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

[ERYFKRAD]

Just suffered a total party kill against spiders.



Guess I'll have to try harder or not play iron man next time.

Which spiders?

Aren't all spiders Generic-Giant-Spider s?

Nah, some are his cousins.
There's at least one grandma somewhere, but we haven't seen her since we set her house on fire.

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

There's at least one grandma somewhere, but we haven't seen her since we set her house on fire.

Good times.

 

[IDtenT]

Just suffered a total party kill against spiders.



Guess I'll have to try harder or not play iron man next time.

Which spiders?

The ones in the library.

 

[IDtenT]

Spotted one new location, and one new secret in my new game and I haven't even left the first dungeon!

So far it's going... worse. Did forgo the stat rolls and used the standard array this time though for that balanced factor. Fighter, Cleric, Ranger, Wizard.

 

[IDtenT]

Finished the tower for the first time and then died to bandits finding my camp.

Getting better at building my party though.

 

[Morenatsu.]

This game looks like shit.

 

[Sacibengala]

This game looks like shit.

Agree on dialogue and character models and voice work, they're really bad. but the levels and combat are good enough

 

[Fedora Master]

This game looks like shit.

Agree on dialogue and character models and voice work, they're really bad. but the levels and combat are good enough

DND 5E isn't good by any measure.

 

[Morenatsu.]

‘This game is the most accurate adaptation of 5E evar!!’

You know, you can always just play the actual 5E and let CRPGs be their own thing. Instead of simping for AI-generated video games.

 

[Cryomancer]

you can always just play the actual 5E and let CRPGs be their own thing.

You mean like Sword Coast Legends?

 

[Morenatsu.]

you can always just play the actual 5E and let CRPGs be their own thing.

You mean like Sword Coast Legends?

That's a CRPG?

 

[Cryomancer]

you can always just play the actual 5E and let CRPGs be their own thing.

You mean like Sword Coast Legends?

That's a CRPG?

Semantics are unrelevant. My point is that the best D&D "video games" are faithful to the ruleset. The worsts like Warriors of the Waterdeep, sword coast legends and so on don't care about rules. In case of Knights of the Chalice 2, they changed many rules but the changes aren't to dumb down the game.

 

[Morenatsu.]

you can always just play the actual 5E and let CRPGs be their own thing.

You mean like Sword Coast Legends?

That's a CRPG?

Semantics are unrelevant. My point is that the best D&D "video games" are faithful to the ruleset. The worsts like Warriors of the Waterdeep, sword coast legends and so on don't care about rules. In case of Knights of the Chalice 2, they changed many rules but the changes aren't to dumb down the game.

‘I think CRPGs should be CRPGs, not tabletop RPGs’
‘So you mean they should be action-mobile-retardo-popamole games? ’

stfu retard

 

[Cryomancer]

‘I think CRPGs should be CRPGs, not tabletop RPGs’

My point is simple. The best CRPG's which adapt P&P RPG's are a bit faithful to the source material. Pathfinder Kingmaker, Temple of Elemental Evil and so on.

 

[Morenatsu.]

‘I think CRPGs should be CRPGs, not tabletop RPGs’

My point is simple. The best CRPG's which adapt P&P RPG's are a bit faithful to the source material. Pathfinder Kingmaker, Temple of Elemental Evil and so on.

Faithful adaptation of a ruleset made for pen-and-paper with actual people is beside the point in a computer game, so having that be the entire point of the game's existence is entirely pointless, because it's not the same and only dumb nerds care. And if I did care, I wouldn't want it to be 5E anyway.

Solassturd looks ugly, banal, shit, boring, but it's okay because muh DnD? I just don't get it because I'm retarded and not a real RPG fan, right. But I don't want to play some sterile implementation of mechanics in some bland imitation of a genre, that's shit. Guess who does, that's right, fucking Codexers. Wasting time on some trash that came out yesterday because it has some ‘gameplay’ and literally nothing else (more like they have negative features lmao) is the very definition of Codexian. You aren't even playing video games, you're all just looking for systems that match your assumptions of what an RPG is. Who gives a fuck that your fake-DnD computer game is slightly less fake than the last one? As real as the rules supposedly are, it's more fake in the ways that actually matter.

If something isn't an actual classic CRPG, I don't give a shit. No, Kuckmaker is not the best, it came out yesterday, so obviously it sucks. Like, duh.

 

[IDtenT]

Decided to finalize my party and play without iron man this time. What concerned me was that someone in this thread mentioned that near the end there are death puzzles and I don't want to deal with that shit... I'd never play again if that happened. So I'm expecting the game to get pretty easy now, as bad results seem to be because of bad rolls and not really difficult encounters. I've already noticed that my playing style has become more lackadaisical which isn't great and is not as enjoyable.

I haven't been playing as much as I would have liked this weekend. Haven't got to the game after the tower yet, which by most accounts on here have a steep decline both in content and difficult. The latter is probably partially 5e's fault, which if you think about it from a role playing perspective high level characters /should/ find adventuring easier, and the rest is item bloat which admittedly is weird for DnD and not very faithful to previous cRPG versions thereof.

The biggest mechanical flaws for me relate to both party size and how death is handled; both things which wouldn't be problems in a tabletop campaign. Let your party reroll a lvl 1 character or pay for a lvl x hireling. Losing the game because a character died is retarded and punishes the player with the /game/ instead of punishing the party for failing in combat. The other is being restricted to 4 playing characters, but why? Seems like an arbitrary requirement to avoid balancing encounters.

I don't mind the side quests re-utilizing locations; I actually think it's quite a good idea if the encounters are well designed and adds flavour to previous settings as well as allow you to reclaim loot. It's nothing like Dragon Age re-utilizing maps for every imaginable location.

