Solasta - Review @ Capsule Computers

Capsule Computers checked out Solasta: Crown of the Magister:

Solasta: Crown of the Magister Review

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If you're missing your weekly Dungeons & Dragons group because of the pandemic or you need to scratch that Neverwinter Nights itch, Solasta: Crown of the Magister might be the ideal RPG for you. This game uses the D&D 5th Edition SRD. Find out why we're addicted to this game in our review.

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There is also this greek review, here : https://ragequit.gr/reviews/item/sol…nglish-review/ . They gave an excellent 90% score.

They call Solasta the "modern Temple of Elemental Evil". I agree there are some similarity but personally, I find Solasta a much more "complete" game.

The weird decisions regarding the sudden changes of face models/ he she buttons/ old alignment section being removed, and didn't inform us during EA, strange. It feels like there's a top dog force his opinion upon the team.

This review was a little more critical than many I have seen / read. He brought up so many negatives that I was expecting him to give it much worse than 8/10. I’ve wishlisted this one and will give it some time to get some patches before diving in. Plus there are a few others I really want to play/finish like PoE 2 and pathfinder:kingmaker

This review is a bit all over the place but there's nothing fundamentally wrong. He's spending time on very little QoL issues instead of elaborating more fundamental ones like the story and the quests, and insists the game is fully compliant with the SRD although it never is the case (and he doesn't discuss what TA brought on that topic), which makes me think this review was made rather quickly.

But overall I think it's fine, he points out the limitations and concludes it's a fun game, it's a good summary.

There are reviewers who try to have their article out as soon as possible and others who wait for a few patches and take the time, I'm usually more interested in the latter. Not that it would make a huge difference with a less complex game like this one

Originally Posted by Kandos
The weird decisions regarding the sudden changes of face models/ he she buttons/ old alignment section being removed, and didn't inform us during EA, strange. It feels like there's a top dog force his opinion upon the team.

I see no weird decision here, nor "top dog force", their decisions are driven by the budget and what they feel is important, and IMO they're quite good at this.

For the models they had a lot of complaints during the EA and tried to improve them a bit, but they've always been clear about this: they don't have the tools nor the budget for AAA-type models. Seeing the performance issues, I'm glad they kept the poly count low The only arguable decision is using cut scenes with close-ups but that was in from the beginning.

What do you mean about alignment section being removed? I haven't seen any change there?

You probably didn't participate in EA, there're only a few complaints about the face models, mainly dwarf females. The budget you said is common knowledge.
The strange thing is that the worse version was suddenly implemented, the quality is much lower, and EA players didn't have a chance to say anything about this. Yes you can still say that this is still a rational decision.
This game was perfect for me before it was released, and I'm sure many others feel the same way. That's why I think this is strange.

Originally Posted by Kandos
You probably didn't participate in EA, there're only a few complaints about the face models, mainly dwarf females. The budget you said is common knowledge.

In fact, I did participate since day 1, you are new here but I wrote a preview article for this game. The faces have always been a significant issue, they addressed that in several dev updates starting 10 months ago already, and the question was asked in their Spring update stream too.

All that is common knowledge, not sure what you mean by that.

Originally Posted by Kandos
The strange thing is that the worse version was suddenly implemented, the quality is much lower, and EA players didn't have a chance to say anything about this. Yes you can still say that this is still a rational decision.
This game was perfect for me before it was released, and I'm sure many others feel the same way. That's why I think this is strange.

By "suddenly" you mean that they worked on it between the Spring update and the final release, and we only saw the new models in that release. Like any change, yes, it's sudden

"EA players didn't have a chance to say anything", there's been a lot of posts in the forums about the faces and discussion on Discord about them, since EA and after release. So they had a chance to say something, always have, but as I said, TA answered that many times by saying they would do what they could within the little resources they had. Sometimes it's not perceived as an improvement simply because of those limited resources, not because of an evil plan by someone working there, there's nothing strange or mysterious about it.

It always felt good for some, and not good for others, it really depends on subjective tastes and priorities. I'm sure that if some of the faces have turned badly in the last version and if that bothers many players, they won't object reverting them, but you shouldn't expect miracles, nor TA to ask your permission before pushing modifications to the release branch.

It's a small team and I appreciate the game for what it is, they did a great job of allocating resources to reach a good balance and yet have quite a few innovative and successful approaches to make it fun. If some areas are incomplete or imperfect, so be it, it was to be expected. They'll have a chance to improve that in a future game.

Yeah, the faces look goofy but I care what the party looks like in tactical combat. I like the look of the battles and think TA did a fine job with that. 90% of the game is played there.

'The faces have always been a significant issue'
I participated since day 1, that's why I know you're exaggerating. It's not perfect, but it's acceptable except for the dwarf females.
And I'm not only talking about faces here, as I said above.

'There's nothing strange or mysterious about it.'
Yes, I know. We're all guessing here. To be honest, During EA I would like to support the devs 100% on their next game if they have a plan on another project but now I'm not so sure… this is a 'sudden' change I didn't expect before.

"EA players didn't have a chance to say anything"
As I said, EA players didn't have a chance to say anything about the new stuff in 1.0. IMO they should let players know what changes would come because those changes are '''apparently''' arguable, as you can see in the forums.

