"We see the protagonist team organising an attack. Both the protagonist and Cassia are masters of strategy, so they always move first. The protagonist puts down the front line area and the rear area, squats down, studies the boss, and breaks the defense. Okay, then she opened the Liberal Level 3 skill, and directly let Jyoe perform a heroic feat! Jyoi's heroic feat can give a certain teammate a full turn! Who is she going to give it to? Give it to Cassia!Hey, sure enough, at the critical moment, she still has to let Ms. Guide, oh no, Ms. Navigator single! Cassia curses the boss, and then dies gaze! A few glancing at her! We see that the boss's blood bar goes down a lot! Cassia ends her round and retreats to Jey. Jieyi gets a bonus round after opening the ultimate!Get a tactical advantage, snipe a shot!End the round,Retreat to the protagonist.。 The protagonist doesn't have many choices at this time, and he panics, and he also gets a shot! And then there's Cassia, and we'll see what she's going to do, and whether she's going to play or redistribute the shots. Oh, she saw that there were still some creeps around the boss, okay, Cassia used the skill to gather monsters!Spray!Morale is full!Glaring at the boss again!Cassia, officer skill, gave Illyette a short turn!Illyette has a flaw, assassin skill plus a single shot two dozen!Back to Cassia, Cassia's ultimate gives Ajieta a full turn!As long as Ajieta attacks, everything will be ...... Ajeta picks her position and opens to increase her damage, and the boss is large, which is just right for her blaster shots. Azeta fires!Game over!Abelard...... I haven't moved the nest yet!"
After it took 106 hours to finally get through Warhammer 40000: Rogue Trader (hereinafter referred to as Warhammer 40000: Rogue Trader), my main impression of it was the above battle report with the charm of the NBA game text broadcast back then, and the image of a kind old man appeared in front of me, and his famous quote with a strong Beijing accent: "It was a reasonable fight!"
I was suddenly speechless, and I looked at you carefully
Ronin Trader is really a game that impresses with the combat part, as the combat does take up a lot of space. On top of that, Ronin Trader is by far the most approachable game Owlcat Games has ever had, and it's much easier to pick up than the two fellow brothers in terms of design, content, and difficulty. Even players who are completely new to the Warhammer 40K setting and European and American CRPGs will be able to easily play and have fun, and with a little research, they will be able to play unhindered on the Standard difficulty - a difference from the original version of The King, which was difficult for the average player on the standard difficulty.
However, Ronin the Merchant has become approachable, not without a price. These changes include not only making the parts that aren't user-friendly enough, but also simplifying the content and systems to make the game a little more shallow. Its predecessor "Wrath of the Righteous" was released in September 2021, and then the Maotou Club also spent a lot of manpower to fix bugs and optimize the game, and made 6 DLCs corresponding to the two season passes. Under such a premise, it only took them 2 years and 3 months to come up with "Ronin Merchant". This makes one wonder whether this approachable change is a follow-up or a good thing.
As of "The Merchant Ronin", the Cat Club has accumulated 3 works in just 5 years, so we can already summarize their styles and shortcomings. "Merchant Ronin" may mean that the Cat Club has reached a crossroads: they have enough accumulation, if they can maintain their style, make up for their shortcomings, and match them with excellent themes, they may be able to become the "next king" of CRPG in Europe and the United States.
I just want to see it again, it warms my eyes
Approachable performance
The approachable tone of "The Wanderer" can be seen in the prologue.
First of all, the combat in "Ronin Merchant" is a turn-based battle based on the grid, which is also the first time that the Maotou Club has made the turn-based battle mode the default combat mode. The grid turn-based system means that players have a lot of time to think about how to read the instructions for each skill and then figure out which skills to use in what order. In addition, the information of the enemies on the battlefield is also all open cards, and you can see the various attributes of the enemy by placing the mouse on the enemy.
Don't underestimate this, many bosses in the game have their own unique mechanisms, such as some bosses are immune to all damage, but they will continue to summon minions, and they can only cause damage to the body by destroying minions; some will draw armor from the surrounding plasma batteries, and if you don't knock out the plasma batteries first, the boss's armor will always be maintained at a very high level; some bosses will have two lives; some bosses can be reduced by 95% with a cover on them A powerful shield for damage, but only not in the back, so find a way to go around the back to fight...... These special mechanics can be understood by clicking on the tag cards on the bosses and carefully reading their active and passive skills, which is not at the same level as the DM's hidden card practice of deliberately concealing the boss's information when running the group.
