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

[gurugeorge]

They pretty much nailed everything in the gameplay, UI, art design and graphics, and they were starting to be more consistent with the exploration, quest and encounter design in the Lost Valley. If they just keep going the way they're going, sort out the faces (get rid of that weird graphic "fuzziness" in the skin on the faces, have at least a few handsome/pretty faces to choose from, as well as the ugly and plain ones, and improve the aging slider) and get a few more voice actors in, the sequel's gonna be great.

I wouldn't expect "better" voice acting because the goofiness of the dialogue is part of the charm; but rather "more" - I want more than 4 or 5 actual "characters" to play around with, I want more variety and more scenery-chewing in the voice acting, say another 4 different actors, and some further iteration on the cool personality type thing, tying it in with more varied backgrounds (with the impact of ancestries and backgrounds being balanced out a bit more, as opposed to always having to pick a Half Elf Lowlife - or maybe just being able to mix and match more, as per UB). The limitation on character voices is the equivalent of having like only half a dozen character portraits in older games, it's kind of frustrating, where really you need lots and lots to choose from, so you can expand your sense of what personalities you could possibly create.

I think TA were a bit cautious with the way they doled out feats and such in this first game - which makes sense. But as the UB mod has shown, you can have quite an expansion of feats without things getting too OP, horizontal expansion just offers more tricks and options, therefore more fun, and makes progression more comfy.

(Oh and can we have an option to turn off the grids and circles (except for selected character) ffs, and have spinnable bespokeable formations like in most other games of this type. And maybe a bit more stylization in the look of the UI - without changing its functionality by so much as a ba' hair Oh and one other QOL thing - in character creation, being able to go "backwards" without losing your choices, and being able to change earlier things without losing later changes, unless of course the new earlier changes have knock-on effects.)

They really don't need to change much about the basics of the game for a second run at it. IMHO the foundation is really solid.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

The mundane writing added a lot to it, you really get the point that these are just mercs doing their jobs.

 

[Reinhardt]

fugg, is that our famous dress wearing brazilian bipoc of color?

 

[J1M]

I would much rather see them continue to build their ecosystem than see them spend all their profits on a sequel with better graphics and fewer features.

 

[Artyoan]

I would much rather see them continue to build their ecosystem than see them spend all their profits on a sequel with better graphics and fewer features.

To me, this really depends on whether they build a new game around user generated content and focusing on capabilities to that end. If they are going to lay a new foundation, make it count. Otherwise, Solasta has solid combat and a modding community willing to stick around even with current limitations.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I would much rather see them continue to build their ecosystem than see them spend all their profits on a sequel with better graphics and fewer features.

I would agree, but several things scream "placeholder". A good coat of paint would help severely.

 

[gurugeorge]

I would much rather see them continue to build their ecosystem than see them spend all their profits on a sequel with better graphics and fewer features.

I would agree, but several things scream "placeholder". A good coat of paint would help severely.

Yeah it would bump the game (or the next one) into more like proper AAA territory level of quality, where you expect a high level of polish and attention to detail. The game has a lot of attention to detaill, but for this type of game where you want to see a world in miniature, the more richly detailed it is, the more delightful (up to a point).

Oh, some other words of praise: the music's great of course, but I also really like the loadscreen paintings (which look like they're from concept art) - they're really well done and evocative of the types of places they depict (not that I've been in a Necromancer's lair, but you know what I mean ). Maybe they need another round of concept art from that artist.

 

[IDtenT]

If there is a Solasta II, can it please be made in a decent engine like Unreal Engine and not Unity?

 

[prodigydancer]

I've been rather busy lately (family stuff mostly) so I'm somewhat late to this discussion. But I genuinely wonder why does everybody praise this game so much? A disclamer: I acknowledge that the devs did implement some parts of 5E SRD more or less faithfully. Aside from that obvious fact, is there anything else good about Solasta?

I've only played the CotM campaign. Maybe LV is better but I doubt it. The game has too many fundamental flaws.

First of all, it's not even an RPG. It's a story-driven (to put it mildly) tactics game where combat essentially means using the same thing nearly all the time. Unless you are facing a dragon, the winning strategy is to turtle under the Spirit Guardians dome and focus fire enemies one by one in the usual order: spellcasters > weaklings > tough guys. If there is a choke point, use terrain/wall spells to abuse it. That's it.

Positioning somewhat matters in theory but doesn't in practice because story missions and encounters routinely force you to defend in an unfavorable spot (which is especially stupid when you're supposedly the ambushing side in a random encoutner). You can actually do something clever about positioning in certail optional fights and those are the only enjoyable ones.

It's not just combat though. Everything's really bad in Solasta. The setting is the laziest generic fantasy I've ever seen which is a bit of an achievement but not in a praiseworthy sense. I mean "Cataclysm", really? They couldn't even come up with a less generic name for the defining event. The story is "kill all the bad guys" completely on rails. There are no choices, no consequences and no free exploration. Adding insult to injury, right before the final mission a minor NPC basically lectured my party about knowing their place. Girl, you didn't have to. Your whole cardboard world had been giving us the same lecture for 60 hours.

The writing is the dumpster fire grade garbage, the dialogues are worse than NWN2 OC (I didn't think it was possible). Ironically, character models look like they were imported from NWN2 too almost 20 years later. I don't know why the devs are so insistent on all those close up cutscenes where your party just stands in a line. A typical cutscene in Solasta is ugly puppets standing in one place and spewing out horribly voice acted absolute nonsense one line at a time. Sometimes bad games at least have nice music, but this isn't the case.

