Solasta: Crown of the Magister

Just finished the Crown of the Magister adventure, and I really enjoied it! First of all, if you are looking for a sandbox campaign with a deep plot, a lot of lore dumping and NPCs with extravagant, grimdark or larger than life backgrounds, you won't find them here: Solasta is more like a "beer and pretzels adventure" with a good DM who does put emphasis on giving clear directions about how to proceed in the main quest, and players who just wanna have fun in exploring a world and roll some dice. Think of railroading, but in a good way: your party is composed of adventurers who enlist for a mission, then find themselves involved in something very big, and decide to stick together. This doesn't mean that the story is boring: it has its plot twists, some quite predictable, other less, and all in all I found it engaging. This game looks like a pumped-up, modernized version of the Eye of the Beholder series: you have places to go, stuff to do, and you have to bash some heads in order to do it. Combat is very fun, it sticks to the 5e rules and involves strategy. Seeing the dice actually rolling on screen gives the game a tabletop feel that I found really enjoable. Some criticise the "not-so-realistic" look or/and the voice acting of the characters, still I wasn't bothered by them: on the contrary, it was like watching at your miniatures come alive, and listening to your DM doing voices. Also, it made me appreciate all the efforts made by Tactical Adventures in creating this game. I agree with others that the endgame of Crown of the Magister feels rushed, but not so much to ruin the game experience overall. So, if you are looking for a 5e based game focused on tactical combat and an easy-going storytelling, Solasta is for you!

The game mechanics are very simple and explained cleary. The calculation is displayed using mouse over tooltip so that you know what is happening. More importantly, it is very fun to create a team of 4 and imagine what each one can do or have done in their life as well as their personality. Granted the dialogue can be somehow janky but it gives enough charm to the character. The graphics performance is somehow improved since launch but it still performs badly in the few areas.

Up to review, beaten crown of the magister, almost 50% of Lost Valley. So we have here a C-RPG, some classes with interesting subbclasses. (some are exclusive to Solasta) When you begin an adventure you have to create 4 characters like it was in the temple of elemental evil. I like that. Downside: you have to stick to the party you start with at the beginning, there is no swapping a party member, so choose wisely. Also, think well while leveling up, as there is no respec option. Regarding attribute builds, you have points, random or allocated, so it is interesting. Other huge good point is the integrated level editor where we can spend some time or take a look at the existing player made content (either in steam workshop or mod.io) The game can be modded "unfinished business" seems recommeded Disadvantages/ to be improved: when at high level (9+), the UI is not adapted when you play a full caster and have 2 rows of spells (spells of level 4+). There are some spells icons that overlap with a spell of a lower level, and some are not accessible. Contrary to Baldur's Gate 3, the spellcasters can only swapp their learnt/active spells while resting (long rest). On the other hand, you are not limited for the short rests so you can recover some abilties more often. Another difference between solasta and BG3 is verticallity: we have spider walk spell, and you can walk on the walls, and you can have your mage flying above the ground and shooting fireballs while being out of melee reach. (spells do not have areas, but volumes... So fireball is a sphere. Compared to baldur's gate3 It seems that Solasta is a more combat focused game. So if you like C-RPGs in general and don't mind playing in english (for the majority and there are not many walls of text) I recommend

Somehow the screenshots don't do the game any justice. This game is like the B-Movie counterpart to Baldur's Gate 3. The dialogues are corny and hilarious, the battle system is top-notch and it's an absolute blast to play. This might be one of my favourite CRPGs ever made so far.

Maybe in a few years this game will be fully playable, for now I've done a few runs. First - bugs with unfinishable quests. Second - Seriously irritated by game mechanics, attunement system got me angry Third - will wait a few months at least for the devs to finish finishing the game. The good: 1. DnD feel 2. Stats and such 3. Turn based combat that's somewhat interesting The bad: 1. Missing item text descriptions. 2. Unfinished gameplay systems (attunement is horrible for example) - TL;DR this game is not finished and I doubt that it ever will be, sadly :( 3. Unclear mechanics, some puzzles require googling to figure out :( 4. Janky gameplay with fps drops 5. The writing and overall story 6. Gameplay bugs carried over from beta.