In terms of character development, "Ronin the Merchant" is also not complicated. There are only 4 starting classes in the game, and there are only 6 advanced classes starting at level 16. Level 36 began to enter the exemplary profession, and this time it was more convenient, simply only 1. Compared with the "Pioneers" two games, the number of classes in "Wanderer Roguer" is obviously less, there are no part-time jobs, there are no complex advanced subclasses, and the combat style of the characters is essentially only melee and ranged, and there is no far difference between the classes in the first two games based on the board game system. In addition, the donut icon of the upgrade system makes it clearer to show the talents or attributes that can be selected for each level, and is more intuitive than the horizontal diagram of the previous game.
On the long road, you and I have not met again
If you compare it with other similar games, you can also see that "Ronin Trader" has many differences and trade-offs in terms of detail design. In Ronin Trader, players don't need to prepare bullets for their guns, and there are no durability limits or custom modification options for weapons. Preparing bullets, whether it's Fallout: New Vegas or Wasteland 3, is an important part of combat - in Fallout: New Vegas, bullets involve weight, and players need to consider the balance between carrying bullets and other equipment, while Wasteland 3 has a wide variety of bullets, and each of them can be obtained in small quantities, which even requires players to think about the different weapons that different members of the squad need to use when building a team, so that each type of ammunition can be used to the fullest.
Design considerations also include whether there should be surveillance shooting in an XCOM-style combat game, whether there should be a limit on the number of bullets you can carry, whether switching between the first and second weapons in battle should consume Action Points, whether players should be allowed to divert Movement Points into Action Points (or vice versa, move all rounds), whether all Action Points should be consumed when using items, and so on.
There is no set answer to these questions, and it all depends on what kind of combat experience the designer wants to create. After the first few battles in Rogue Traders, I was a little dismissive that the game didn't even have a surveillance shooter. But when I had 3 officers on the team and all the extra rounds to be had, I felt like I didn't really need surveillance shooting in this game. In terms of design ideas, the overall detail trade-offs of "Ronin Merchants" are reasonable and self-consistent, which is very good.
In addition, regarding picking up garbage and carrying weights, from the one-click return to camp in Baldur's Gate 3 to the one-click packing box in "Ronin Merchant", it seems that players who do not set weights and do not embarrass players in collecting have finally become the mainstream thinking in the CRPG world. I agree with both hands and feet - the focus of CRPG should be content, exploration and character development, since it is not a survival horror game or a survival building game, what is the point of card loading? Players are willing to spend time exploring, collecting, and picking up garbage, the maker should be content, at most should design a system for players to use this garbage. If you want to control the player's progress from the perspective of resources and collection, you can design it in terms of efficiency and how to obtain powerful proprietary weapons, and you don't need to make it difficult for the player in terms of weight.
Of course, the details of "Ronin Merchant" are not perfect. The team management in the large map exploration mode is still relatively rough, and when controlling the whole team to turn on the spot and turn back, the team members will often make a huge turn, and it is very likely that they will burst the trap in the process. So, there's room for improvement.
Today's gaze will be a thousand times a day
A perfect blend of "hammer" and "cat's head"
Like the previous two works of the Cat Club, "Ronin the Merchant" is also a game that is backed by the rules of the existing board game. After the release of "Wrath of the Righteous", there were rumors that the next work of the Cat Club would be the background of the Starfinder board game, but it was finally announced that "Warhammer 40K".
I'm not a veteran hammer guy, so I don't have very clear expectations for the game. But in my opinion, the "hammer flavor" of "Ronin Merchant" is still quite sufficient. Especially for Meng Xin, it well upholds and expresses the most important charm of "Warhammer 40K", that is, the brutal atmosphere of "not treating people as people", and the unique beauty of "replacing machines with people".
For players who haven't had much experience with Warhammer 40K before, the brutal atmosphere in the setting can be a lot of emotional understanding as long as you open the game and play it for a while. The first battle of the prologue has various scenes of chopping the enemy into several pieces and bleeding all over the ground. In the various interstellar events that followed, there were also dead people on your ship.
Regardless of the events that are portrayed in specific scenes, such as being invaded by subspace demons and requiring you to personally lead the team to fight the chaos, there are more events where the crew members die for various reasons and are simply not worth mentioning. As the story unfolds, the various forces you see in the game are all murderous - there are no good seeds in the Colonus Expansion District, just as Florida does not raise idlers.
