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rogue trader

I congratulate all those who care; it hasn't even been 20 years since we got a second *cool* little game about Warhammer 40k after the Dawn War of 2004.
I'll say right away that this computer role-playing game is fucking long; I don't even want to say how many hours are on my save, even accounting for alt-tabs. Possibly the longest of all RPGs I've ever played; I truly wasn't speedrunning, but going for maximum content, and yet my playthrough clearly wasn't 100%, given its peculiarities, so it's possible it would have dragged on a bit more compared to what I have if I had squeezed out every last drop for the absolute maximum.

So, I think I'll list my impressions as they occurred.
I knew nothing about the concept of "rogue trading" in 40k, nor the developers, nor the game itself, which I downloaded and launched randomly with zero information; it turned out to be a little RPG about how we, a giga-aristocrat with incredible powers and wealth, conquer an entire sector in 40k through our will.
I generated myself a pretty sleazy-skuf character with the background of a commander, nobleman, and Hero of the Imperium, who puts everyone around him in their place with every phrase, even starting with a "fake it till you make it" mindset, and after 30 minutes of gameplay, I felt that something elusive was preventing me from dropping this trash—as usually happens when launching dubious modern non-Japanese projects, especially those based on 40k, which these days are parasitized by everyone who bought the rights from GW for a small fee.
I really planned to do exactly that and move on to another game penned by Japanese masters, but somethiiing still wouldn't let me rest here. Pretty soon I realized it was the dialogues in magnificently written Russian—they tried just a tiny bit to load me down with dull lore, but I simply ignored it, delivering maximum giga-chad elephantine phrases, and this stage was mined in a matter of tens of minutes, and this event even rewarded me with absolutely unexpected recognition within the game setting for this choice. And everyone I had these great-and-mighty dialogues with communicated—imagine that—not in the modern-habitual-soy-NPC way, in typical RPG game design style with some questions-answers, tangible alignment-routes of dialogue and so on, but in a way that made me think—hmmm... well, okay, for now the dialogues and characters are written slightly more interestingly, and most importantly organically-lifelike, than usual.

Next, I discovered that I was actually made an arbiter of fates in the 40k setting, at whose snap of fingers thousands, tens, and millions of thousands of respected and pious citizens of the Imperium do everything I say, and I repay them by using all my unquestionable authority and self-confidence to resolve any crisis exactly as a rogue trader of 40k should—an anointed one of the God-Emperor, and without exaggeration, the best person in the entire galaxy.
Alright, alright—I thought—this is a cheap way to buy my favor; you've got the wrong guy, I'm not some piece of shit eater, and if I smell something unpleasant, I'll drop it that same hour. But what do you think? The plot and game design didn't even think about gradually lowering my rank as a player toward "shit-eating," but on the contrary—they piled on more and more material that helped me realize—this time you've actually sat down not for some random piece of shit indie RPG, but exactly for what you signed up for (without even realizing it)—an anointed one of Humanity in the forty-first millennium.

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The great stuff.
Continuing the previous tale—I really liked the subservience of 90% of the NPCs encountered in the game. Yes, I mercilessly and sometimes cruelly punished heretics, boors, and unreliable elements with maximum bias; however, being in my position, I couldn't help but treat the common servants of the Imperium, who clearly realize the difference between their position and mine and spare no effort for the prosperity of the Imperium, with the maximum possible respect and solidarity. If you are a cog in the state machine, even fully realizing that the Imperium will lose nothing with your loss, but you continue to perform your role for the benefit of my dynasty and the Imperium as a whole, you will be highly valued by me and rewarded if the current situation allows. But if you are a little bitch who puts your own emotions and needs above what is destined for you, then you are not needed in this paradigm.

I also liked the combat. It's not particularly complex, characters don't have that many stats, progression doesn't differ super-cardinally from class to class, but the devs (I don't know if it's this game or the rogue trader sub-setting itself) made it so that even with a relatively meager set of mechanics, classes and their combat are cardinally different from each other, sometimes squeezing out the maximum available possibilities of game-mechanics to introduce variety—but not for the sake of variety as such, but variety that makes sense within the given mechanics. It might be hard to explain in words, but it will be easily felt when trying to play.

