Solasta - Review

SteelySam checked out Solasta: Crown of the Magister:

Solasta: Crown of the Magister Virulent Review

Solasta is a Turn-Based Tactical RPG based on the Dungeons and Dragons SRD 5.1 Ruleset. In Solasta, you make the choices, dice decide your destiny. Wizards of the Coast granted Tactical Adventures a license to use the Dungeons and Dragons SRD 5.1 Ruleset, further anchoring our will to make the most faithful video game adaptation with the Tabletop Ruleset and craft the game you are hoping for!

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More information.

Still haven't played the release version since they didn't fix the GPU overheat problem. And it looks like they won't, I mentioned that in their last Q&A stream and they used an unrelated isolated hardware issue on very specific cards as an excuse to sweep it under the rug. Ah well, that's the risk with small teams.
I don't mind, the EA was a lot of fun

I played the final version and I think it's a great foundation for a proper PnP-like experience.

Unfortunately, it's a little light on non-combat content, and it seems there's a significant problem with variation as the game goes on (based on what other people are reporting).

It's also a little too indie-rough when it comes to the presentation of non-combat content, so I'll probably hold off playing it for a couple of years.

If it's a big enough success, I hope to see it expanded significantly.

I found very litle to complain about with this game. Obviously I have criticisms, there is no game ever made that I could not find criticism with and if you hold back on playing and supporting games such as this because of vague criticisms then you'd never play any game ever. It' the nature of the criticisms that are important.

And this game provides a very nice introductory level adventure in D&D 5e. That' all there is to say really as a summing up. If that kind of thing appeals to you then your expectation is met, if that concept doesn't appeal to you then there's also not much else to say other than, no, you probably wont enjoy it much.

lackblogger said:

I found very litle to complain about with this game. Obviously I have criticisms, there is no game ever made that I could not find criticism with and if you hold back on playing and supporting games such as this because of vague criticisms then you'd never play any game ever. It' the nature of the criticisms that are important.

And this game provides a very nice introductory level adventure in D&D 5e. That' all there is to say really as a summing up. If that kind of thing appeals to you then your expectation is met, if that concept doesn't appeal to you then there's also not much else to say other than, no, you probably wont enjoy it much.

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I really couldn't have said this better. It's almost like one of those introductory modules for 5E - you could literally teach somebody the basics of 5E on a battlemap by using this game, and it even reminded me about some positioning things and strategies; as somebody who has been running the game since release and before with other versions.

It's... like the Lost Mine of Phandelver in digital form - not a bad thing at all and nothing else really exists like it.

Thankfully, I never had any issues with overheating on my i7/Nvidia 2080 rig. I keep it water cooled to the nines, tho.

You can get hung up on how the game looks, but to me that's really not that important when a game has gameplay as good as Solasta has. I'm also fine with the combat focus since the majority of "story" in games doesn't do that much for me anyways. The core parts of the game look fine (combat for example). Janky cutscenes are the very least of my concerns in a game like this.

The thing that bothers me the most in the game is the wonky random dialog your people spew sometimes, but again this is a minor thing that doesn't detract from the whole.

I grew up on PnP D&D (original soft cover rulebooks) but haven't played it in ages and haven't played 5th ed, so to me Solasta feels very comfy and fun. I'd have to dig deep to TOEE to find a combat system I've liked as much in this style of RPG. It's like XCOM levels of tactical goodness but it's D&D, so it's that much more awesome.

I just started playing this week. I'm enjoying it, a lot more than I thought I would since I heard it was a very linear, combat heavy game (i.e., tactical RPG) rather than the story / quest / dialogue centric cRPGs I prefer. The combat is really good and there's a decent amount of options for how you build your characters. I find I don't miss multiclassing much at all since some archetypes are similar to multiclass / prestige classes. Would be worth replaying the game (or playing some of the custom dungeons) just to try out different builds. And there's already mods that add additional classes and multiclassing.

What I found disappointing was that there were three skills noted to not be used in the main campaign; investigation, animal handling, and sleight of hand. Particularly disappointing if you build a ranger as the first two are their class skills, and of course sleight of hand is a pretty core thief ability. I appreciate the game gives you a heads up but it's rather disappointing they couldn't work in a few uses. The non-combat skills that are in the game are mostly for flavor & earn a bit of extra treasure, but still nice for immersion.

I wish they would've hired another writer or two to polish up the story and dialogue rather than using their limited funds for full voice acting. The actors who do the main party members seemed decent enough, but a lot of the rest of the cast wasn't great IMO and voice acting adds very little to a game. I'd rather read better dialogue than hear cringy lines. I'm probably not even half way through the game but if I never hear the phrase "Clear skies" again, it will be too soon.