Me playing Act One of an Owlcat game: “This is awesome!”

Me playing Act Four of an Owlcat game: “Please, let this torment end.”

What you’ve got to understand about Owlcat is that they make games with a ridiculous amount of ambition that they’re not capable of following through on. They offer hundred-hour RPG campaigns, where the first fifty hours are glorious and the last fifty hours are incredibly sloppy. They offer incredible build variety, but have no ability to balance combat. They offer fascinating story hooks, but then deliver terrible pacing and unsatisfying conclusions. It all starts huge and bombastic and ends in a buggy, amateurish mess. It’s just how they roll!

Still, they have some die-hard fans, and I’ve devoted over 200 hours to their games despite their major issues. The sheer depth of what’s on offer is an attraction all of its own, and though I’d never recommend the Pathfinder games to anyone due to how janky and hostile they are, I can’t deny that my old-school tabletop campaign sensibilities are always drawn in by what Owlcat attempts. It’s a huge pity that they can’t manage adequate quality control.

Rogue Trader falls to the Owlcat curse in Act 3 (or 4, depending on who you ask). Combat balance devolves badly, hinging on bosses with bloated stats or one-round blitzes. The pacing becomes terribly slow, and the story hinges on laughably choreographed betrayals. Rather than slog through stuff that wasn’t appropriately playtested or bugfixed, I just restarted and played through the first two acts again. It can only be described as half-baked.

Which is a real shame, because Owlcat once again demonstrate that they understand setting, environment and tone like few creators out there. This is one of the most immersive and exciting looks into the 40k universe we’ve ever had, with an array of fascinating characters and locales brimming with potential that is never fully realized. Without proper direction, all of this hard work building up a narrative just dissipates, fading into the background while you fight yet another trash pack.

At this point, it’s not enough to say “Well, it’s an Owlcat game, this is just how they make them”. They’ve received mountains of feedback on these exact issues and they keep insisting on releasing products that are, frankly, unfinished. Then they patch, usually with a series of targeted nerfs, because making sure that nobody has any fun in a singleplayer game is somehow more important than properly balancing encounters or pacing a campaign. If this is how they make them, they should make them different.

Maybe in a few years the game will be out of beta and ready for release.

Owlcat is horrible. They are what's wrong with the gaming industry. No matter how much they make they still choose to rip off the public when they can. Owlcat has made a fortune churning out dlc's for all of it's games and yet still hasn't honored it's Kickstarter backers for Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous. They constantly lie and make excuses but continue to release more over written garbage as if having 100000 lines of texts makes up for mechanics that don't work and bugs. This released as a bugged out mess and still has issues almost a year later, but the DLC train is still cruising along keeping their cash cow fat. I'd never have owned this game if it wasn't given to me and I predict that I'll play it little if at all as anything Owlcat feels tainted to me even if they do fix the issues.

Here's an idea Owlcat, if you are never going to honor the backers that helped you become such a profitable business, why don't you refund their pledges? Oh maybe because you're a bunch of crooks just moving on to the next cash grab? Release some more dlc's for the blind faithful to scoop up.

I've turned off comments this time as I have no interest in the opinions of fanbois that didn't have their money stolen in the kickstarter. I just want Owlcat to know that they suck and their lack of honor will taint anything they ever release even if they release something decent one day. Return my pledge and I'll delete the review but we both know that you won't refund it (because you don't have to) or honor it (because you're crooks) so I'll remind you every chance I get.

Cheers.