I waited until I beat the game before I made a review, though it was tempting at times to just jump in and say how good the game is. I have a summary at the top, followed by a section that goes in detail. The detailed section was too long, so I put the whole review in a discussion post. Here's the link: https://gtm.you1.cn/app/2186680/discussions/0/4302697906483369678/

In short, the game is easily a 9 to a 9.5 out of 10 for me. I had played Owlcat's previous two games and love them all, so I got really excited when I heard about this one back when it was announced. I was ecstatic when I got it for Christmas (so technically not for free in terms of some sort of sale, but functionally free and still 100% worth full price). The story is good, though I had a few bugs here and there (and Owlcat has released many fixes during the time I've been playing) and though some Aeldari bits seemed a tad too sensationalist. The build crafting is satisfying (allowing me to kill the final boss in one round on max difficulty; I'm still enjoying the adrenaline rush from that right now). The combat is tactical and really makes positioning and knowing when to use each of your characters' skills important, but it also had me cackling (or maniacally giggling, your choice) when I got builds and tactics to line up right. So, 9 for the story, 9.5 for the build crafting, and 10 for the combat, which brings me to a 9.5 average. Below, I have included a bigger breakdown of the positives and negatives of each. There may be very mild spoilers in the story section.

Story:
First with the negatives: This game is so Warhammer 40k that the dialogue options can be a bit limiting. I really love how 40k the game looks and sounds and feels, and how that affects dialogue 90-95% of the time, but I did get mildly annoyed a couple times at a character being an idiot or dialogue options not including how I would respond but at best making me sound like a rich idiot whose palm is glued to his handheld mirror or at worst making me sound like a genocidal maniac who flushes his toilet with the blood of orphans. In between, you happen to have the genocidal maniac who makes a mountain of corpses because orbital bombardments sound cooler than listening to people's problems. Again, this game is very Warhammer 40000, and I normally really like that. Story also does affect game mechanics to some degree, with the alignment system (non-traditional here with two variants of self-righteous scumbags and one dude who gets ostracised for being nice--which I do find somewhat funny) giving you benefits as you progress along each path. However, reaching the max rank with an alignment before the final boss is difficult; for instance, I achieved max rank Iconoclast (the closest to not being a constant dirt-wad) literally in my last decision in the game, so I never had a chance to benefit from its amazing perk--friendly fire immunity, basically. RIP teamkills.

Despite all this, I found myself investing again and again into the characters, and by the end I was rooting for characters I initially did not care for much. For example, I did not really like Heinrix but suddenly found myself appreciating him due to his character arcs and development as a person, and I was mentally cheering for him in the dialogue before the second last fight in the game. The character writing really made me love this game's story, and it coupled well with the feel of it--trust me and listen to the ost, even just the Reaving Tempest theme song. I did read someone's complaints that characters do not react as much to your actions as in previous games by the devs, specifically Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, and while I can see why, I think the story is still good on its own, without comparison to WotR, which had a TON of player options (though Rogue Trader has a lot of options by any normal RPG's standards) and has had much fine-tuning through updates and such. The general plot is also good, but the final act could have used a bit more prefacing or hinting. Even so, if you don't just rush through dialogue, you can encounter quite a good tying together of plot lines, especially in the end dialogues (before the second last fight and before and after the last fight) and in the epilogue, which tells you what happened to all the worlds and major characters. I got so lost in the story that I did what I do with books and take a freaking AGE getting through the last 10-30min, dragging it out so it wouldn't end. I haven't done that with a game since I played Transistor and Pyre in 2021, and Transistor has long been my favourite story game. I recorded the final companion dialogue, the final mission, the dialogues with bosses, the final decisions I made, and the epilogue, all the while going through it painfully slowly to torture myself with the fact that the story was coming to a close--like I do with books I really enjoy. The story gets a 9/10 for me, though I WISH I could give it a 10.

The build crafting is complex. You choose an origin (your background), a type of origin world (like agri-worlds or forge worlds... etc.), and then one of four primary classes. Maxing out your primary class gives you access to one of three secondary classes--though there are more than three secondary classes; each primary class locks you into a choice between three of them only. Then you get the exemplar class, the only tertiary class. You can take passives and abilities from your previous two classes as well as absolutely game-destroying perks specific to exemplar. I will not name names as I do not want my boy nerfed more than he has been (RIP flat damage from Versatility, you will be missed, though you were definitely too insane to live). The origin stuff (world of birth and starting vocation) give you access to passives you can get when levelling, which can make a MASSIVE difference, especially considering being a psyker is bound to origin (original vocation, specifically) rather than class and benefits from a lot of perks other systems would just have benefit non-magical abilities and damage instead (like Run and Gun letting you cast more spells instead of only letting you shoot more).

Also, levelling up is FAR quicker than in any other CRPG I have played as the level cap is 55 instead of 20, and every level-up is useful (no only getting a little bit of HP for levelling up), though useful to varying degrees. The build system is fairly complex--though what else would you expect form developers who made two games on the 1st edition Pathfinder system?--and allows for you to progressively learn what does and doesn't work while doling out some absolutely broken, boss-shredding annihilation. You can build so well that you can kill the final boss in one round on the max difficulty with only one character doing damage and with killing all secondary enemies before the boss. It is so satisfying; it has made me cackle and giggle like I was once again the little boy who laughed loudly on seeing the size of a heavy weapon in the original Star Wars Battlefront 2 (true story). I have heard of people struggling with builds, but you can also just ask people on the discussions page; I have gotten some good pointers (such as that burst fire attacks do not count as area attacks for some reason), and I am sure that some youtubers have probably made builds. I don't know that for sure as I prefer to make my own builds, usually. As for how intuitive the buildcrafting is, this is the first Owlcat game where I made the builds for all my characters myself; the previous two games (Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous and Kingmaker), I only made about half of the builds myself (or at least took inspiration from others for the second half). *This paragraph got cut off.*

See the rest in the discussion post, if you want.