In addition, "Ronin Merchant" also expresses the unique beauty of "Warhammer 40K" that "replaces machines with people". Not long after the game starts, when introducing the crew, a lot of space is spent introducing the master of the sound array. We live in a world where the work done by the telephone or the Internet exchange is done by such a living person with a lot of equipment implanted in the ship.
In real life, it's hard to feel the load or failure of a machine, but when something happens to a person, the feeling is completely different. In the plot, you will also encounter the scene where the master of the sound array faints because of the too many signals he receives, coupled with interference, which brings people the touch and watching their computer processor overheat and reduce the frequency, resulting in the game changing cards is completely different.
In addition, there are minions who have been transformed into biometric validators, space marines who have undergone various genetic modifications, psykers who can receive and wield subspace powers, not to mention Cassia the navigator and Pascal the engine prophet who will take on the duties of your Void ship. These people have either been modified or are mutants themselves, and the responsibilities they take on are carried out by machines in the world we live in. This misplaced aesthetic is, in my opinion, one of the great charms of the Warhammer 40K.
I have forgotten how many winds and waves you have spent in the past
The "hammer flavor" full of grand narrative just leads to the next topic, that is, the sense of drama in the game of the Cat Club.
From "The King Bearer" to "The Wrath of the Righteous" to "The Ronin of the Merchant", the three works of the Cat Club so far have a grand beginning, and the protagonist is quickly put on a resounding name and a lofty goal, and then he will start to form a team and lead the team to embark on a magnificent adventure. This makes the games of the Cat Club closer to the soft "Dragon Age" series and "Mass Effect" series in temperament, and very different from those role-playing games that deliberately dissolve the grand narrative, especially the "Fallout" series and the "Deus Ex" series.
This feature is a natural fit for the Warhammer 40K. Warhammer 40K is inherently very grand in the setting of various board games, and with the consistent pursuit of the Cat Club, the best effect is the prologue, Chapters 1 and 2 of "The Ronin" that is very large and full of pride. In these 3 chapters, you must first quell the rebellion on the Void Ship and survive the suspicious and dangerous moment of power transfer in the Lord and the Young Kingdom. After that, you have to find people for your Void Ship, and then you have to get official recognition, and lead the team to start doing things, and the cultural and martial arts go hand in hand, and save the territory where you have all kinds of problems one by one.
So far, the Maotou Cat Club's long-standing pursuit of a sense of drama has borne more fruitful fruits than the two works of "Pioneer" after combining it with the setting of "Warhammer 40K".
I only know that most of the laughter in the past is also because of you
Another important aspect is the company's dedication to business modules. The organic combination of the drama, the protagonist who is in a high position and holds the power and the business module constitutes a "cat's taste".
The business module is probably the most unique symbol of Maotou among many European and American CRPG developers. From "The King" to "Ronin the Merchant", it has always insisted on building a very existential business module into the CRPG game. This dedication may have something to do with its core members, many of whom came from Nival Entertainment, and the highlight of the company's career was taking over the development of Heroes of Might and Magic V and releasing the finished product in 2006.
Naturally, the place of the "Heroes of Might" series in strategy games goes without saying. Alexander Mishulin, the creative director of Cat Club, once recalled in an interview the cheering scene of the company when he received the task of making "Heroes of Might and Magic V" - from his description, it is similar to Larian's boss Sven Wink announcing at the company meeting that Larian will be producing Baldur's Gate 3.
Of course, the love for the "Heroes of Might" series is not enough to explain why the Cat Club always has a management module built into the CRPG game. Fortunately, Alexander Mishulin himself has mentioned the idea of the producer in an interview. In their vision, the strategy elements and management modules help to add depth to the story, add more events to the story, and have the player character's teammates play specific roles in these events, showing their side as leaders on the one hand, and showing their teammates' reactions when they encounter specific events on the other, and better portraying teammates.
On the long road, it doesn't matter where you and I are in the future
The biggest breakthrough of "Merchant Ronin" is that the Maotou Cat Club finally came up with a fun enough business module after the two works of "Pioneer". "Hammers" should be aware of a series called "Gothic Fleet: Armada", which was released in 2016 and 2019, respectively. Both games are pure "Warhammer 40K" real-time tactical games with a background where you take control of your fleet and fight space naval battles against enemies of all kinds. Of course, these two games also have content such as managing fleets, buying bigger ships, and customizing modified ships.
