I'm skimping on screen grabs on purpose this time as all of the neat sights I could show would ultimately spoil the narrative by revealing what lies ahead.

My first outing as a Rogue Trader came to a timely end yesterday and was – to paraphrase my favorite Krogan – less than I expected, more than I hoped. The game maintained its high level of polish throughout, never cutting corners or feeling rushed or undercooked, for a finale that was definitely not Games Workshop canon — and all the more satisfying for it.

Tying up every loose end (reaching level 55, completing all quests and most rumors) took me 106 hours and 44 minutes that never felt rote, stale or boring and though I managed to finish most things the way I wanted, I now know more than a few could have been handled better. It's the mark of a nuanced plot that getting a "good" ending still leaves room for improvement.

Without giving away the plot, the game is divided into five chapters. The first teaches you the basics, the second introduces planet management and gives you free reign to fly around, structure your colonies, gather (some) allies and develop your character enough so a score of heretics will no longer pose a challenge. Chapter three then promptly flips your expectations, locking you into a separate, self-contained story, before you return for more free-roaming fun in chapter four and a smaller (but no less entertaining) finale in chapter five (which locks you into the endgame, narrowing the narrative's scope).

A deeper dive

As I mentioned in parts une and deux of the Rogue Trader review, I think Owlcat's greatest accomplishment with this game was giving the W40K setting some much-needed depth.

Look at any previous Games Workshop adaptations and all you'd see was a narrow focus on the core elements of the board game (pew, pew and zap, whack). There was never a deeper delve into how W40K society is structured or functions — what regular citizens feel or fear, what motivates them or how they try to cope with the brutal reality of their existence... Which isn't entirely the devs' fault, as it turns out: in developing Rogue Trader, the Owlcats actually forced Games Workshop to flesh-out as yet undefined parts of W40K lore (since, for a game focused on fighting, bureaucracy or courtly protocol weren't exactly necessities).

In fact – despite the quick and enjoyable combat – my favorite sections of the game were ones that skipped it altogether. I was never happier than when I boarded a drifting hulk and could chat with some salvagers instead of fighting. Or queued (for actual days) to get a trading permit. Or went out for drinks with pirates. Or shamelessly flirted with a navigator... Which is not to say charging headlong into battle wasn't fun – but having the option not to was refreshing.

Even though the narrative never entirely got away from how unwelcoming, deadly and bleak the W40K world truly is, the fact you could experience moments of levity or – even better – steer PC behavior away from the polar extremes of W40K canon (rah, rah Emperor / rah, rah Chaos); was, in my opinion, the best aspect of the game.

Scale and detail

The immense scope and thoroughness of the production were clear runners-up where achievements were concerned.

Being able to experience the vastness of the gothic architecture, seeing the difference in size between a space marine and a paltry human being, (narrowly) avoiding being stepped-on by a Lord of Change (that's "huge honking demon" for the uninitiated); or watching an infinite army march past to the drumbeat of metal on stone really pushed home the otherworldly scale of W40K that (I don't think) any adaptation to date managed to accomplish (as none, previously, combined the ordinary populace of W40K with its battlefield counterparts on the same screen).

As for being thorough, even though Rogue Trader didn't incorporate every aspect of W40K lore (for those of you holding out hope, it won't be much of a spoiler to say the Orks and Tau do not make an appearance, while Tyranids offer only a token – but memorable – showing); neither did it go the route of past games and pretend other aspects of lore didn't exist (one location in the game – the den of a smuggler specializing in xenos artifacts – stockpiled static Ork and Tau assets in a nice nod to lore that may not have had a place in the Koronus Expanse story, but existed nonetheless).

In places where ambition outpaced the technical ability of the Unity engine, Owlcat resorted to resolution via text-based vignettes that, nonetheless, weren't mere static dialogue (as they incorporated skill-checks and could be affected by the plot). And while the game did resort to the Kai Leng "I've got an impenetrable force field" cop-out a few times (twice, off the top of my head), the instances were grounded by lore and situation and more postponements than outright denials (as both characters could be killed at a later date, when their part in the narrative allowed for it).

Expanding the expanse

The bugs I mentioned previously continued throughout, but never severely enough to break the game and not in a way that couldn't be solved by loading a previous save.

For the most part, they were scripts that didn't fire properly (like star map events you'd fly into only to have them vanish, the same lines of dialogue
appearing multiple times or missed prompts that would stall a cutscene); of which only one affected my playthrough (when, in trying to stop a romance through dialogue, not only did the next dialogue not start, but my poor Lord Captain got locked into the sitting position and could only float around like a wizard on an invisible chair). All in all, though, the 95% of the game that needed to work for it to be playable did.

To make up for missed opportunities and improve on some choices I made (but mostly to have another playthrough lined up for the August release of Void Shadows – the first of two planned DLCs for the game), I already started another character.

My only concern now is how the DLCs will integrate into the game. Even though the final chapter locks you into a linear path to the finish, you keep finding new items and leveling up, you see, so I'm hoping the content can be played after your final save (to avoid having to backtrack a few hours of gameplay). Even if that is not the case, however, I'll be more than happy to re-tread old ground just to keep playing: the game is simply that much fun.

If you enjoy isometric RPGs, as-yet untrodden W40K lore, well-written, choice-heavy narratives or X-Com-like, turn-based combat, Rogue Trader has all that and more on tap and comes highly recommended. The learning curve for the mechanics might be a little steeper than necessary and it's not without its share of bugs, but the gameplay and story are more than rewarding enough to justify the investment.

Pig Duly Mentions

• -the first Rogue Trader DLC (the aforementioned Void Shadows) got pushed back from June to August 8 and offers 15 more hours of gameplay – this time aboard your own ship; apparently, a genestealer cult is causing trouble on the lower decks and you have to put down the brewing mutiny before it comes to a boil; on top of more narrative, combat, extra items and all, the DLC is adding a new, (romanceable) crew member in the form of a Death Cult assassin (just think of the pillow talk!); it's not what I expected, but – if Owlcat maintains the degree of polish from the base game – it should make for a welcome addition;