I'm not sure whether to feel sheepish or smug that I exclusively come to Owlcat games late. On the one hand, I feel like a fairweather fan of this underrated RPG powerhouse, one whose output and ambition is honestly kind of scary.

But on the other hand: Owlcat has yet to have a single smooth launch. PCG weekend editor Jody Macgregor gave Rogue Trader a 59% in his review at launch in December, 2023, and I don't blame him one bit.

I hated this game when I tried the beta that fall. The fun unfamiliarity of being a 40K newcomer was outmatched by the frustrating unfamiliarity of a complicated new RPG system⁠—Rogue Trader is at least as intricate as Pathfinder, but without any built-in, D&D-derived muscle memory. The fact that "hit points" are called "wounds" made me feel indignant in a way I struggle to describe. You're not special, stop calling them that!

But perhaps Rogue Trader has earned its silly little proper nouns by now. With the release of its Infinite Museion DLC, I decided to finally dive back in and give it the second chance I'd always planned to, just like Jody did last year.

Similar to Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous and Kingmaker before it, Rogue Trader has grown into an all-timer RPG. It's also hit one of my main quality indicators for the genre: I'm so obsessed with its character building that, dissatisfied with the first guy I made after 20 hours, I rolled a new one and beat its first act again in half the time.

In the Navy

When I played Rogue Trader in beta, there were no guides I could rely on, and its level-up screen made for a quagmire of effects, stats, and nouns with little indication of what was actually good. I'd recommend a guide, either from cRPG Bro or Revan619 on YouTube⁠.

For my playthrough on the notch above normal "Daring" difficulty, I'm following builds for my main guy and every single companion, but after 30 hours of gameplay, I do finally feel like I have enough knowledge to make tweaks at my discretion.

On my first guy, I made what's widely agreed to be the most powerful single build with the⁠—let me take a deep breath here⁠—"Death World Pyromancer Psyker Blade Dancer Executioner."

It's built around a few abilities that make you more powerful the more injury debuffs you have on you, as well as a set of powers that let you spend hit points and kill enemies to get a ton of extra actions per turn. It's certainly powerful, and it's always cool to be an edgelord with two swords, but it just felt janky and stale after a while.

I found I was having way more fun controlling the companion Abellard, whose build was basically identical to one buildsmith Revan dubbed "the most fun for new players." That's right gamers, the Navy Officer Warrior Arch Militant. Basically: You dual wield a sword and a gun. When you score a critical or parry an enemy with your sword, you automatically make a free attack with the gun.

Eventually, gun attacks make your sword more powerful, and vice versa. It feels badass, ultimate lightning tank mode in the middle of all the enemies, instagibbing beefy dudes with your signature one-two punch and parrying chumps left and right.

Tally-ho

I just beat the final boss of Rogue Trader's first act with my dark future seaman, and I keep playing it out in my head. Spoilers, but you get ambushed by a Chaos Space Marine with twice as much health wounds as the next-strongest guy in Act One. The world you're on just had its sun go out, and in-between shredding your party with his bolter machine gun, this bad hombre will blow up the last remaining shuttles offworld one-by-one.

That obviously can't stand, so I had my whole party turn and focus on beef boy, only sending my main man Abellard to tank the annoying support mooks. I knocked off the Space Marine's first 200 hit points wounds with three bolter salvos from my freaky gun nun companion, Argenta⁠—two on her own, and the third with an extra turn courtesy of fish princess Cassia.

That teed the boss up for a finisher from my Rogue Trader, wiping out his last hundo or so of health wounds with a critical charge and revolver shotgun to the face.

I felt incandescent. That was one of the best-feeling things I've done in a game in a month of Sundays, and I got a nice little achievement (only shared by 12.4% of players!) for taking him down without losing any of those shuttles.

There's also a whole RPG here, by the way⁠—companions, romance, skills, planetary management, Rogueing, Trading⁠—but that turn-based combat and buildcrafting is the perfectly-charred neapolitan crust of this pizza. Rogue Trader is redeemed, here's hoping Owlcat's upcoming Dark Heresy just bangs like this outta the gate⁠—it sounds like it will.