Objectively, even Sword Coast Legends was a better game (just not really a D&D game) and that's coming from someone who played SCL once and would never play it again. Solasta is just a pile of trash. If you compare Solasta to an actually good tactics game (e.g. Knight's Tale), it'll be like a fight between a malnourished junkie and a heavyweight champion.

 

[Lacrymas]

Aside from that obvious fact, is there anything else good about Solasta?

No.

 

[Artyoan]

I've been rather busy lately (family stuff mostly) so I'm somewhat late to this discussion. But I genuinely wonder why does everybody praise this game so much? A disclamer: I acknowledge that the devs did implement some parts of 5E SRD more or less faithfully. Aside from that obvious fact, is there anything else good about Solasta?

The combat is solid with features not typically found in crpgs like verticality/flight and a tactical lighting system. It also has custom campaigns where the combat can take more advantage of cover systems and enemy variety. There is also a healthy modding community currently involved with it. Full party creation and, thanks to those modders, the capability of having five or six man parties as well.

If you only play the main campaigns with no mods then the game is okay-ish with those obvious faults and weird elements. Its quite a bit more capable beyond that though.

 

[whydoibother]

But I genuinely wonder why does everybody praise this game so much?

Actually implemented major/minor actions, push, shove, etc.
Verticality, climbing, flying, enemies doing these too.
Light mattering (maybe even too much).
These are all combat stuff, and out of combat the game is maybe even below average.

First of all, it's not even an RPG

Name one digital Dungeons&Dragons implementation that is a proper role playing game, where you play as a character with such and such principles, such and such desires and drives, and you are rewarded for observing them and punished for not doing it.
Certainly the Golden Age games are about as much RPGs as this.

 

[Mortmal]

It plays exactly like some official 5E module, as railroaded as them. Its not a bad thing, i prefer that to an illusion of choices , redoing the same content ten times to see a little bit of variation like in age of decadence.It's D&D and all about combat, nothing wrong with it.
CRPG are lacking compare to true tabletop rpgs, all of them , solasta is one of the less lacking.
Beside you'll see their next game it will be pathfinder second edition one, exact same template , just more tactical.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Name one digital Dungeons&Dragons implementation that is a proper role playing game, where you play as a character with such and such principles, such and such desires and drives, and you are rewarded for observing them and punished for not doing it.

Mask of the Berater

 

[J1M]

I would much rather see them continue to build their ecosystem than see them spend all their profits on a sequel with better graphics and fewer features.

I would agree, but several things scream "placeholder". A good coat of paint would help severely.

Darkest Dungeon II.

 

[Grunker]

After 14 years, I'm of a mind to support a rule that we just instaban everyone who

- says something is or isn't an rpg
- is responsible for any line of posting that leads to discussion about whether something is an rpg

especially a case as retarded as this one - and I don't even like solasta

 

[Lacrymas]

But I genuinely wonder why does everybody praise this game so much?

Actually implemented major/minor actions, push, shove, etc.
Verticality, climbing, flying, enemies doing these too.
Light mattering (maybe even too much).

These are good on paper, but they are shockingly irrelevant in practice. It's very rare that shoving something 1 square in any direction makes any kind of noticeable difference. This is doubly true in D&D 5E where movement is independent from other actions (as opposed to, say, Gloomhaven). Positioning usually requires much more impactful distances, f.e. luring an enemy away from the main group. What verticality in Solasta managed to do is force every character in the party to have a ranged weapon to swap to, that's it. The encounter *and* map design just wasn't there to support anything more dramatic. Light matters insofar as you don't play humans in order to natively negate the light maluses.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

It's very rare that shoving something 1 square in any direction makes any kind of noticeable difference

Knocking a sucker prone is advantageous.

What verticality in Solasta managed to do is force every character in the party to have a ranged weapon to swap to, that's

Why? Plenty of positions to whack them in melee.

Light matters insofar as you don't play humans in order to natively negate the light maluses.

4 human run is plenty viable

 

[whydoibother]

But I genuinely wonder why does everybody praise this game so much?

Actually implemented major/minor actions, push, shove, etc.
Verticality, climbing, flying, enemies doing these too.
Light mattering (maybe even too much).

These are good on paper, but they are shockingly irrelevant in practice. It's very rare that shoving something 1 square in any direction makes any kind of noticeable difference. This is doubly true in D&D 5E where movement is independent from other actions (as opposed to, say, Gloomhaven). Positioning usually requires much more impactful distances, f.e. luring an enemy away from the main group. What verticality in Solasta managed to do is force every character in the party to have a ranged weapon to swap to, that's it. The encounter *and* map design just wasn't there to support anything more dramatic. Light matters insofar as you don't play humans in order to natively negate the light maluses.

I mean, that's you being a munchkin. Obviously if you were ROLE PLAYING you would've made a human and solved the light via torches, or enchantments, or some spell.

 

[Lacrymas]

Being able to negate the maluses is what is wrong in the first place. What light should've been about is having some parts of the battlefield being dark and some not, so positioning and luring enemies into light actually start to matter. Munchkinism is in our blood, so adding options that only cripple you just for role playing in a computer game goes against the human soul.

 

[whydoibother]

>talks about human soul
>has no humans in his party
Perfidious elf.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Munchkinism is in our blood

Bullshit.

 

[Reinhardt]

But I genuinely wonder why does everybody praise this game so much?

you can select pronouns and with the help of fantastic face generator create true ma'am like you always wanted, so codexers are excited.

 

[Nortar]

Munchkinism is in our blood, so adding options that only cripple you just for role playing in a computer game goes against the human soul.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yes, RP is fun, but in tabletop where it actually matters. RP can in no way excuse bad mechanics in a computer game.