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As a massive 40k fan who owns countless books, the massive wall of text is an absolute joy for me. I will happily chill and read about the lore and world building

Along with a healthy dose of top down tactics games(Aliens Dark Descent, Wargroove 2, and Jagged Alliance 3), the venerable CRPG has had a bit of a renaissance this year between Baldur's Gate 3, Colony Ship, and Rogue Trader. As an old school Black Isle era CRPG fan, I could not be happier.

As someone that loves 40k lore, this game is absolutely nailing it for me so far (just finished chapter 1) So few of the games have them cosmic horror vibes that make 40k such an interesting universe.

I'm not a 40k nerd, I know almost nothing about it, but I've wanted to get into it for awhile and the idea that this game has a "ton of exposition, lore, dialogue, and world building" makes me think it may just be what I needed! having played FFXIV, I have no problem sitting through 300+ hours of dialogue to learn an engrossing story

If this ever gets an update like Disco Elysium where every piece of text gets voiced, that would be huge.

I wasn't a fan of WOTR, but I love CRPGs as well as the 40k universe so I'll definitely be giving this game a try at some point.

BG3 basically just shows that the main barrier of entry for CRPGs is production quality, not the genre itself (I mean Dragon Age: Origins showed that, but AAA developers (edit:execs) have zero faith). It's just that managing that level of production in a full-fledged CRPG is pretty big undertaking, and corps are too risk-averse.

Owlcat is absolutely killing it. Owlcat and Larian Studios have been god sends for the CRPG genre. Imagine them collabing on a game, Larians polish and passion with Owlcats depth.

Never played 40k games before, I bought this game mostly because it's a CRPG and made by Owlcat. Played tons of Pathfinder and love the game to death. This will be totally new to me.

"in the grim darkness of the far future , there is only War" of course there is a lot of combat , wouldn't want it any other way in a Warhammer game as long the combat is fun which seems to be the case .

Thank you for taking the time putting this critique together. I'm new to Warhammer 40k, although I've watched plenty of U-Tube material by content creators such as Luetin. Think I will give Space Marine as my introductory game first.

I've really enjoyed the Beta. I think it felt a bit off from being this super-powerful, ultra-wealthy Rogue Trader and having to scrounge for weapons, but otherwise it caught the feel of the universe quite well. Very much looking forward to taking the full game for a spin.

Thanks for all your thoughts. My life has made me not able to play a lot of the classics, or not enough, and it's important to know that something just soaks up lots of time, but I feel this is absolutely a game I will want to pick up when I can. I just don't know when I'll manage to enjoy it all. Hey, I like to read and I've touched on the universe, but I didn't play this studio's prior games due to constraints.

The endless walls of text and lack of voice acting is really grating on me too. I like the game but it is just a bit tedious. Like you said I had to take a break. Like I want to see all my characters get stronger and unlock more abilities but I'm just a bit hesitant to wade through the amount of time it's going to take to get there.

Always my first stop for reviews, and didn't disappoint. Thank you! Still on the fence here, I have loved WOTR, but "walls of text" is a sticking point. I always loved hearing my companions and other conversation, mainly the voice acting adds the layer. Is that lacking "main" characters or just your quest givers, sort of like WOTR?

dude these CRPG games are so top quality and i cant believe i just discovered them. I have always been an competetive mainly FPS/shooter player, but now i just cant get enough of crpgs I just needed a hyped game to introduce me to the genre like BG3 apperantly.

I totally agree with all the reading. Like I like to read, but I also want to play and enjoy myself. Sitting in one spot going through SO much lore dumps and textwalls, kinda makes my brain itch. after a while I literally stopped caring. I wish the presentation of the lore was easier to digest. If I wanted to read a novel, I would just go do that. VOs would def speed this up. Like, when the party is talking about themselves and I can hear their voices I feel more engaged. (Argenta is best girl btw, but I'm a SoB main so I'm biased lol.)