"Ronin Merchant" has a built-in youth version of "Gothic Fleet: Armada". You'll have to run your Rogue Trader's flagship, get better equipment to improve your flagship's performance, and then fight turn-based space naval battles against enemies. This section can't compare to the content and depth of Gothic Armada, but as a mini-game, it's fun enough and doesn't take up a lot of the main story to be annoying at all.
In Kingholder and Wrath of the Righteous, I was very reluctant to open up the kingdom management system and the Holy Army system, but in Ronin Trader, I was looking forward to finding new equipment to upgrade my flagship and maneuvering it to fight against enemy ships as I explored the various galaxies. Some of the new equipment in the flagship is closely related to colony management, another part of the Rogue Trader's management module, which in turn requires you to explore various galaxies, count the resources you have, and invest in new construction projects to reap the rewards. Running a colony is quite generous in return, and it's not dominant, so it feels good to combine it with exploration, naval battles, and character growth.
This is also what I am more satisfied with "Ronin Merchant": it not only accurately grasps the "hammer flavor", but also inherits and carries forward the tradition of the Cat Club, and has achieved a perfect unity in setting, tradition and gameplay.
It's very pleasant.
One day the wind is flying, and one day I won't forget you
The shortcomings of "Merchant Ronin" and the shortcomings of the Cat Club
Although there are many highlights, "The Ronin Merchant" also has many shortcomings. Some of these shortcomings are only related to "The Wanderer" itself, while others expose the shortcomings of the Cat Club on a more macro level. As mentioned earlier, by the time of "Ronin Merchants", the Maotou Club has released 3 works, so it is already possible to summarize its style, tendencies and shortcomings.
Let's start with "The Ronin Wanderer" itself. One of the drawbacks is that while it captures the core of the atmosphere and style of the Warhammer 40K series, it really doesn't cover a bit of content. This "lessness" is reflected in various aspects - such as the forces that appear, the weapons and equipment, and the types of ships that appear in naval battles, and so on.
When I was playing Ronin and thinking about how to Amway, I asked some non-Hammer friends to find out what their impressions of Warhammer 40K were. As a result, with the exception of one or two screwed buddies who suddenly started rereading "'StarCraft' plagiarized 'Warhammer 40K'" as if corrupted by Chaos, most of the answers mentioned the 2006 strategy game Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War and the 2011 shooter Warhammer 40K: Space Marine. When they learned that there was no green skin in "The Ronin Merchant", they all let out a weak and helpless sigh. This sigh seems to me to be a sign, marking an instant increase in the difficulty of persuasion from "-30" to "-120".
In fact, not only does "The Wanderer Roin" not only have no greenskins, but also no swarm and Titan-kun. At the end of the game, you can fight the Space Necrons, but you can't pick up their iconic Necro Gauss Gun and fire even a single shot. This may have something to do with licensing - the Cat Society's financial resources are limited and they are unable to open up the license to purchase various factions, equipment, and ships from Games Workshop (the copyright owner of the "Warhammer" setting). It's not that this is incomprehensible, and the non-senior "hammer guy" doesn't necessarily mind, but it's a pity.
Every night, I will look far away
The plot problems don't stop there. In the first stanza, I praised the simplification of Rogue Trader over the previous game, but it comes at a cost. Compared with "Wrath of the Righteous", one of the major drawbacks of "The Wanderer" in terms of plot is that it greatly simplifies the path system, resulting in its plot being too linear and lacking in variety.
The path system is probably the most brilliant part of "Wrath of the Righteous". This system connects almost every aspect of role-playing, making the role-playing depth of "Wrath of the Righteous" greatly improved compared to the previous game "The Champion of Kings". The path system allows players to play as extremely powerful mythical creatures, such as angels, lichs, and demons, which is pretty cool in itself. On this basis, players will also face different story developments, different choices, different perceptions of themselves by teammates and NPC forces, as well as different skills, different equipment, and so on.
Compared with the traditional "choice and consequence", the Daotu system adds a layer of "what you are is more important than what you are going to do", binding the identity to the plot branch and even the strength of the character, making the whole mechanism of choice and consequence more complex. Players who choose different paths face very different story developments, and even when they talk about it, it feels like they are not playing the same game. This also became a major selling point of "Wrath of the Righteous" at that time.
