บทวิจารณ์ล่าสุดโดย It's Not Slander If It's Written

I'm about to talk some mad ♥♥♥♥

I ♥♥♥♥♥♥' love warhammer fantasy, man. I lost interest in 40k specifically for a longass time, though. I got into 40k a bit in high school and kind of fell off. I played every one of the tabletop RPGs at one point or another - black crusade, dark heresy, only war, deathwatch, and yes, indeed, Rogue Trader. I've also played both pathfinder games Owlcat also made.

My overall opinion has been the following: Owlcat's writer's room is staffed entirely by supergeniuses, but pathfinder 1e is a terrible structure to build a video game on (and the lack of several desirable QoL features in said pathfinder games also hurts.) Owlcat never misses with characterization or dialogue.

I was HIGHLY skeptical I would like Rogue Trader, because quite frankly I am not super into the single-note nature of most warhammer 40k media. Dawn of War 1 and its expansions were fun but more for the gameplay and mods than the setting itself. I loathe every game titled "dawn of war" released after Soulstorm I've laid hands on. Here's the thing, though.

There is, I have been forced to realize, a great amount of /potential/ depth in warhammer 40k as a setting without betraying the fundamentals of said setting. I used to think that if you weren't making Ciaphas Cain you were locked into something really single-note: it's dark, it's grim, it's hopeless, and your individual ability to make decisions, let alone impactful ones, is /deeply/ limited if present at all.

Rogue Trader is BRILLIANT. They had five different games they could have licensed for 40k and they picked the one with a ridiculous amount of freedom and choice, and they have translated the mechanics from the tabletop game BEAUTIFULLY. The 'hologram' movement system, where you can inspect if an attack can be done BEFORE moving to a tile with intent to make it, is excellent. (I personally would prefer an 'undo movement' button but you know what? it's still very good!)

One of the big problems with 40k being translated to tabletop games is that, especially in Dark Heresy (the one I played the most of) there are very specific limitations on equipment options and variety, and at the end of the day there is a set hierarchy that lays down the iron law of what is and isn't allowed as equipment.

Rogue Trader comes out swinging with a bunch of variations of equipment - pulling in a variety of different patterns for various weapons to justify "X is Y but with higher stats" in a way the original tabletop game was incapable of. This solves the lack of growth curve the tabletop game frequently suffered from, and that makes a LOT of sense because as a Rogue Trader you are ostensibly one of the most important individuals in the entire setting. They convey this beautifully through mechanics like the Profit Factor system, as well.

This game is a loving mesh of a CRPG and the modern 40k setting (it's even set in the same /part/ of the setting of 40k as the tabletop, after recent plot developments that postdate the original tabletop's release!) and has given me inspiration to try running the game again myself, one day. Owlcat have really nailed it this time. It may be newness bias, but I genuinely feel the writing here is /almost/ as good as that of Wrath of the Righteous (just the tiniest bit less to my taste) while the game side of the game being night and day. This is a VERY GOOD video game even if you don't care about the story, and a VERY GOOD story if you don't care about the video game. Packaged together, it's phenomenal.

I only have two complaints.

1: What do you MEAN my only flagship ever is a cruiser? I'm a rogue trader! I don't get to get even a Cruiser, EVER? I get it, a whole lot of the story is tied into the specific ship, but like, come ON. At least let me get a whole fleet together!

(Good work taking the mess that is the tabletop ship combat rules and making them work well and make sense, by the way, Owlcat.)

2: WHERE DA BOYZ AT

Listen, Owlcat, I'm not asking for much. Just let me either have a Freeboota join the party, or at least let me end up in a weirdass long-term rivalry with a recurring Greenskin warboss. Come on! It'll be fun! I know it, you know it, this game certainly lets you make wilder choices than palling around with one Ork. I'll buy that DLC. I already bought the first one because you said "I'm going to put a kickass goth ninja assassin cultist in this game if you give me money" and I was already reaching for my wallet.

(This request brought to you by when I played a Kommando in the old tabletop, and upon failing to sneak up on someone after having a minion paint me purple, bashed the grot over the head and screamed YOU IDGIT, YOU DIDN'T PAINT ME PURPLE, THIS IS LAVENDER!")

(You can put a Fire Warrior in here too if you want. Zero reason nobody from the Farsight Enclave could ever be here if you wanted to justify it. C'mooooooooooon!)

Rogue Trader is 10/10 excellent and I cannot recommend it enough, assuming the final stretch doesn't just completely fall off a cliff. But honestly? I'm 91 hours in, I no longer care if the rest WAS bad. I'll revise this review later if necessary. I'm so stoked to see what more gets added, especially having seen just how much they supported Wrath of the Righteous after its release.

Please don't nerf my favorite builds, Owlcat.

as has been said elsewhere: base game content locked behind paywall.

Short version: This is the best roguelike RPG I've played, and still Early Access. There's enough here to be worth buying and playing at full price and I highly recommend doing so to everyone with love for turn-based RPGs.

