“Feeling confused” and “having enjoyable” normally exist at reverse ends of the expertise spectrum for me, however Owlcat’s Warhammer 40K: Rogue Dealer is bringing the 2 nearer collectively than I might’ve thought doable. I’ve by no means warred a hammer earlier than, and when Rogue Dealer was launched in 2023, Baldur’s Gate 3 absolutely occupied my time and a spotlight. However with Owlcat’s massive July 7 Change 2 replace for the sport, I figured now was nearly as good a time as any to offer Rogue Dealer a go. I am glad I did. It is a implausible spectacle of darkish sci-fi fantasy and deep technique, and regardless of a number of hiccups, it runs surprisingly properly on Nintendo’s hybrid handheld.
Or it does now, anyway. The Change 2 model launched in a dreadful state in December 2025, stuffed with wildly variable body charges, stutters, crashes, and game-breaking (even ending-blocking) bugs, however Owlcat’s patch fixes a lot of the main points and even bumps the decision up a bit. The body price is capped at 30fps, and dips are a lot much less frequent now. After they do occur, it tends to be within the sometimes uneven transition from gameplay to cutscene fairly than throughout customary gameplay in, say, a crowded location (and that is normally in handheld mode, not when enjoying docked). Battles unfold easily, even when lightning and psychic blasts are competing for consideration on the display, and to this point, I have not encountered any crashes or quest-blocking bugs. And regardless of being designed for mouse and keyboard, the controls really feel clean and intuitive on Change 2.
Load instances are a bit longer than I might like, although. It takes 30 seconds or so to go from the primary menu to the sport itself and about 15-20 seconds when altering areas in handheld mode, although a lot much less in docked. Saving additionally takes a number of seconds, which is annoying when an autosave all of a sudden forces you to cease what you had been doing till it is carried out. Hopefully, Owlcat can enhance these in future updates. However annoying because the load instances are, I am simply glad I can play a large sport like this with out being chained to my pc. As an apology, Owlcat made Rogue Dealer’s expansions free on Change 2, too, which is a pleasant and welcome bonus.
Although I admit, I am not fairly completed with the completely gargantuan base sport but. Owlcat tosses you into the deep finish of the Warhammer pool, nevertheless it’s a mild touchdown that allows you to float for a bit. Rogue Dealer begins with you in attendance to a rogue dealer, which is type of Warhammer’s model of what England’s Elizabeth I did together with her naval captains within the Age of Exploration. “Go forth and chart new lands for us! But in addition be happy to do unhealthy issues and wreck our rivals and act like a pirate.” The lands in query are “uncivilized” photo voltaic methods on the far fringe of the galaxy, that are completely civilized on their very own, thanks. They simply do not essentially comply with the God-Emperor, humanity’s political and non secular chief. Faith can be a bit funky in Warhammer, as its boundaries with expertise blur loads. The God-Emperor’s throne, for instance, is an emblem of religion and a technological masterwork regardless of the apparent contradictions there.
You study all this in roughly an hour, and whereas it is loads to absorb, Owlcat doles it out in easy-to-digest chunks wrapped in a reasonably gripping story of conspiracy. Your presence on the vessel of rogue dealer Theodora von Valencius is a part of a bizarre household reunion. She’s searching for blood-heirs to share her empire with and pulled a bunch of distant cousins in to see who is likely to be worthy. Then individuals begin dying, and dropping their minds, and exploding, and getting possessed by area demons, and dying some extra. You are the captain now by advantage of not being useless, and you have a psychic, a knight, and a murderous nun with a shotgun that can assist you run issues. I do not assume I’ve ever performed a sport with a prologue as wild as Rogue Dealer’s.
There is a helpful glossary so you possibly can lookup stuff like “the warp” that is making individuals lose it (an interdimensional area dominated by chaos, however very helpful for touring quick), “God-Emperor,” and the sport’s weird HP terminology. (It isn’t well being, it is wounds!) Throughout and after the prologue, Owlcat does an admirable job spacing out lore dumps and introducing extra correct nouns so Warhammer newcomers like me by no means really feel like they’re falling into an unknowable abyss, even when they’re standing on the sting of it.
Which is nice, since Rogue Dealer’s story will get knotty, quick. The gist of it’s you are coping with the fallout of Theodora’s extremely questionable actions, and also you’re getting concerned in lots of different individuals’s messes within the course of, shaping the galaxy’s uncharted corners along with your particular model of ideological lunacy. Rogue Dealer’s model of morality alignment is much less about good and evil and extra to do with which ideology your character adheres to. There’s room for a number of, however when you attain a sure degree of entrenchment in a single philosophy, it turns into your dominant trait and has higher affect over your dialog choices and the way doubtless you’re to conflict with everybody else.
They positive are some high-stakes clashes, too. Rogue Dealer has all of Warhammer’s extremes, so saying you comply with the God-Emperor with out query is type of the identical as saying “sure, I help colonization and mass homicide.” And never following them means you place your self in lots of harmful conditions by taking the “iconoclast” route and supporting all of the individuals the emperor’s followers oppress. Or you possibly can toss all of it to the wind and embrace chaos. Each path has its advantages — and unpredictable penalties. Despite the fact that you do finally specialise in one kind of morality, the choice to combine and match as you go helps you to take a extra versatile, bespoke method to issues fairly than routinely choosing the great, unhealthy, or impartial choice and just about figuring out how that is going to pan out.
It is spectacular simply how successfully Owlcat manages to seize the unparalleled distress of residing in a Warhammer world, making these large-scale political conflicts really feel so private and intimate. Grim as it’s, although, it is by no means overwhelmingly horrible thanks partially to how well-written your companions are.
And it helps that you simply spend lots of time in Rogue Dealer’s wonderful turn-based fight, too. The bones of it are much like Larian’s Divinity: Unique Sin video games, although barely extra forgiving. Shifting and utilizing expertise use factors, however since Rogue Dealer retains the 2 separate, you have got extra room to maneuver earlier than committing your self to an motion. It is simply as dense because the story, however, mercifully, you possibly can open a fight glossary mid-battle to verify what you are doing will not backfire horribly.
It will get deep quick. Argenta, the nun-with-a-gun, begins with a talent that lets her take two actions, so you possibly can have her zoom across the battlefield and fireplace her shotgun in an enormous cone sample that engulfs teams of enemies after which do it once more. There is a penalty for it, however you possibly can have her study a talent that reduces that penalty too. I admit I had no thought what I used to be doing with my participant character throughout the creation sequence, however even within the prologue, she ended up debuffing enemies and one-shotting traces of them with a sniper rifle’s piercing bullet. That turned out properly. That is not even stepping into the distinctions between melee assaults and ranged assaults and the completely different stats that decide how and in the event that they land. The talent ceiling for constructing combos is extremely excessive, and Rogue Dealer is among the solely RPGs I’ve ever needed to replay only for an opportunity to do issues otherwise with fight.
Even with its lengthy load instances and 30fps cap, Rogue Dealer is an ideal match for the Change 2. It is the type of sport that rewards you for taking your time with it, chipping away at it in bits and items and exploring each darkish nook and potential thriller. If, like me, you let it get misplaced within the shadow of Baldur’s Gate 3, now’s the proper time to test it out.
Associated
The Nintendo Change 2 has lastly justified its existence
Splatoon Raiders is the most recent unique to indicate off what Nintendo’s handheld can do