But "Ronin Trader" doesn't do that. If you really use the analogy of the path system, this game only has 3 "paths" at most: purity, heretic, and humanitarianism. No matter which faction you are, the plot you face won't make much difference. The battle that should be fought must be fought, and the people who should be Kar should be fought the same. The development of the plot is generally very linear, and while the mechanics of choice and consequence still exist, they are nowhere near as fanciful as in Wrath of the Righteous.
Boundless sea of stars, a little starlight
After talking about "Ronin Wanderer" itself, it's time to take a look at the inherent shortcomings of the cathead club embodied in this game.
In my opinion, the biggest problem with the Cat Club is their level design. Whether it's the spatial design of the level, or the way the player passes through the level, it's lackluster.
Take "Ronin Trader" as an example, its levels are basically a small map that you must be able to step on after beating the enemy step by step, and the combat accounts for a very large proportion of the game, and it is rare to be able to pass the level with mouth cannon or make use of the different abilities of the squad members to pass the level in a variety of tricks and tricks.
The player character and his teammates have more than 10 skills, but the only ones they can use in dialogue are persuasion, coercion, and vigilance. Explosives, movement, mechanical use, and logic are basically only used to open paths for rewards or traps, while lore skills can only help you get some good information as you explore. Drinking skills are especially ...... It is very much in line with the current trend of young people who are less and less fond of drinking high-alcohol alcohol.
Therefore, in "Ronin Trader", there is a rare moment to pass the level with skill checks, and most of the encounters end up in battle, which leads to fighting for most of the game, and my impression of it is closest to "Wasteland 3", probably because of this.
At the same time, in terms of combat, "Ronin the Merchant" also exposed the shortcomings of the Maotou Cat Club since "The King Bearer".
To be sure, the combat in Rogue Traders is nowhere near as difficult for players as in The Kingholder and Wrath of the Righteous. Also on Standard difficulty, the combat experience of "Ronin Trader" is much better, and the problem of brainless monsters has been greatly improved. But these are only quantitative changes, and the real problem related to qualitative changes is that the combat of the Cat Club game is essentially a very simple numerical game.
Except for a few boss-level monsters with their own unique mechanics that require players to think more about strategy, in most encounters, all players do is observe the enemy's stats, think about what skills they have in their hands that can weaken the enemy's stats, and which skills can stack up their own character's stats, and then draw up the order of the skills, and attack at the moment when the character's stats are the highest and the enemy's stats are the lowest. This is known as "stacking" and "chipping", or "radio gymnastics before the whole team starts" (where each character buffs themselves or detracts enemies from the game, much like stretching in broadcast gymnastics).
In Kingskeeper and Wrath of the Righteous, where the default combat format is Real-time-with-pause, this isn't a big problem. Instant time-out battles are similar to ATB turn-based battles, with a certain operational component. If the player is not careful enough or does not move fast enough, the number of orders that can be given in the round will be lower than the theoretical value, and the maximum output effect will not be played.
But this problem is especially evident in Rogue Trader, where the default combat format is turn-based. In turn-based situations, if the player does not press the button to end the turn, the thinking time is infinite, so the player will not miss the skill that should be used. This will result in a high degree of consistency in the player's actions in different battles, and each time they will do the buffs and debuffs on the gymnastics in the same order, and then start the fight. It's still a little tired after a long time.
Fortunately, the rich enemy types made by the Cat Club with the back of the board game monster manual have brought new experiences and challenges to the player's combat to a large extent, effectively alleviating the "stacking music" and "cutting music". However, the combat part is just a pure numbers game, and the level design is too simple, which is indeed an important obstacle for the Cat Club to go further.
Seek thousands of miles of stars, ignite your way
epilogue
Although Rogue Trader has exposed some problems, it is still a very fun and easy game to play if bugs are not taken into account. Similarly, the Cat Club is also a player who is more likely to become the "next king" in the current European and American RPG camps, but they must first continue to live, gain a firm foothold in the already small field of CRPG, and then try to develop further.
Ronin Trader definitely has a lot of bugs to fix, and there will be at least 2 DLCs. Maybe then it will become a work that is free from bugs and can show all its charm.
Until then, we can probably already start looking forward to what the next game of the Cat Club will be - continue to "Warhammer 40K" and bring more races and equipment? Swap to Starfinder and show us a different Star Sea Legend? Return to the Pioneer and make the game an expansion class like Psychic Evoker, Psychics, etc., that we haven't been able to implement before? Or start a new collaboration with someone else, such as Shadowrun or Traveller?
Sounds like a good one.
Tell the wind to call you a thousand times