Never played a 40k game. But from the creators of Pathfinder?! Looks good, definitely going to give it a shot. Hopefully someone can use AI to create voice overs for the game, assuming it's mod-able in that way.

WH 40k, Complex Combat, Tons of Lore sounds amazing to me. I bought the game but will wait a couple of months until Owlcat fixes the major issues (which they always do).

Been playing this for the past 3 days and the character customization is INTENSE. Takes me up to 15 minutes to level up sometimes, I love it!

oh I loooove the negatives you brought up! I'm getting this right now

I noticed that there's a lot of debacle between BG3 and Rogue Trader on which game is better. When both fans should appreciate how crpg is getting a lot of mainstream attraction and we could potentially get a lot of more games in the CRPG genre in the future because of what we are getting right now.

so this video is divided in two parts, positives and positives, just love everything about Rogue Trader

combat feels long, because so many games don't want an encounter/quest to take longer than 20 minutes.

this vid lasts exactly the time I need to wait for the game to release Great !

As much as it's controversial, AI is the most obvious path for Owlcat to fully voice their games. Not totally sure if the quality is all the way there yet, but soon their be fully customizable voices that are capable of generating high quality voice acting. Ethics make it a little complicated tho

I watched a few play this last night! I'm not really that into CRPG until BG3 so I think I'll wait for a sale!

Considering Torment: Tides of Numenera and Disco Elysium are two of my favorite games, I'm definitely down with some exposition! 😂

Linda funny I hated how there's is not enough combat in bg3 😂

"There's a lot of reading" Meanwhile there's me, who remembers when everyone was demanding more reading in their games because that's what at least half of the game was. Seriously, even the "downsides" to this game sound great. Can't wait for my download to finish.

Nice review! I will buy this game indeed, love 40k lore, I like all the sci-fi storytelling from it, it's just awesome!

I know nothing of Warhammer but this game looks good, Epic is having its holiday sale, and reading that Cavil will work with Games Workshop and Amazon to make a new Warhammer franchise, it feels this is the time to get into it. I hope it is not too overwhelming.

I really liked it until I got to chapter 4. Chapter 1 is a bit getting used to, but overall okay. Chapter 2 was really cool, chapter 3 was good but bugs started popping up and chapter 4 completely unraveled at the seams. It's a complete bugfest and you'll see yourself getting stuck and reloading over and over again -- if not just getting completely stuck. It's really not a pleasant experience and all the bugs make chapter 4 (and supposedly 5) borderline unplayable. So my advice is: wait at minimum a month or 2 before getting this -- and preferable 6+. If however all the bugs are fixed, this should be a really cool and fun game.

Lol, when you said, I need to decompress, totally agree. Sometimes just too many text. I do wanted some more variation for the enemies in act 1, like suddenly growing horns or tentacles, or even some kinda puzzle combat, not the go-to approach shoot and cover. And the psy-rating is an issue, I mean, you start at psy-rating 0, which means it's only viable at level 11 unless you go biomancer

Warhammer has some of the most diverse factions in any game. The Dawn of War games were so fun.

Just got it today can't wait to play it baldurs gate 3 has really gotten my back into turn based games.

I think the devs wanted the combat to emulate the board-game epic length game rounds.

ive played 40k since it was invented. from your review it sounds like an ideal game for me.

I've played 40k tabletop miniatures when I was younger. Warhammer had a bunch of action combat games that I wasn't interested in. But turn based?? I think I'm gonna have to give this a shot. It really looks good, albeit a little slow perhaps. But good just the same

I'm always very drawn to games like this, I love everything about it .... except the combat. I just hate the lengthy combat sessions. Weird huh.

Owlcat has grown on me as one of my favourite devs. Picked up Kingmaker to try it out due to a lack of long term RPGs. Ended up spending way more time on it than I expected. Then WotR came out and I spent even more time on it. And this is threatening to make me a complete shut in for the next few months.

so excited to play this tonight

“Too much combat” Excuse me Sir In the grim darkness of the far future there is only war

In the grim dark future there is only war...... thus having almost too much combat is spot on!

