I gave a 3 star review to the original game, because the story was linear and predictable. I eventually got bored and never finished the game. This DLC feels as though it was written to address all my concerns about the base game. Interwoven quests -- you can't finish all questlines from all factions, because they are fighting one another. No faction choice is the obvious powergamer way to max. It's an interesting world, on top of the already-excellent tactical turn-based combat and movement. Recommended.
While I enjoyed the original Solasta campaign I gave it 4 stars. I was an enjoyable dungeon crawl and had that D&D homebrew feel to it but I had little desire to revisit it after completion (although with the new multiplayer update I might reconsider it).
Lost Valley on the other hand raises the bar in many ways. While the main quest starts out deceptively simple (enter the Lost Valley to find a person and then try find a way to esxape the Valley) the politics and factions of the expansion are the "real main quest" here. You have 5 factions to do quests for and you can't complete all their quests without breaking a relations with others. There are a fair amount of different solutions to quests that can further alter the reputations to different factions. Having a good stealth character and high charisma skills were thus much more useful here than in the original campaign,
As of this writing review I didn't find any real bugs but some general jankiness which can be attributed to the low price point (and thus budget). The factions could really use more dialogue or even just lore or exposition to flesh them out more. However the factions are still presented as interesting, and there is no with no clear good faction which leads to some tough moral and political choices.
Overall this would maybe be more of a 4 or 4.5 star game but the low price I can't in good conscience rate it anything less than a 5. My total playtime for a single playthrough (with doing most of the faction and side quests) clocked around 30 hours which is the same as with the original campaign.
If you like Solasta already there is little to no reason to skip this one.
I enjoy Solasta quite a lot. The core of the game is really well done and I think it is its saving grace. The D&D ruleset is fun to play with, I thoroughly enjoy the races, classes and spells and the combat is well done. The UI is very clean and very familiar which makes for a smooth experience without needing to fumble for controls. It was enjoyable in the original campaign and it is enjoyable in this DLC.
Lost Valley specifics:
Pros:
- More subclasses to play around with
- More enemy variety with some pretty cool enemies
- Cool areas to explore
Cons:
- Questing is a mess. You receive too many quests all at once from different factions which can cancel each other out, make you lose track of what you are doing or just completely cut you off from other factions and quests.
- The factions are poorly done with dubious animosity between a couple of them. There are times where simply talking to an NPC kills all your reputation with other factions and automatically fails any quest you might have had related to them.
- Quests to capture outposts that just make you feel like you're playing Far Cry (and not the good bits). These result in extremely tedious fights in areas that don't even differ from each other, even the enemies are exactly the same.
- Too many underwhelming and tedious fights against numerous opponents who are just fodder.
- Main story is very weak and the finale just felt like a fight in a random encounter vs bandits and then the game just ends. Very underwhelming.
- Difficulty is very poorly implemented. The difficulty slider only adds artificial difficulty by buffing enemy HP, damage, saves and attack bonus. Does nothing for the AI which is very dumb. Spellcasters spend 99% of their time casting level 2 spells or cantrips (yes, I play with the Deadly AI on) and fighter types just focus on your tank.
tl;dr: Can be fun if you are someone who loves Solasta and want more Solasta combat gameplay. Anything else other than that, don't bother.
I enjoyed the original "Crown of the Magister" campaign quite a bit. "Lost Valley" was a step up in many ways: Important multiplayer bugs were fixed, outdoor maps and dungeons were much bigger, the factions were a fun addition.
The finale was indeed underwhelming. The fight was a piece of cake - we romped through everyone with very little effort. The game just kinda stops not long after that. And, we were waiting for a big reveal, like something that the cover art hints at. Never happened. Regardless, I'd gladly play another one. The game is fun and combat is always entertaining.
My suggestions:
* Expand out the PC voice acting - enough to have unique voices for each party member, both sexes
* Continue to create these kinds of campaigns!
* Bugs are getting fixed - keep it up!
Solasta appears again with a chunk of DLC offering a new campaign with new subclasses.
The campaign is fun and setting well done.
The only downsides are that some of the exp. can be a bit lacking and some of the combats are a bit much in certain areas thus interrupting the flow.
There are different factions to help and join and I have finished the dlc campaign twice now on authentic difficulty with different factions.
The new monsters are fun to fight, animated well and look good.
