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Subscribe to the world's #1 PC gaming mag Try a single issue or save on a subscription Issues delivered straight to your door or device From£35.99Subscribe now Essential Hardware Dune: Awakening PC Gaming Show Recommended reading Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader just received another 'massive' update, this time directed at its expansion The next Warhammer 40K RPG from Rogue Trader's devs sounds killer: An Imperial inquisitor detective RPG where you can intimidate your enemies until they're 'scared as f**k' and surrender Owlcat is 'redoing everything from scratch' in Dark Heresy, its next Warhammer 40,000 CRPG, which is the best thing I've heard about it so far Every Warhammer 40,000 game, ranked Darktide's first DLC class gets a cybernetic dog who is a very good boy, and will arrive alongside a free update that structures missions in a campaign at long last Thank you for ruining my life, Larian: Even after 900 hours and a dozen playthroughs, Baldur's Gate 3's Patch 8 has me obsessed all over again The Elder Scrolls Oblivion Remastered review: The old magic still works Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader If you've been putting off Rogue Trader until patches and DLC make it better, now's finally the time to jump in Jody Macgregor 16 July 2025 There are way less bugs now, unless you count genestealers. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Owlcat) If playing Owlcat's CRPGs at launch is a mug's game then fill me up with coffee I guess, because I keep doing it in spite of their issues. It's not just that they're buggy, though that's definitely part of the problem. My first experience of Rogue Trader was marred by the fact I lost 18 hours of progress thanks to a bug at the end of chapter one. But beyond the glitchiness there's also the wonky balance, inevitably addressed across several months' worth of post-launch patches, and the DLC, some of which is carefully threaded into the game rather than bolted onto the end where you could play it just by loading an old save. To experience the two expansions released for Rogue Trader so far, making up its first season pass, you need to start a whole new playthrough. Or just wait until the game's been out for at least a year, maybe two, before you even bother with it. Like a sensible person. If that's you, congratulations! Play Rogue Trader now and you'll have a much better time than I did when it came out at the end of 2023. Related Articles Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader just received another 'massive' update, this time directed at its expansion The next Warhammer 40K RPG from Rogue Trader's devs sounds killer: An Imperial inquisitor detective RPG where you can intimidate your enemies until they're 'scared as f**k' and surrender Owlcat is 'redoing everything from scratch' in Dark Heresy, its next Warhammer 40,000 CRPG, which is the best thing I've heard about it so far Each of the two DLCs adds a new origin and archetype you can choose (one available at level one, the other an advanced archetype that unlocks at a higher level), a new companion for your voidship's crew, and a string of sidequests involving that companion. Both are romanceable, and both have dialogue that comments on other quests if you bring them along, making them feel about as central as the existing companions. Your Imperial Gothic GF (Image credit: Owlcat) In fact, the first of them feels more significant than several of the companions available at launch. The Void Shadows DLC adds Kibellah, an assassin from a death cult that lives in the bowels of your city-sized spaceship, and her questline lets you explore more of that ship and meet more of the officers who help run it. There's an entire train line you'd never get to see without the quest that involves a hunt through the ship to find a hidden temple. As you get to know your ship better you get to know Kibellah and her gonzo philosophy of blood and tarot, which is fully accepted by the state religion because if you kill in the name of the Emperor you're the kind of useful fanatic who can be pointed at enemies of the Imperium. She's an unstoppable murder machine who gets powered up by standing in blood, with a leap attack that can be chained multiple times and then the whole chain repeated to slice and dice a bunch of enemies every turn. Her archetype, the death cultist, isn't as broken as the officer archetype was at launch, but still makes her a terrifying beast. Yes, of course I romanced her. The biggest gaming news, reviews and hardware deals Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team. Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. Owlcat's love of unchallenging filler combat is toned down in Void Shadows, with more fights that have interesting objectives like timers to defeat or generators to shut down and bosses who shield themselves so you can't snipe them on turn one. A dogfight with a space station bristling with turrets made for one of the better space battles too. Post-launch patches that made combat abilities more impactful help. There's none of the "improves your chance to crit by 0.5% if it's raining and also a Tuesday" stuff it had at launch. Although you still level up often enough that it gets annoying, with climactic encounters handing out so much XP you level up once and have enough XP left over that doing something laughably trivial immediately after will level you up again. I once followed a post-boss leveling with another because of the extra XP I got from taking a bath. (Image credit: Owlcat) Arbitrator Rex The Imperialis Lex DLC adds an arbitrator, which is what 40K calls its Judge Dredd analogues, named Solomorne. He's got a pet cyber-dog sidekick to suggest there's a soft side beneath the gruffness, but beyond that there's not a lot of layers to him. Lex Imperialis feels thinner than Void Shadows in a lot of ways, even adding less music to the soundtrack, though what it does add is decent. The overseer archetype lets you choose a familiar, like Solomorne's cyber-mastiff, with the other options being an eagle, a swarm of servo-skulls, or a psychic raven. I gave my navigator Cassia those skulls, which she can use her officer abilities on to spread them over multiple characters within range, making officers feel almost as busted as they were at launch. (Almost.) (Image credit: Owlcat) Solomorne's storyline gets into gear with a raid on a pirate spaceship called the Heartless, which you then get to keep as a side-piece to your frigate. Both Solomorne and the Heartless were initially rewards you had to wait a while to unlock, but patches have made them available earlier if you needed another reminder not to play anything Owlcat makes close to release. Shooting your way through a pirate ship isn't a bad time, but it does seem a waste of a detective not having his quest begin with a mystery. Something with more crime-scene investigation and less shotgunning generic bad guys might have sold me on Solomorne, but he does come off as another character with reams of introductory text and not a lot beneath that, which is another recurring Owlcat issue. (Image credit: Owlcat) Still, if you've been holding out on Rogue Trader now is a good time to finally bite the bullet. When you do, grab the Void Shadows DLC for sure, but Lex Imperialis only if you really want a pet dog or skull-swarm of your very own. Jody Macgregor Social Links Navigation Weekend/AU Editor Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame. 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Warhammer 40K: Rogue Trader just received another 'massive' update, this time directed at its expansion The next Warhammer 40K RPG from Rogue Trader's devs sounds killer: An Imperial inquisitor detective RPG where you can intimidate your enemies until they're 'scared as f**k' and surrender Owlcat is 'redoing everything from scratch' in Dark Heresy, its next Warhammer 40,000 CRPG, which is the best thing I've heard about it so far Every Warhammer 40,000 game, ranked Darktide's first DLC class gets a cybernetic dog who is a very good boy, and will arrive alongside a free update that structures missions in a campaign at long last Thank you for ruining my life, Larian: Even after 900 hours and a dozen playthroughs, Baldur's Gate 3's Patch 8 has me obsessed all over again Latest in RPG An absolute Elden Ring madlad just soloed Nightreign's most-hated boss at level 1 with the power of Sekiro parries Seven months after putting Johnny Silverhand in your car, Cyberpunk 2077's latest update will let you kick him out Avowed update basically reinvents the fighter and ranger classes, while also adding new weapons and better Steam Deck optimization Cyberpunk 2077's delayed 2.3 update will be revealed tomorrow and could go live later this week 'We could have, at that point, put out a s*** game': Former Deep Silver comms boss says Dead Island 2 released 8 years late because an earlier version 'would have killed the franchise' if it wasn't binned 'I think Todd in particular gravitates not towards the weird stuff': Skyrim's co-lead and Morrowind 'torchbearer' says Elder Scrolls 6 will probably be pretty normcore Latest in Features It's been a year since Minecraft ditched annual summer updates, and I have to admit there's never been a better time to play Cop Bastard is a retro first-person shooter that's exactly as aggressively weird as you'd expect from a game called Cop Bastard My desktop has been overrun by virtual pop sensation Hatsune Miku goodies from Asus, but I'm here to tell you that it really is a case of style over substance Neverwinter Nights 2 is one of the best RPGs you've never played, and if you like Baldur's Gate 3 or Disco Elysium, you owe it to yourself to check out its new Enhanced Edition Neverwinter Nights 2: Enhanced Edition is an excellent, subtle remaster and my new Steam Deck game of the summer Think you know gaming? 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