This is my first 40k game ever and I'm loving it! If you're new as well but love crpgs and don't mind a bit of reading do not be intimidated - the lore is explained very well in the game and I got immersed right from the start. I like the combat a lot better than in Pathfinder too. The game has its fair share of signature Owlcat tediousness when it comes to gameplay and mechanics but I feel like they're getting better at it with each game.

Basically this video can be summarizes as "this game is every 40k nerds wet dream, especially if you devour the novels".

Thanks for the video review! As a WH40K fan I will buy for sure!

Hope they make they make the PC feel like a living breathing character. Usually in owlcats games they are just brainless player inserts that serve as someone for the companions to exposition dump to. You can’t avoid some of that, but the pathfinder games are especially bad at that, considering how much they let the players roleplay on the macro scale.

So your biggest gripe with this game is .... reading? How has society not collapsed yet....

Solid review. I agree with your positives, so as I'm going to talk more 'negatively' that's not an insult. Your good stuff is good, moving on. ^_^ I was born in 1970, started playing videogames at age 5 & PnP RPG's at 11. So I have a LOT of XP under the belt. Now, when it comes to defining what an 'RPG' is, many people have their own takes, and in our modern culture it is offensive to flatly state facts & have hard & fast definitions of things. An RPG is a truly unique form of entertainment, and it is defined by one very specific thing, that without that thing, you may have all the exterior trappings of an RPG, but it will fail at that key element. At best, you will have a 'Diablo' type game. Not a bad GAME, but NOT an RPG. That key feature is Player Agency. An RPG is a game where the Gamemaster creates a world, where the players can then tell their own stories THROUGH the medium of the world the GM has made. If the players are just sitting there, in stunned awe, while the GM regales them with a story, that is basically a Book, or a Film(TV Show). A game like 'The Last of Us' is a perfect example. The minigames a player goes through have no effect on the cutscenes shown. Which is why you can watch those scenes isolated from the 'playable' parts & end up with a very similar experience. Now, a Pen & Paper game has a tremendous advantage over the Digital version, as even an average GM can respond to player's choices in a much more comprehensive manner. It is of course absurd to imagine even the largest Dev team could match the creative flexibility of a talented GM. But trying to do that should ALWAYS be the goal. If you shoot for 100%, but only hit 70%, that's still far better than phoning in a 40 or 50%. Why am I writing this little essay about this in the first place? Well, because of that very limitation of time and resources. It is far, FAR more cost-effective for a team to use Text, than to have everything voice-acted. Having a game like Rogue Trader, or BG3 fully-voiced increases costs by an order of magnitude. So a Developer must either cut back on the flexibility of the story, or be prepared to shell out huge amounts of money, which, obviously, companies are loathe to do, especially as RPG's, even the BEST-selling ones, make up a relatively small amount of the Game Industry. As good as it is, imagine how much more open and reactive BG3 could have been, if Larian had chosen to cut back on the voice-overs. There IS no way around it- An RPG that has enough Player Agency to even be considered a real RPG, will be dramatically more cost-effective if it is mostly text. I know there is this perception that Joe Normie Gamer HATES reading, and if true, that is (Aside from the real learning disability issues) just a sad commentary on both our culture and educational system. But is having some person talk AT you for minutes on end really so much better? I have watched many playthroughs of voiced sequences in games and very, very often they are just skipped through as fast as possible. My impression is that these days, people don't have much more patience for being talked to, than they do for reading. I wonder though, if using the technology that has existed for many years, of A.I. replicated voices, might 'split the difference' to a degree. At the very least, some enterprising developer should use it so that players can actually hear their own unique character name spoken. I bet that one small change alone would increase immersion to a surprising degree. Just have the Voice Actor's voice sampled and insert the A.I'd voice when the PC name comes up in dialogue. These days it would be easy to do. Hope THIS wasn't too long to read. Again, solid review, keep it up! ^_^

POE league starts tomorrow so I can't dive in... but will absolutely pick this up and rotate between Pathfinder and BG3 Honour mode

Having spent 15 hours playing this game I'm very disapointed in it, buy it the summer sales next year when they've fixed the bugs and updated it a bit...Maybe then it's worth the 25 usd price tag.

