Solasta Solasta: Crown of the Magister Thread - now with Palace of Ice sequel DLC

[Whisper]

"But Myzzrym, you dumb fuck" I hear some of you clamor, "Why cater to game journalists and those lacking opposable thumbs?"

A bit offtopic, i apologise. Did you watch this video?

 

[Whisper]

There are plenty of games similar to Solasta with great encounter design. Blackguards and Dungeon of Naheulbeuk for instance. Your encounter design is simply uninspired. It's a massive shame considering everything else is in place for the game to be good, but when you make a game entirely about tactical RPG combat, having uninspired encounter design is a dealbreaker. It's that simple. It's the one thing the game couldn't fuck up, everything else is tangential.

A bit unfair to compare Solasta to Blackguards. Which probably has one of best encounter design battles compared to like 99% (aprox.) crpgs out there.

 

[gurugeorge]

There are plenty of games similar to Solasta with great encounter design. Blackguards and Dungeon of Naheulbeuk for instance. Your encounter design is simply uninspired. It's a massive shame considering everything else is in place for the game to be good, but when you make a game entirely about tactical RPG combat, having uninspired encounter design is a dealbreaker. It's that simple. It's the one thing the game couldn't fuck up, everything else is tangential.

Like you can read in my Naheulbeuk-review, I'm a massive fan of these small games with focused scopes. And I wanted hard to love Solasta. Unfortunately I was bored out of my skull, and it wasn't because of all the corners you had to cut (like quest design and voice acting) which I don't give a fuck about. It's because the core feature of the game simply wasn't very good.

That said, I've praised the system design many places in this thread - everything from the 5E implementation to the verticality to the itemization is very promising - and I hope your next game nails those encounters. Then I might write a full-fledged, glowing review. But I cannot in good conscience recommend a game that is bad at the only thing it should really be judged on.

It's a nice question, whether if they'd focused more on the encounter design they'd have made more money than by trying to make more of the kind of CRPG gesamtkunstwerk that's the only thing that crosses over from the nerd field to the mainstream. In hard reality, they probably made the right decision by ensuring the core systems functioned (for future-proofing and possible modding), while spreading around the rest of the desiderata for a full-on RPG to a level where it's not stellar in any category but good enough for some entertainment, and feels like value for money for most people.

If you think of Dungeons of Nahaelbuek, they must have spent a shit-ton on the "stuff I don't give a fuck about." The Solasta developers just had harder decisions to make in those areas (less money, smaller team). And if Dungeons didn't have a spread of those other aspects, just like Solasta does, if it had only the nifty encounter design it has, would it have been as big as it is?

 

[NJClaw]

I think base game campaign poopoo

BREAKING NEWS: Tactical Adventures' developer Myzzrym SHITS on his very own game!!!

 

[Wunderbar]

 

[Grunker]

There are plenty of games similar to Solasta with great encounter design. Blackguards and Dungeon of Naheulbeuk for instance. Your encounter design is simply uninspired. It's a massive shame considering everything else is in place for the game to be good, but when you make a game entirely about tactical RPG combat, having uninspired encounter design is a dealbreaker. It's that simple. It's the one thing the game couldn't fuck up, everything else is tangential.

A bit unfair to compare Solasta to Blackguards. Which probably has one of best encounter design battles compared to like 99% (aprox.) crpgs out there.

I’m not saying it needed to be as good, I’m saying a small budget is provably not a reason to have no encounter design

 

[Whisper]

Where you got this screenshot?

 

[gurugeorge]

There are plenty of games similar to Solasta with great encounter design. Blackguards and Dungeon of Naheulbeuk for instance. Your encounter design is simply uninspired. It's a massive shame considering everything else is in place for the game to be good, but when you make a game entirely about tactical RPG combat, having uninspired encounter design is a dealbreaker. It's that simple. It's the one thing the game couldn't fuck up, everything else is tangential.