-

Previously, I wrote a review about Bravely Default 2 in which I got nothing wrong and every part was factually correct and everyone agreed with me and there was no debate or disagreement and it was wonderful. In that review I mentioned that what made its gameplay so marvelous was that it explicitly encouraged finding and identifying class combinations and cheese combos to break the game with.

This remains true. There is, however, one snag I discovered over time with BD2: the game has no challenge once you DO find the cheese. I killed the final boss in one turn. It was extremely anticlimactic.

Now, why am I bringing up that game in this review? Because Time Break Chronicles is THE unchallenged master of class synergies and the brilliance thereof. TBC is made with an enormous amount of love for classic RPGs, especially Final Fantasy 6, as well as class-based RPGs in general. If you can think of a class, it's here somewhere. It's all but guaranteed. The amount of work that went into this game is frankly shocking to me. I am incredibly impressed. And the challenge I think is perfectly where it should be, especially because if you really want to you can crank it up significantly over time.

Picture this everyday scenario: You're traveling through time and space in a bizarre dreamscape fighting a cult to an evil eldritch god. We've all been there. And as metal gear solid fans, we know what "on-site procurement" means, and can adapt accordingly. You identify people who might be able to help you, break them out of the cult's control, and start realizing the insane amount of synergies available between different party members - and the game VERY MUCH wants you to realize them, too. The feeling of realizing this plus that = incredibly powerful tool is perfect joy, and TBC LOVES to revel in that with you. And you better do it, too, Or Else.

In TBC, there is an alternate mode that I am excited to explore (53 hours at time of writing played over four days and I haven't even had to jump into that yet btw) where you essentially randomize your start entirely, every time. It's marvelous. It's wonderful.

The synergies at play here and the GIANT roster (well past 50 and climbing; I STILL don't have all of them!) are a thing of beauty to be commended. I salute TBC and love it so very much.

Shout out to Coffee Potato for recommending this on his youtube channel, I don't regret a second of this game. The man has stellar taste.

I've said before that 2019 was an incredible year for video games and I meant every word of that.

Devil May Cry 5 is not just the best game in its series. It is not just the best action game of 2019. It remains, for my money, the best action game that exists at time of writing (September 2024.)

It is a masterpiece, it is a brilliant work of art, and my play time is 28 hours because I bought this game on Steam after beating the hell out of it on PS4 purely to do a bloody palace race with a friend which never actually ended up happening, to my keen disappointment.

ALMOST every single thing you could possibly want is here (RIP the Ladies Night DLC we never got. RIP to Shootie HG for not getting invited back, his absence is SORELY missed, but those are the only flaws in an otherwise flawless, perfect package.

It has more style than any other game I've ever so much as heard of. It has the most satisfying gameplay I've found ever. It is the pinnacle, the peak achievement, and I cannot even imagine what it would take for another game to come along and exceed it.

Genuinely - how could anything hope to compare?

And before you start, FF16's combat (I played it on PS5, I know) is NOTHING compared to this game. If you thought that game's combat was good, you owe it to yourself and to me to buy DMC5 and experience pure bliss.

And play 1, 3, and 4SE first, while you'e at it. Maybe look up that ridiculously edgy cringe prequel novel of the first game that I CANNOT BELIEVE they made canon because it is SO DUMB, it is SO DUMB, but I love it and I LOVE that they kept it.

It is so rare to see a sequel to a great game come out so long after the prior entry and just absolutely kill it like this. Most of the time the best you can hope for is something that's heartful but boringly safe, or so faithful an adaptation that it refuses to 'update' older systems in line with newer innovations. DMCV is a smashing success, it is the holy grail of action games, it may well be the greatest video game.

There is no greater thrill, and I stand by that.

NOW GO BEAT THE GAME WITH ROYAL GUARD. DO IT.

Do I like this game? This is the most conflicted I think I've ever felt about a video game.

I am a massive fan of the Yakuza series. I got Yakuza 1 on the PS2 on launch (and can tell you all about why that version is superior, in many ways, to Kiwami, and people who blindly parrot "at least Kiwami 1 and 2 are better than those old PS2 games" are depriving themselves of the chance to have a wonderful experience, but that's not really important here I just take every chance I can to say that.)

I was one of the handful of people who preordered the original Yakuza 2 on the PS2. I was there when Yakuza 3 got gutted in the localization. I was there, playing Yakuza 4, seeing the Super Best Friends push that game into cultural relevance. I was there when Yakuza 5 almost didn't come to the states, when Sega did everything in their power to stop it from happening - released it AFTER CHRISTMAS and only because of contractual obligations, and it STILL performed well.

I have played this entire series, is what I'm saying, and this game is...

hmm.

