Rogue Trader (RT) is better than Baldur's Gate 3 (BG3) in many aspects. If you liked one, play the other too. In this review I will mainly be comparing these two excellent games, and in the process presenting the merits of RT. I'm honestly amazed that Owlcat has made a 10/10 game on a much smaller budget than Larian.

LORE. RT >> BG3. I love both the DnD and the 40K universes, but the more focused and extensive world-building in 40K outshines the broader 'template' that DnD provides. Sword & Sorcery has a charm, it is cozy, it has that timeless LOTR vibe, but for me, a grimdark setting will always feel more complex, nuanced and well-developed. Owlcat has done an amazing job of building on the tremendous mountain of lore and world-building that has developed the 40K universe since the 1980s. It is riveting to experience. Furthermore, since Larian went with full VA (huge production and time cost) BG3 has less alternative quest branching, paths, and overall lore text in general. RT has partial VA, which is more than enough, and the resources freed up by this has clearly allowed Owlcat to explore a staggering number dialogue trees and branching outcomes. The hauntingly beautiful soundtrack will leave you not even wanting VA anyway.

MORALITY. RT >> BG3. First of all, the three-way alignment chart in RT is far superior to the binary good-evil axis (highly unrealistic, LOTR-esque duality) forced on the player in BG3. RT has three alignments: Dogmatic, Iconoclast and Heretical. You gradually descend into one as you make choices throughout the game, and it changes everything around you. These are very well fleshed out and they make sense. There is no good one; sometimes Dogmatic feels morally right, sometimes Iconoclast. But in a grimdark setting you can not always go for the 'fairy-tale good' choice, as you will see, there are severe repercussions for naivety. This is one of my biggest gripes with BG3. Even within its subpar good-evil binary, the 'evil' path is severely underdeveloped and unrewarding. You can 'feel' the developers wanted the 'default' path to be the good one. By going 'evil' you miss out on so much content, and so many side quests and companions quests. It just does not make for a satisfying alternative to the 'default' good play-through, which is my complaint since RT manages to show how this can be done with the Heretical path. The only really well done thing in BG3 is the Dark Urge path, which honestly should've been the default game mode.

IMMERSION. RT = BG3. RT gets a head start here for the immersion provided by the richness of its lore and world-building. But BG3 has full VA and more fluid character animations and scenes - think romance scenes for example. And particularly the narrator VA is amazing in BG3. Both games have a number of romance arcs, both are well developed and nuanced, but BG3 has better cinematic 'scenes'. So that's an immersion plus. Both games have excellent music, but as I said, I love the grimdark orchestral gloom exuded by the 40K soundtrack. On the other hand, I am not sure if any game can ever replicate the goosebumps I felt the first time I heard Hope singing during Raphael's Final Act in BG3. There are several close contenders in RT (and its DLC, which is also excellent), but nothing quite like that scene (a bit of a bigger budget, bigger studio win for Larian here).

COMBAT. BG3 >= RT. This one is close. BG3's main advantage here is environmental interactivity. It has many creative ways to use or manipulate objects and use the terrain. RT does not have these to anywhere near the same extent. BG3 has a tried and tested class and combat system using DnD-5e, which is robust and well implemented. That being said, I thoroughly enjoyed the novelties to the CRPG combat style that RT brought. The sheer complexity of the different archetypes and ways to build characters, and ways to then use abilities/skills and synergize them is astounding. The replayability is nigh endless - but that can be said for BG3 too. In any case, while a navigator's Lidless Stare in RT is indeed conteptually and gameplay-wise very fun, nothing can beat the Hunger of Hadar spell in BG3: my favorite combat ability in any CRPG I've ever played.

COMPANIONS. RT = BG3. Both games have companions with their own complex quest chains that develop through the acts of the game. Both games provide diverging branching and many fateful choices in these, and both have a 'camp' area to talk to companions whenever (the voidship bridge in RT). It's honestly hard to say whether Shadowheart or Cassia, Abelard or Gale, etc. will stay more in my memory as times goes on. Both games truly get you invested in the characters. All these are roughly on par in both games. I think RT has more companions numerically (10 by default plus a further few secretly), but anyway.

VILLAINS. RT > BG3. I loved Orin the Red, Raphael and a few of the lesser story characters in BG3. It's a DnD world after all, it contains the classic trope of monsters and beings that many of us gamers have grown accustomed to; we expect to see them. But the villains and story characters in RT far outshine all that. Again, this is not a point to Owlcat's genius or anything, it's just that 40K has such a rich repository to pull from. The whole warpspace, webway, realspace stuff, the Chaos gods and their infiltration of realspace, the concept of navigators, the concept of the astropathic choir, the idea of Tyranid hive fleets consuming galaxies, the very existence of Necrons, the fall of the Aeldari to the temptation of Slaneesh, Commorragh and the Drukhari psychic channeling of agony, the inquisition, the undead emperor etc. etc. etc. - the list is endless. The world is dark and fascinating. It's mesmerizing. The politics in RT is also more interesting and nuanced. Do you aid the inquisition, do you help this noble house or that, do you help the Xenos, etc. Compared to this, BG3 has way less in-game politics and world-sculpting, aside from maybe a bit of stuff in Act3.

PROSE. RT > BG3. Being more text-based and having more dialogue and text in general, RT has such beautiful prose in many places. For example, the way Cassia the Navigator sees everything in colors and the way she continuously chimes in is so beautiful. Descriptions of chaos, warp-matter, blood and gore, the might of the imperium, and various Drukhari practices, to give a small selection, are often screenshot worthy in themselves. Owlcat has some good writers, kudos to them. The banter between characters as you walk around is also so well done and sometimes very funny (this was also quite good in BG3 too).

CONCLUSION: IN THE GRIM DARKNESS OF THE FAR FUTURE, THERE IS ONLY WAR!