A bit unfair to compare Solasta to Blackguards. Which probably has one of best encounter design battles compared to like 99% (aprox.) crpgs out there.

I’m not saying it needed to be as good, I’m saying a small budget is provably not a reason to have no encounter design

It's a bit of an exaggeration to say it has "no encounter design." That big area where you have a big fight with some vampires after you open the puzzle door, and before you go down in the big elevator platform and free the dragon - that's a pretty good zone of decent encounters. There are several others. The game isn't exactly full of them, but it has a few good ones. I'm inclined to think that "lack of epic encounters" may be a problem with 5e rather than what the devs did here.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Where you got this screenshot?

Ebay

 

[Lacrymas]

PoE is a better combatfag game than Solasta. Come at me. Really, Grunker is absolutely correct - this game is bad at the only thing it should've been good at. I can get over everything else, trust me. Now that the game is out and relatively successful (?), why not gradually push out improved encounters in the base game with each DLC release as a free update/patch? This "but new players bad" rhetoric doesn't make sense when you have difficulty options. I doubt it would take so much effort to improve one or two dungeons every 6 months or however long it takes between DLC releases. Some dungeons will even benefit from outright removal of some of the encounters, I suspect that takes like 3 minutes for one person to do.

 

[ItsChon]

Had no idea this game finally came out, and it was something I was hyped for. What is the KKKodex Konsensus?

 

[Grunker]

There are plenty of games similar to Solasta with great encounter design. Blackguards and Dungeon of Naheulbeuk for instance. Your encounter design is simply uninspired. It's a massive shame considering everything else is in place for the game to be good, but when you make a game entirely about tactical RPG combat, having uninspired encounter design is a dealbreaker. It's that simple. It's the one thing the game couldn't fuck up, everything else is tangential.

A bit unfair to compare Solasta to Blackguards. Which probably has one of best encounter design battles compared to like 99% (aprox.) crpgs out there.

I’m not saying it needed to be as good, I’m saying a small budget is provably not a reason to have no encounter design

It's a bit of an exaggeration to say it has "no encounter design." That big area where you have a big fight with some vampires after you open the puzzle door, and before you go down in the big elevator platform and free the dragon - that's a pretty good zone of decent encounters. There are several others. The game isn't exactly full of them, but it has a few good ones. I'm inclined to think that "lack of epic encounters" may be a problem with 5e rather than what the devs did here.

It's an exaggeration, but not much of one. The vast bulk of encounters are unspired and has very little interesting going on. Which is even more bizarre seeing how many systems are in place that make good encounter design a probable prospect (not the least of which being the verticality).

 

[Parabalus]

A lot of the people saying the encounter design sucks probably didn't play on max difficulty - lots of good fights to be had.

 

[Lacrymas]

The foundation is there, you have your different monsters, spells, models, animations, etc. Someone just needs to sit down for an hour or so and reorganize the monster placement. For example, Aksha needs a single Dark Apprentice to push it to the next level. Is placing a single DA in that fight such a hassle? I doubt it. How many encounters are there in the Dark Castle? 10-15? That's like a week's worth of effort. That optional goblin fight in the cave outside the very first dungeon? You need a boss monster in there, that's it. The goal is so tantalizingly close.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

I think a lot of games that get lumped into the combatfag category and then considered to have poor or mediocre combat are misunderstood. They're actually explorationfag games, an underappreciated niche.

 

[Grunker]

The foundation is there, you have your different monsters, spells, models, animations, etc. Someone just needs to sit down for an hour or so and reorganize the monster placement. For example, Aksha needs a single Dark Apprentice to push it to the next level. Is placing a single DA in that fight such a hassle? I doubt it. How many encounters are there in the Dark Castle? 10-15? That's like a week's worth of effort. That optional goblin fight in the cave outside the very first dungeon? You need a boss monster in there, that's it. The goal is so tantalizingly close.

