies of the Imperium. I admit, I was kind of disappointed at first since I wanted Space Regill, but a man struggling with deciding between short-term benefits with long-term consequences and vice versa is definitely an interesting route to take with the guy, and I do hope Owlcat gives me more hard choices about Heinrix in the future.
*Freudian slip, but I'm keeping it.
1: Pasqal Haneumann, Techpriest
Definitely my favourite party member. I might switch out a dude here and there depending on the situation, but Pasqal will never leave my side, barring some truly unexpected story circumstance. Tactically, he's much more of the jack of all trades that Jae seems intended to have been; respectably effective at all battlefield roles, though never quite excelling at any of them. However, if you need a buffbot in the front lines (as my CQC RT and Heinrix often did), then spec him into Strategist and just pump out the buffs. He can't give out the free actions and movement that Cassia can, but for those on the front line, he's much more capable of enduring enough punishment to make sure those guys can do their jobs. He does good damage with his Omnissian Axe, and while his single-target shots aren't very good, ranged AoE attacks automatically hit. Give him weapons like flamers, shotguns and meltas, and you have a buffbot (ahaha) that can also dish out punishment as needed. If you ever needed in-story justification as to why the Imperium can't survive without the Mechanicus, Pasqal's your man. About the only negative thing I can say about him is that his low Initiative often means he acts much later than everyone else, but even this can be remedied by giving him the more defensive and/or movement-based strategies and buffs.
His personal story also seems intruiging. He's apparently on a search for his mentor, but there are hints that maybe his mentor isn't quite the paragon he seemed to be, or even that (this might be the product of somewhat ineffective translation software though) he might actually be said mentor, albeit with some kind of memory loss. He's also firmer in his opinions than most CRPG characters; dialogue seems to indicate that while you can certainly offer your suggestions on certain matters, he does have his own ideas, and I'm not actually sure how much sway you have over whim, which is kind of refreshing. Pasqal's also surprisingly quippy, and without proper voice acting for his dialogue I can really tell if he's being serious when he says he will submit a complaint over an incinerator's workers after he was almost roasted in said incinerator.
N/A: Spehss Woof
If he was in the Alpha, I missed him. I don't think he is in though, since I did my best to explore everything pretty thoroughly.
MISCELLANEOUS COMMENTS
1) The biggest thing that threw me off at first was the commerce system. This is old news to anyone with the beta, but I'm putting it here just in case people want to buy in, and I'd like to save them the confusion.
See, your character doesn't have a specific amount of money, per se- instead, you have Profit Factor, which regenerates at a set rate. On the surface of it, you're incentivized to keep your purchases as small as possible, as PF regenerates faster the more of it you have. This isn't really an issue though; even draining your PF to zero can be easily remedied by going into space and doing some space adventure; you usually take enough time that your PF has regenerated by the time you get back to Footfall (so far, the only place I've found to do commerce in the alpha).
S what do you do with all that poo poo you pick up while space adventuring? You turn it into reputation. You can stock up non-document/non-quest items (like documents, data logs etc) as 'cargo', with each item contributing a certain percentage to the stack (so a suit of flak armour might add +10% to a stack of armour, a suit of enforcer carapace might give +15% etc). Once a stack reaches 100%, you can 'sell' it to one of currently three factions via their leader for rep with that faction. This rep doesn't add to your Profit Factor; instead, every rep level apparently opens up a new level of their respective stores, and in the full version, might open up additional quests, business contracts (more on that further below) and other story content, but that's just my speculation, let me be clear.
That said, you can also use these cargo stacks for story content purposes, which leads me to my next point.
2) The variety of warp travel encounters seems very sparse. Again though, this is an alpha, so I'm willing to be lenient on this for the moment. There are a few unique interactions here and there, but on the whole travelling to any star system through any but the safest routes will have you potentially enter a combat encounter. Right now, these don't really have any consequences if you're not in the mood to fight; apparently, instead of fighting you can just give the crew a stack of weapons and have them fight and die for you. Since most ship game mechanics haven't been implemented yet, AFAICT this doesn't really do anything- as long as you have a stack of the item in question (usually weapons or armour), you can essentially skip the combat encounter for free. You don't even lose the stack of cargo from what I could tell. Still though, as ship mechanics expand I also hope the encounter variety does too, especially since having the crew fight literally says you're losing hundreds of crewmen for every skipped encounter, which might have a gameplay effect as ship mechanics expand. Hopefully there's some way for your Navigators to improve their skills, or for you to permanently increase the capabilities of any crew you have so you can skip any fights you're not in the mood for. As much as I like the ground combat, you can have too much of a good thing.
3) Colony mechanics need a bit of a pass through to be made more user-friendly. The way a colony works is that they have a list of capital-P Projects they can undertake, which in turn needs certain amounts of resources either produced by your colonies, or mined from non-colony worlds using extractors (which you can purchase and find). Thing is though, you have to be at a colony in person in order a new Project, which can be inconvenient. My ship has an astropathic choir, let me use them! Also as mentioned, Colonies and mines also produce resources, which in turn can be used to fulfil Contracts. These are simple, one-click options from a menu (e.g. spend 10 Promethium and 10 Plasteel for +8 Profit Factor, that kind of thing). Right now, these seem a little underutilized, and I hope that Owlcat expands on these by letting us open up new questlines and interactions from Contracts.
And while we're on the subject of Colonies, I do hope we get more in the full release. Right now we only have three, and maybe it's just my broken brain talking, but I hunger for more management, more resources to feed my Profit Factor and make the fun chemicals as I watch money number go up.
ANYWAY, that's all I have to say about the Rogue Trader Alpha. Honestly, my main complaint is that it's left me wanting much more- if anything, playing the alpha has made the wait for the full game all the more intolerable. Sure the bugs and glitches have been annoying, and my computer does chug during the large crowd scenes near the end, but there are very well-polished bits here and there (I loved the forge world map), and I can't wait until I get to explore more of the Expanse.
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May 26, 2023 22:31
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Not that I can see.