Yakuza thrives on the juxtaposition of absurdity to gritty reality, and there is a certain special something in how it juggles those extremes. It's always done a very good job of that - until this game, I feel. The gameplay change is disappointing but it's a pretty good JRPG overall so I don't hate it, and it DOES have a Gambler class (which I'm a sucker for), but I really don't like the direction the plot goes, quite frankly.

There are multiple great characters in this cast, but there's a lot of really stupid decisions made in the creation of this story and the events therein, and I find myself torn because of that.

I think I actually recommend this game more the /less/ Yakuza you've played.

So here's the thing.

The developers abandoned this game, and didn't deliver on everything they promised they'd add - they ghosted everyone on their discord server, went silent, and started a new game instead.

I do not recommend buying their new game.

All of that being said, the reality is, if you let go of the baggage of what was promised, what IS here is a VERY good roguelite with fantastic combat and movement that feels great, a rather wide variety of playable options, and some great designs and a ton of fun to be had.

So I would recommend this game on the condition you don't look at what was promised and never added.

But I also don't begrudge anyone giving this a negative review, because it definitely feels like a betrayal how this game's development went. Made it out of early access, at least, but I won't be buying any more TeamSuneat games until they're finished and I have the full picture on what's there to be had.

I loved the N64 wrestling games, and never thought in a million years I'd ever get anything like them again.

That is EXACTLY what this game is.

I have no complaints, I have no notes, I have nothing fancy to say. If you want to play a beautifully jank wrestling game that's tons of fun and made with an absurd amount of love, this is the game. It's so good. It's SO GOOD.

Okay so, I'm giving this game an extremely positive review, but with two giant caveats that you need to be aware of before buying this game and I am telling you now so you do not make the same mistake I made.

1: Install any mod that deals with the 'alignment wheel' subsystem by making it instead a double-axis, so that picking "Good" options over and over doesn't pull you out of "lawful good" and into "neutral good" because Lawful options are AWFUL and stick out like a sore thumb amidst what is otherwise EXTREMELY GOOD writing, like, ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ this writing is excellent ASIDE FROM that problem.

2: I would /strongly/ recommend that you not get too heavily invested in the game until the patches are over. The game is worth buying on sale, and worth waiting to play until you stop seeing "Patch X.214123413123: we fixed thirty more save-ending bugs". So either wait, or shotgun it with the aforementioned mod before they can patch it again and hope you don't get got by the bugs (you'll probably be okay, I'm just overly cautious. Probably.)

The cast is fantastic, the story so far is amazing, the setting is phenomenal, and the gameplay is... well. Pathfinder 1e.

I would give so much more than I'm willing to publicly disclose to get a version of this game that's running off Pathfinder 2nd edition. It fits video games so much better, it'd be easier to make balanced internally, it'd solve so many of the problems of clunkiness and character build dead-ends that are endemic to this system, it would be amazing. It would be a game I would never stop playing until I had worn every single line of dialogue into my very finger-bones.

Please god, Owlcat, hear my plea: make a PF2E game. I know you've said in the past you're unlikely to, I know it's a stretch and a half, I know, but with Hasbro ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ the bed on DND this is your time to push its replacement system that's massively better. PF2e is on the way up. I want to play the remastered 2e ruleset in a video game my god it's so good. It's SO good.

I know I'm holding out hope for a miracle I'm unlikely to get, but I hold that hope all the same. Please god.

I miss when Dawn of War was good - this is the final game of that era.

I strongly recommend playing awhile with the base game, then switching to the Titanium Wars mod, and then playing the Campaign with it. That's how I had a huge blast with this game, and I recommend it to everyone who has any love for RTS or 40k.

That mod is absurdly good, and the only downside of it is it's a nightmare to get ahold of. Since Steam's rules probably prevent me from directly linking it in this review, all I can say is "Look for the discord server" and "Godspeed to you". It took me two hours to learn about the mod, find the actual place to get the mod, find the password to open the compressed file, install the damn thing and get it running and it was SO WORTH IT, I CANNOT OVERSTATE HOW WORTH IT IT WAS.

Godspeed to you. Maybe one day Dawn of War will be good again, but until that day we still have Soulstorm.

It is extremely important that you play Resident Evil 5 with a friend, because there are two versions of Resident Evil 5 - the bad video game that's lame, where you escort an AI around and have a largely underwhelming time with a story that you made the mistake of taking seriously, and the AMAZING CO-OP GAME where you dismiss the very idea of caring about the story beyond cackling at it.

Play this game with friends, get the Gold Edition to play the extra stories that are both good and, even more importantly, the KICK ASS bonus mercenaries mode. I played two hundred or so hours of it on the PS3 and regret not a minute. This game KICKS ASS.

Get in there before they remake it and take these servers down, it'll go on sale for ridiculously cheap again.

It is stupid, it is loud, it is so insanely dumb, and I LOVE IT. If you love having fun, you will love this game IF YOU PLAY IT WITH A FRIEND.

Having done so recently, online play is surprisingly good overall.