Exactly. There's a great fight over a pillared pit in one of the first dungeons that really takes advantage of the games systems by placing ranged enemies out of reach and then spiders in a position to surround the party as they try to get to those enemies. The fact that most encounters subsequently just puts you on a map with enemies running towards you without any caveats or interesting, tactical conundrums is the problem here.

That's why Parabalus' harping on about difficulty makes no sense. Those settings don't change or have anything to do with the problems we're discussing.

I think a lot of games that get lumped into the combatfag category and then considered to have poor or mediocre combat are misunderstood. They're actually explorationfag games, an underappreciated niche.

Tactical Adventures

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I think a lot of games that get lumped into the combatfag category and then considered to have poor or mediocre combat are misunderstood. They're actually explorationfag games, an underappreciated niche.

Such as?

 

[Parabalus]

The foundation is there, you have your different monsters, spells, models, animations, etc. Someone just needs to sit down for an hour or so and reorganize the monster placement. For example, Aksha needs a single Dark Apprentice to push it to the next level. Is placing a single DA in that fight such a hassle? I doubt it. How many encounters are there in the Dark Castle? 10-15? That's like a week's worth of effort. That optional goblin fight in the cave outside the very first dungeon? You need a boss monster in there, that's it. The goal is so tantalizingly close.

Why would you need a boss monster there?

It's a great early fight that shows the value of sneaking to a better position.

Blackguards and Dungeon of Naheulbeuk for instance.

These games (Blackguards more so) make each fight different by liberally introducing encounter specific mechanics, scenario modifiers. Solasta doesn't really do this at all.

 

[Lacrymas]

I'd like a better encounter than one teaching me positioning with copy pasted goblins. I know that already. But hey, if you like the samey, haphazardly placed encounters, just play on a lower difficulty. You do you, buddy.

 

[Parabalus]

That encounter wouldn't be any better with a copy pasted big bad either.

 

[Shrimp]

I think a lot of games that get lumped into the combatfag category and then considered to have poor or mediocre combat are misunderstood. They're actually explorationfag games, an underappreciated niche.

That may well be the case, but this game certainly doesn't fit into that category considering that for a majority of the game the only thing you will be exploring is a corridor.

 

[V_K]

It's a nice question, whether if they'd focused more on the encounter design they'd have made more money than by trying to make more of the kind of CRPG gesamtkunstwerk that's the only thing that crosses over from the nerd field to the mainstream.

Well, given that they have twice as many Steam reviews as Naheulbeuk and almost four times as many as Blackguards, I think the answer to that question is no.

 

[Parabalus]

Exactly. There's a great fight over a pillared pit in one of the first dungeons that really takes advantages of the games systems by placing ranged enemies out of reach and then spiders in a position to surround the party as they try to get to those enemies. The fact that most encounters subsequently just puts you on a map with enemies running towards you without any caveats or interesting, tactical conundrums is the problem here.

That's why Parabalus' harping on about difficulty makes no sense. Those settings don't change or have anything to do with the problems we're discussing.

Blackguards and Naheulbeuk wouldn't be interesting at all if they also weren't difficult.

 

[V_K]

Exactly. There's a great fight over a pillared pit in one of the first dungeons that really takes advantages of the games systems by placing ranged enemies out of reach and then spiders in a position to surround the party as they try to get to those enemies. The fact that most encounters subsequently just puts you on a map with enemies running towards you without any caveats or interesting, tactical conundrums is the problem here.

That's why Parabalus' harping on about difficulty makes no sense. Those settings don't change or have anything to do with the problems we're discussing.

Blackguards and Naheulbeuk wouldn't be interesting at all if they also weren't difficult.

Is Naheulbeuk difficult though? Granted, I didn't play it on very high difficulty because I suck at combat, but for all my sucking I found it quite easy.

 

[Grunker]

Exactly. There's a great fight over a pillared pit in one of the first dungeons that really takes advantages of the games systems by placing ranged enemies out of reach and then spiders in a position to surround the party as they try to get to those enemies. The fact that most encounters subsequently just puts you on a map with enemies running towards you without any caveats or interesting, tactical conundrums is the problem here.