'they did a great job……….The budget……….If some areas are incomplete or imperfect……….'
Yes it's common knowledge.

Project management is clearly no easy thing and in past we saw many to fail, even some experienced developers and consequences were almost always harsh.

In case of Solasta its pretty clearly visible the developers had to make some hard decisions, which aspects of the game should be prioritized, to make the project managable with available resources. Im glad they prove themself competent and delivered good game.

Im sure everyone has bit different preferences and for example I would personally rather see more complex dialogues and story depth overall, instead of full VO. But I think they identified who are potential customers quite well. If they manage to stay in the business and continue with cRPG development, it will be proven as correct.

I agree with this one. If I have one regret about Solasta, it's their decision to go fully voiced. For a game with a limited budget like their, I feel that's a waste of money. And they get criticized because of the quality of it, anyhow.

Personally, I certainly wish the game the game was less linear and included more exploration and dialogs. Hopefully, we will see this with Solasta 2 and/or the additional modules. Meanwhile, it's still a great game with a great engine and they are likely to get my money for whatever they do in the future.

Good remarks @Hastar, @Andrew23 and @vanedor!

Yeah, voice-acting. I suppose they felt compelled to do it because of the cut scenes, it would have felt weird otherwise. And indeed, when there were discussions on C&C and more story, they said they couldn't afford too much of that because of voice acting.

Personally I'd rather have spoken dialogues for the important stuff only, like Pathfinder, or none at all, and no cut scenes - just scripted animation with the normal top-down view and a chat box. That would have given more budget for the story and maybe some branching in it, and we wouldn't have issues with the face modelling. But maybe it would have looked too classic for many people, and so their decision was perhaps the good one. Seeing the scores, it's certainly not a failure

Originally Posted by vanedor
There is also this greek review, here : https://ragequit.gr/reviews/item/sol…nglish-review/ . They gave an excellent 90% score.

They call Solasta the "modern Temple of Elemental Evil". I agree there are some similarity but personally, I find Solasta a much more "complete" game.

This was an incredibly well-written article. It was a little light on review specifics but I really enjoyed the background it provided on the D&D rule sets and history. I’ve never been into tabletop D&D so I only have a passing knowledge of this history from my crpg experiences. Really enjoyable read…thanks for posting this!

The only thing I don't like that much so far are the dialog cut scenes (BG-style dialog boxes any day!), the UI look and the char portraits. It also seems it is most worthwhile to not talk your way out of boss fights. If you succeed in convincing them you cannot aggro them later it seems.

All things I can live with and I enjoy the game a lot so far. Although, playing on generic difficulty seems to become too easy soon.

Originally Posted by Darkheart
It also seems it is most worthwhile to not talk your way out of boss fights. If you succeed in convincing them you cannot aggro them later it seems.

Do you still gain XP for passing the dialogue checks?

Originally Posted by JDR13
Do you still gain XP for passing the dialogue checks?

Yes, you do. You can also still fight the bosses. Try and steal their stuff. That vampire didn't like me going through her armor.

It depends. Some bosses you can fight. Some just disappear. The three bosses of the haunted castle, for exemple, are dealt differently.

Originally Posted by vanedor
There is also this greek review, here : https://ragequit.gr/reviews/item/sol…nglish-review/ . They gave an excellent 90% score.

They call Solasta the "modern Temple of Elemental Evil". I agree there are some similarity but personally, I find Solasta a much more "complete" game.

Solasta *is* the Modern Temple of Elemental Evil in that no other game has been such a perfect turn-based replication of the D&D ruleset since ToEE came out. A certain type of tabletop D&D nerd (me) was so incredibly impressed by this feat that TO THIS DAY ToEE remains a one-of-its-kind fan-supported game that, when properly patched and modded, offers a computer tabletop gaming experience unlike anything else.

The ONLY other type of game that did this with the D&D rules, let alone the 5e most popular ever version of these rules - PROPERLY turn-based on a battle-grid as the game rules were designed for and meant to be played on?

Solasta. Solasta is the only game that has done this. Solasta is the only game so far that so perfectly matches combat in my tabletop gaming sessions that I can literally just use strategy from the game to build characters. What's the best archer? Well, easily one of the archetypes that can take an archer combat style for that all important +2 bonus while maxing out a 20 DEX for the complete +5 allowed in 5e… what cantrips will a wizard need? Obviously at least a ranged one and a melee one because, hey, you don't want to use a ranged damage spell against a monster right next to you. Want to shove somebody a square? Save an action? Disengage the monster? Fly? Levitate on a 3D field - all, as it was mentioned, in a turn-based chesslike format?

Hey, Solasta does that and nothing except ToEE has since. Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 were great little RTWP games but they didn't have anything close to the slow, tactical feel that I was really playing a D&D game. Still relied too much on twitch.

This is all gold, no twitch.

As one might imagine I not only backed the game but am enjoying it incredibly.

Ok, hearing Solasta compared so favorably to Temple of Elemental Evil really has me drooling for this one, now. Those that say all the genre needs these days is a modern equivalent of ToEE kind of nail my own internal feelings, because it's quite the feat to nail D&D correctly in the computer world, yet when it's done right it shines like no other!!