 

[Miner 2049er]

I just jumped into this game with the Lost Valley campaign and I'm having a blast. I love the character personality presets. Like in Wizardry 8, but taken a step further. I always adored this system and wondered why no other game tried to copy or expand on it.
Fully developed party members like in Baldurs Gate ect may have better writing, but I prefer how generic DnD characters, I have created, come to life and express their personality. The dialogs in Solasta reflect that. E.g. my ranger with the egoism trait often presents suggestions what's best for the party, while altruistic characters offer different solutions.

The degree of vertical exploration is very nice for a DnD game. I think I didn't enjoy a DnD RPG this much since ToEE.
I loved The Ruins of Myth Drannor too, so obviously I don't know RPG. What you can't take from that game, is having the most massive dungeon, even Mia Khalifa had problems swallowing, in the history of RPGs.
I feel 5th edition is a downgrade from 3.5, but I can enjoy the slick novelty, at least for playing through both campaigns.

My party is:

- a Paladin of Tirmar (the first Pally I have played since Baldurs Gate 1, because they just were the worst of both worlds from cleric and fighter; in Solasta they seem to be superior to barbarians and even fighters.

- a Swift Blade Ranger (she's a beast and dual wields without penalties from the beginning..what the ?! )

- a Battle Cleric (always the heart of a party, because potions are for pussies)

- and....a Half-Orc Sellsword Court Mage.....Wizard (yeah, not exactly min-maxing, but I originally tried a druid and found too much overlap with the ranger chick and feared regretting having no Int expert in the team, so I restarted with a wizzy. He is called Castaneda and has this Don Juan personality.

 

[Late Bloomer]

I just jumped into this game with the Lost Valley campaign and I'm having a blast. I love the character personality presets. Like in Wizardry 8, but taken a step further. I always adored this system and wondered why no other game tried to copy or expand on it.
Fully developed party members like in Baldurs Gate ect may have better writing, but I prefer how generic DnD characters, I have created, come to life and express their personality. The dialogs in Solasta reflect that. E.g. my ranger with the egoism trait often presents suggestions what's best for the party, while altruistic characters offer different solutions.

The degree of vertical exploration is very nice for a DnD game. I think I didn't enjoy a DnD RPG this much since ToEE.
I loved The Ruins of Myth Drannor too, so obviously I don't know RPG. What you can't take from that game, is having the most massive dungeon, even Mia Khalifa had problems swallowing, in the history of RPGs.
I feel 5th edition is a downgrade from 3.5, but I can enjoy the slick novelty, at least for playing through both campaigns.

My party is:

- a Paladin of Tirmar (the first Pally I have played since Baldurs Gate 1, because they just were the worst of both worlds from cleric and fighter; in Solasta they seem to be superior to barbarians and even fighters.

- a Swift Blade Ranger (she's a beast and dual wields without penalties from the beginning..what the ?! )

- a Battle Cleric (always the heart of a party, because potions are for pussies)

- and....a Half-Orc Sellsword Court Mage.....Wizard (yeah, not exactly min-maxing, but I originally tried a druid and found too much overlap with the ranger chick and feared regretting having no Int expert in the team, so I restarted with a wizzy. He is called Castaneda and has this Don Juan personality.

Please oh please post a screenshot of that party. Sounds hilarious.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The biggest mechanical flaws for me relate to both party size and how death is handled; both things which wouldn't be problems in a tabletop campaign. Let your party reroll a lvl 1 character or pay for a lvl x hireling. Losing the game because a character died is retarded and punishes the player with the /game/ instead of punishing the party for failing in combat. The other is being restricted to 4 playing characters, but why? Seems like an arbitrary requirement to avoid balancing encounters.

Yes, one of the greatest weaknesses of Solasta is the limitation of party size to 4 PCs, which hampers party customization and replayability.

Solasta was intended from the start to be a combat-focused game, and therefore it's understandable that exploration was short-changed in favor of combat mechanics, but even so it was quite disappointing for there to be a complete lack of wilderness exploration, with the player instead selecting a destination from the map and then watching the party gradually traverse a road. Similarly, although dungeons would inevitably serve primarily as combat arenas, there could have been some attempt at creating larger dungeons with a degree of non-linearity and puzzles to be solved.

 

[Cryomancer]

I don't think that 4 party members is such huge problem because mostly of my favorite 2E AD&D games has 4 party limit. Dark Sun : Wake of The Ravager has you creating 4 party members. Menzoberranzan, Ravenloft, Strahd possession & stone prophet has you creating 2 characters and being able to recruit other 2.

 

[IDtenT]

Let me rather ask this question, is it possible to make a custom campaign that's not a four character party? Is it possible to have a PC death and play on? Could you hire in a player created character etc.

I'm more thinking of it as a potential 5e platform.

 

[Fedora Master]

I find Lost Valley a bit confusing. It seems to me that I'm stuck in a position where I have to fight an outpost garrison but those guys are tough as fuck. Not sure if I'm supposed to do that.

 

[IDtenT]

From what I've read Lost Valley is not linear, so you do run the risk of early high difficulty encounters.

BTW, another mechanical problem I forgot to mention is how the game has no retreat options for encounters.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

From what I've read Lost Valley is not linear, so you do run the risk of early high difficulty encounters.

BTW, another mechanical problem I forgot to mention is how the game has no retreat options for encounters.

Plenty of time to retreat after you have won.

 

[Grunker]

This game looks like shit.

Agree on dialogue and character models and voice work, they're really bad. but the levels and combat are good enough

Individual battle maps generally have great level design, but saying that level design in general is good is a misnomer. Most maps are completely linear or very small. Most boil down to a funnel for encounters. In any case, the encounter design is so weak it doesn't matter.