Owlcat is an insanely busy RPG dev: It’s currently developing Mass Effect killer The Expanse: Osiris Reborn, CRPG Warhammer 40K: Dark Heresy, and new add-ons to 2023’s Rogue Trader as it celebrates 10 years of build sicko multiclassing. The latest Rogue Trader add-on, The Infinite Museion, was accompanied by a massive patch to the massive RPG.
The major changes, to my eye, were a balance pass to Rogue Trader’s biggest glassjaw wimps: Operatives, Assassins, and Uralon the Cruel. The two classes (or “archetypes”) have widely been regarded as the game’s weakest. While far from unplayable, Operatives were hands-down outclassed by the RPG’s other ranged damage archetype, the Soldier, while Assassins similarly couldn’t measure up to the beefier Executioner.
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Now, both classes’ keystone abilities work during bonus turns, like the ones granted by the Officer class. Rogue Trader’s ruleset, especially at higher difficulty, is all about maximizing or abusing bonus turns, so the classes being able to do more with them could prove transformative. Additionally, Owlcat just buffed the Operative’s abilities overall.
Uralon the Cruel, meanwhile, is a bad guy Chaos Marine antagonist who can join your squad on suitably bad guy Chaos dude playthroughs. So far, so good, but mechanically, he was quite booboo compared to other story characters and even generic mercenaries. Owlcat has significantly buffed Uralon through his stats, scaling, and loot pool.
There are a great deal more changes and bug fixes—shout out to my favorite individual note, “Interacting with objects at the cultist hideout at Rykad Minoris no longer endlessly causes trauma”—but no nerfs, as far as I can tell. I appreciate that Owlcat isn’t punishing players who rock some of Rogue Trader’s more ludicrous builds, like Bladedancer-Executioners.
We were tough on Rogue Trader in our initial review, but Owlcat’s games have tended to age like fine wine thanks to post-launch support. I’m currently elbows-deep in playthroughs of Pathfinders Kingmaker and Wrath of the Righteous both, and they’re probably some of my favorite CRPGs, period. Once I’m done with them in about 100 hours of collective roleplaying from now? It’s time I got down to brass tacks with a new guy in Rogue Trader, a monster RPG I’ve dabbled with, but yet to finish.
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