I liked the warp jumps through this segment of 40,000-space, though there is a negative point associated with this.
In general, "warp" in all its manifestations—both explicitly as space travel between systems or demon spawns, and implicitly, including quests, exploration of chaos-afflicted locations, atmosphere, and other things—is shown quite excellently, as some unconquerable and unknowable element even to the player, which puts them before unpredictable variables that can manifest at any moment of your Gameplay, regardless of how correctly you complete quests/level up/gear up/manage the navigator/buff yourself before battle. For example, warp-things can randomly spawn in combat when one of your psykers casts any spell. Or in any newly encountered location, you might discover the influence of the "Ruinous Powers" and instantly realize that you now have to mentally prepare for any kind of shit, because it will definitely happen. And so on and so forth.
But in the case of this little game, you have to move through the warp quite a lot, and when for the 50th time you hit a fight spawn with demons and cultists on a typical deck, it's... not great. Well, fortunately, on the player's side, this can be mitigated by assigning a squad of imaginary NPCs to the fight at the cost of losing one type of cargo.

To that, I'll add the following minus-plus: the reputation situation is not obvious. Here you can sell unused goods and gear from some of the Factions (by moving them into "cargo"), and I didn't really sell them throughout the game, waiting for some separate moment where it might be useful. Don't do as I did—sell any "cargo"-trash immediately to your favorite faction as soon as they appear, and if they don't appear, add loot from mobs there. You lose nothing from this, only gain. You'll thank me in the end.

There is also a specific problem with pacing. At one point %%we are deprived of some of our regalia, and have to endure without them (approximately 95%, because for the remaining 5% we remain ourselves)%%, but... then we overcome it.
Admittedly, this isn't the longest moment, but just considering the paradigm in which I PERSONALLY played, it deprived me for some time of one of the game's central pillars.

There are many other things I noted during the game, but perhaps now I'll only write down one major one.
The English voice acting is super-excellent; all characters seem to be felt by their voice actors down to the smallest fiber. For example, a Battle Sister speaks with fanatical excitement and breathlessness, as if the Emperor himself appeared in her bedroom at the most critical moment of her life; an Inquisitor—dryly, coldly, and clearly, without frills; your Right Hand advisor—corresponding to his background + with complete reverence and businesslike manner, so that it's impossible not to respect this impeccable best-boy-grandpa; the alt-girl from the DLC—with a sense of inexhaustible faith in the Emperor, but at the same time existential longing and acceptance of the heaviest fate befitting both her and humanity as a whole. And so on and so forth. Other than companions, I can't even recall anyone else being voiced, but those who were—it was magnificence within the setting and their character. I couldn't have imagined that something like this would be possible in a "Western" game in 2023-24, but look at that.

Well, I'll add that technically I hit a noticeable number of bugs and the camera is shit. But whatever.

On the other hand, thematically—the theme of some of my favorite xenos is super-developed, about whom there isn't much content in the game industry or the setting in general, so in the end it's a good thing.

And overall, in terms of a modern computer RPG—the game is simply top. If you are not an Imperium hater and don't mind CRPGs, you'll love it.
To be honest, compared to Divinity: Original Sin 2, which I praised last time as a "good Western CRPG," in terms of computer-RPG progression-exploration-overpowering—the game is clearly worse, not even the same opera. That is, you won't have situations where you, as a disembodied being limited by your game avatar, walk through the world, level up the most obscure techniques, and eventually farm chests in unreachable places or defeat bosses with one pinky using a super-broken build.

But unlike team Larian, here you have a good, non-joke setting, and you'll really enjoy it in terms of plot, setting, roleplaying, and everything related to that; you'll dive into it headfirst even with total ignorance (and it won't even be hard for you if you don't know 40k at all).

Anyway, I'll end on this—if you have a couple hundred free hours in your stash, then perhaps this will be the best or one of the best CRPGs of your life.
I'm not joking—specifically in yours, whoever is reading this now.