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.