The really interesting thing about Heroic Acts, though, is that they can also be used at low Momentum… for a price. Essentially, it’s the deluxe version of the soldier’s basic skill. Daring Breach, for instance, is a ‘Heroic Act’ that allows a character to move and attack multiple times in a turn. At high Momentum, a character is able to use an ultimate-style ability that could be the devastating finale to a multi-turn strategy. The final major system Gusev shows me is Momentum, a stat that builds with each attack and heal. While they will no doubt bring their own skills to the table, it seems like a Rogue Trader’s most important job (in battle, at least) will be unleashing the potential of their companions. We all know the desperate pain of not quite killing a powerful enemy in a single turn and having to suffer one more attack, and the Rogue Trader seems set to mitigate those situations. They have the ability to issue orders, which effectively grants any companion in range an extra turn, free of charge. The final part of the puzzle is the Rogue Trader themselves, captain of this whole venture. Rogue Trader’s tactical depth seems to be hidden in the gaps between characters, and the way their skills can be layered to create strategies far more impressive than each individual companion. But combine that with a buff from a more specialised character and she could become an explosive force on the battlefield. She’s able to move and attack twice per turn, a fairly standard skill compared to lethal screams and channelling the god of machines. That’s another thing to monitor and keep track of as the turns go by.Ī more recognisable strategy for XCOM veterans can be found in Jae, one of Rogue Trader’s soldier class characters. I don’t get to see any of those awful things, but Gusev does tell me that I’ll need to be careful as both allied and enemy psyker abilities will weaken The Veil. If it breaks all sorts of terrible things could happen on the battlefield, Gusev warns. But psyker powers cause The Veil - the barrier between reality and the demon-infested realm of Chaos - to weaken and fracture. Gusev has Idira use her Psychic Shriek to blast waves of eardrum-bursting sound at a Kabalite Warrior, which successfully erodes away at their health bar. Other characters, like the Inquisition interrogator, Heinrix, or seneschal, Abelard, are tankier fighters able to buff and provide shields for her if needed. In this combat demonstration Gusev uses Idira predominantly as a magic cannon. That will hopefully avoid the classic RPG pitfall where having two companions of the same class feels like pointlessly doubling up. So while both characters hail from a similar skill set, they have the potential to evolve into distinctly different specialisms. Idira, another party member, is also an adept, but as an unsanctioned psyker (see: illegal space wizard) her advanced and elite tiers promise to tap into adjacent-but-different areas to Pasqal’s, such as precognition. For example, Pasqal is an adept, a class that studies the battlefield to identify opportunities and weaknesses. All characters have a basic class, but they develop into advanced and then elite tiers, which further specialises them. Even characters that share a class can have unique skills thanks to Rogue Trader’s multi-tier career ladders. Most turn-based RPGs embrace this kind of forward thinking, but it's the fact that every single character in this demo has their own strategic abilities that impresses me. These three steps combined can prove devastating to an enemy character, and this is what appears to be one of Rogue Trader’s more simplistic strategies. Finally, Pasqal’s firearm - a volatile plasma gun - can be overcharged for devastating damage (provided you’re willing to run the lethal risk of it backfiring). That attack can be enhanced through the use of the Machine Spirit Communion skill, which blesses a weapon to increase its attack value. Party member Pasqal, for example, is a Tech Priest with the ability to survey an enemy and identify their weak points, which can then be exploited with an attack. While devastating psychic abilities and guns capable of reducing an enemy to smears of red paste are exciting, I’m surprised to find it’s the planning layers before the kill that have me most impressed.
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