That's why Parabalus' harping on about difficulty makes no sense. Those settings don't change or have anything to do with the problems we're discussing.

Blackguards and Naheulbeuk wouldn't be interesting at all if they also weren't difficult.

Is Naheulbeuk difficult though? Granted, I didn't play it on very high difficulty because I suck at combat, but for all my sucking I found it quite easy.

I played it on the highest difficulty and found the difficulty uneven but generally very satisfying. And it's certainly exponentially more difficult than something like Solasta:

Cocking up the curve

A final note must be spent on Dungeon of Naheulbeuk’s difficulty curve and subsidiarily on its encounter design, because while I must praise the game's systems design, no trees grow into Heaven. And while actually playing Dungeon of Naheulbeuk is a pleasant experience at most times, it is a somewhat... uneven experience in actual execution.

First of all, keep in mind that this reviewer played the game on its highest difficulty – 'Gzor’s Nightmare' – and highly encourages every aspiring dungeoneer to do the same, since, much like Pillars of Eternity’s Path of the Damned difficulty, the difficulty allows the game’s mechanics to shine and all its systems to assume the relevance they were meant to have. Keep Iron Man off, however, this game was clearly not meant for it. As well, you should turn off the “Retain random seed” option – for some reason, the game doesn’t change its seed on reload by default, meaning you could potentially end up in a fight where your party critically miss their first 5 efforts while your opponents critically hit theirs and be locked in it forever. I can only envision the frustration this must have caused before the option for new seeds on reload was added.

That being said, the difficulty curve is a strange one. The game places your party in a tower – the titular Dungeon of Naheulbeuk – and the first couple of fights are manageable and fairly basic. Once the game thinks you have a handle on things it cranks hard on the vice it has your nuts placed in. The old RPG formula applies here: low levels mean your characters have fewer options. This coupled with a combat system that places great importance on accuracy and good positioning (the latter of which you don’t have many tools to ensure yet) means margins for error are small and gameplay is punishing. The game is capital H Hard at this point.

This also means that the hardest (but also best!) fight of the entire game will face you very early on, while another early fight sadistically takes you from one fight directly into the next – which can be a very frustrating experience if you survived the first of these two fights by the skin of your teeth and are low on healing potions.



As the game moves on however and your party attains a level around 4, the game becomes more manageable and something approaching a “healthy” difficulty sets in - certainly harder than most RPGs, yet firmly in the "manageable"-camp. Then around level 7, things start to become too easy, and the game completes the traditional difficulty curve of an RPG: hard beginning with a fresh party, piss easy final part as you stomp the world with your overpowered gear and abilities.

But here, Dungeon of Naheulbeuk becomes a bit weird. After the initial ease of the later levels, difficulty starts going all over the place. Some fights are very easy, some somewhere in between, and some are almost as hard as the game’s first act (for instance, this is the case for one of the game's last bosses, whose mechanics are more trying and have much better design than the final boss himself). This odd rupture of the difficulty curve isn't a bad experience, though, because unlike the previous three points on the curve, at least it makes fights more unpredictable.

Unfortunately, the game also runs out of tricks at this point, and the sheer abundance of “stuff” the developers put into the game, impressive as it may be, is starting to get old. The fights of the final act are a far cry from even the basic-but-efficient ideas of earlier acts. They rehash old mechanics, and both the last boss and the game's “secret boss” have identical “burst down the only relevant enemy” gimmicks that deprive them of any joy and fun decision-making - dead is the natural flow of earlier stages. It doesn’t help that both of these bosses have a very limited toolkit or that the final boss attempts to introduce a creative mechanic which doesn’t end up affecting how you play the fight much. In fact, the most interesting part of both of these fights is how they attempt to use their “trash” mobs. Even if these mobs are basic enemies, their toolkits really gum up the gimmicks of the boss fights in ways that highlight that the game is best when it relies on the strength of its systems to carry it.