Is there much to the spaceship component? I didn't see much of it in the vid. How linear is the exploration?

Aside from Pokemon Go, Space Wolf was the only phone game I ever played. (It ended up getting ported to steam.) After the generic chapter composition from the Dawn of War games, it was fun to play one of the more eccentric chapters, even if it wasn't squad-based; but it was also the first time I'd encountered this kind of gameplay. I enjoyed it. I date back to the Rogue Trader book that started it all off, so I feel an amusing sense of obligation, but I probably won't get the game until a decent sale.

Anyone who played the TTRPG will tell you that this game is an insult to the original TTRPG. All they had to do was port the system over, not change it entirely.

Imagining a dlc Wich idea you prefer? An add on " Catachan " An add on " Cadia " An add on " Caliban " An add on " Black fortress " An add on " Worlds of Ultramar " An add on " Holy Terra " An add on " Armageddon during Waagh " ?

The fights ARE full of cannon fodder, theyre there to rack up on kill buffs and fill your heroic action meter before nuking down the main threat of the fight. If you spend your first turn mowing all the one hit guys down it goes MUCH faster

I'm glad that the first negative is actually a huge plus for me. As a fan of 40k since the early 90s.

Its like Baldur's Gate but Warhammer 40000? If is i'm in, doesn't matter if isn't good as BG3 because the bar is too high, but visually this got my atention.

Don't get this game just yet, I'm 70 hours in and about 20 of those were spent trying to get to the next act because of game-breaking bugs. It's not a finished product yet, far from it...

What difficulty would you recommend? I played the whole alpha, the question is, will higher dif be better or just longer?

Baldur's Gate 3 spoiled me. It would be amazing if the dialogue was voice acted.

The game would be absolutely awesome was is not for the fact that it is completely broken and unplayable at the stage of the IV act. I would strongly suggest anybody to refrain from buying this game before it is properly fixed. Its bugged beyound oblivion. They beta tested first 2 acts, those are ok, but the rest is horrible. Nothing beats the filling of pouring say 70 hours into the games only to get stuck cos your charater cannot move on the bridge of the ship or the quest that you finished doesnt show as completed. Shame on the developers for rushing this game without properly testing to a state where it was somewhat playable. It is worse than a Cyberpunk 2077 disaster. Whait till they fix all the major bugs!

All the negatives were positives for me.😂 Love the game. Some small time bugs but nothing game breaking. Now that they have a template they can keep doing these games and I'll buy every single one. Love it.

Seems a game I'd like. But I really hope RT would open oportunity for Warhammer Fantasy CRPG to be developed!

Sale for me. Not keen on the Art style and I'll wait till its been patched/dlcd.

FROM Baldur's Gate 3 to this,we gamers eating well!

Looks pretty good but worry about bugs on release

Sold. Buying it now!

Big day today!.. its “the day before”!

5:57 While I think it is good to mention the deep lore in a Warhammer 40,000 game... it being "too deep" is a very weird complaint. It is nice to be warned that this game has "deep lore" and "allot to read" with it being "very combat heavy" but I think two out of the three complaints fit nearly every Tabletop "game" made by Games Workshop, and the computer versions are not much different.

massive 40k lore? sold!! i’m new to the Warhammer universe but its so freakin awesome!

The CRPG isometric formula is 25 years old! is there not one inovative developer that can create something better than the old tired isometric party roaming approach to this genre?

This is good. I dig the art! Don't mind reading as I need to know more about the Warhammer universe. I'll pick this up for sure. Its 17% off on Fanatical!

the lack of voice acting is disappointing. I already didn't like that in e.g. Mechanikus.

My only gripe with the other Owlcat games was the lack of co op! This is amazing!

hm, comparing with wotr and bg3... i like wotr way more than this. funny thing; i feel like i have less control and choices, less diversification possible... there are a few talents and special abilities, but not 10% of what wotr offers... the Reason for that feeling of less control is that for some values of the character: you have no automatic progression in some areas, like ballistic skill or weapon skill... you have to micromanage everything. in bg3 and wotr if you choose fighter: you will automatically progress in hit chance and hp... in this game you have to tackle that yourself, which also means that you have almost no reference if the value you have will be enough to beat the encounters... of course you can retrain everything, but for me that makes it almost too much trial and error, the rpg system i definitely dont like. to the other points: fully agree, the lore, immersion is amazing in this game. thanks for the video! enjoyed it!

But the fun of this kind Is the Reading? I love that charme like in Disco Elysium, Pathfinder or Baldurs Gate.

This is my greatest complain against Turned based. IT TAKES SO LONG! Real Time With Pause you just let the cannon foder act for a few seconds before pausing, its much more fluid and consistent.

AI can do all the voice acting.. As a dyslexic all the reading will be a pain, but lots of combat sounds okay.

Nice Review but what about the Bugs? Seems there are a lot according to other Reviews.

hopefully more crpgs do what bg3 did with grouping turns, it definitely helps tremendously for allowing encounters with large mobs of enemies

Thank you for your review. I have been looking forward to this game as I have been a big fan of Owl Cat's previous entry and thought they were a perfect fit for bringing the incredible world of 40k to life. Anyone who is familiar with the 40k universe should not be intimidated by walls of lore and endless combat. Plenty of other entries with this IP to scratch the "less is more" itch!

1) this is only available on current gen consoles. Plays fine (PS5 player) 2) this is a crpg, reading is part of the experience. We enjoy a well written story and dialogue/characters that is intriguing 3) I found the combat very fun and didn’t mind the long battles (that is a preference and I can see how others might find them tedious)

i cant play owlcats game without some sort of TTS mod. i dont mind reading but owl cat game writers are putting entire 1000 page novels into their game and it becomes tedious reading multiple walls of texts. with a TTS mod I can do other things on the second monitor while I listen.

I bought and play it. I even recommend it especially the soundtrack also the only game where my profile picture feels finally canon.

7/10

Completely disagree with your stance on there being too much text. Some people are arguing that parents don’t have time for that. Well, I would say in that case OwlCat games might just not be for you. I feel like if they spent too much of their budget on VA, they would have less budget to spend on writing. If the game is only partially voice acted - fine by me. My imagination will fill in the gaps.

So how big is the game now? Steam page says 40GB, but every system requirement page says 100GB. What is it???

THIS GAME IS AWESOME!

As far as I know Rogue trader are current Gen only or not?

thats the main issue i have with turn based rpgs : they are fucking slow.. Even if your party is strong , and the enemies are mooks .....it takes time. I dunno why owlcat didn't made it at least like wrath - having the ability to switch between the 2 modes - if they really wanted the game to be turn based. Honestly , if you make your game be ONLY turned based.....then make it waaaay less combat focused , and turn it into a narative focused game

BG3 was my first turn based rpg game (before that, I was not a fan at all of turn based games). This game does look great, but really confused if I should get it

Do they have paired takedown animations?

I'm just waiting for Owlcat to come out with their next Pathfinder game...

Warhammer have been releasing game this 2 years with non-stop, few are acceptable... But the rest are really bad is like they are giving their license to anyone who ask for it

Olwcat needs to find one good narrator to voice their game just like Disco Elysium did.

I wish there were an actual Adeptus Mechanius origin and class instead of just a Forge World origin

Darn bro I'm literally falling asleep during this review. Where's the energy at? It sounds like you're doing this review reluctantly