Solasta Solasta II - coming to Early Access in 2025

[Mortmal]

No dungeon creator guaranteed...

Do you mean there is definitely no dungeon creator in Solasta 2 or there might be but they cannot guarantee it?

They cannot guarantee it.

 

[Shrimp]

No dungeon creator guaranteed...

Do you mean there is definitely no dungeon creator in Solasta 2 or there might be but they cannot guarantee it?

The latter, since they switched to a new engine they're still not sure whether or not they'll be able to make one in time (or at all)

 

[Cryomancer]

Is 5e confirmed?

I will buy it but I prefer other ruleset(except 4e and pf2e aka 4e 2e)

 

[Orud]

From the livestream; it's 5e, not 5.5e... which is good.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Looks pretty enough. Hopefully the content is better this time around. I still haven't been able to force myself to finish (or even play much, frankly) the first one. And don't drip feed us classes again, pl0x.

We want to have all 12 classes at 1.0 launch. Just to set things straight, the 1st time around it was simply because our size / budget did not allow us to do that. It's not like we wanted to make a D&D game with only 6 classes, but we were like 15-20 people and it was our first game and money don't grow on no money tree... So yea, no promises but we'll do our best to have 'em all this time.

More important than a large number of character classes is having a larger party size than the meager four PCs in the first Solasta:

• Larger party size, at minimum 6 PCs versus the current 4, to boost diversity of party composition, increase replayability, and improve combat
• Wilderness exploration, rather than merely selecting a destination on a map
• Proper dungeons with non-linearity and puzzles, rather than a mostly linear sequence of fights
• More logistics and other effects to improve exploration
• Decent cosmetic aspects in the character creator (cf. Dragon's Dogma) with vastly improved faces

 

[AdolfSatan]

KOTC1 is one of the greatest RPGs ever and it only has three available classes for a party of four. KOTC2, despite expanding on both of those aspects felt unsatisfying in comparison.
Dark Sun SL is also an adventure for four characters and a top tier classic.
Party size is irrelevant, what makes or breaks an rpg is having great adventure modules.

 

[Harthwain]

Huh, they dumped Unity. This is an Unreal Engine game.

I am not surprised. They likely want to avoid any potential payment per installation coming back in the future. Slay the Spire 2 isn't done in Unity either.

 

[scytheavatar]

From the livestream; it's 5e, not 5.5e... which is good.

What's wrong with 5.5e? I thought the consensus is that it is more or less 5e but slightly better. People hope for more changes but it is hard to argue that it makes 5e worse.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Dark Sun SL is also an adventure for four characters and a top tier classic.
Party size is irrelevant, what makes or breaks an rpg is having great adventure modules.

A good tactical turn-based combat system is wasted on a mere four-character party. Solasta falls very much into the Tactical RPG subgenre; although there are many games with turn-based combat, most of them lack the focus on combat inherent in this subgenre (and the majority have combat that isn't tactical in nature). Although I'm urging the developers to attempt a semblance of exploration (at least for dungeons, and preferably for the wilderness as well) in the sequel, I expect the focus on combat to be maintained, and the best way to improve it is to increase party size.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

They even have a guy with a ffp2 mask :]

 

[IDtenT]

From the livestream; it's 5e, not 5.5e... which is good.

It will be 5.24 if the SRD releases in time.

 

[Reinhardt]

so between module creator and derpy faces+pronouns they decided to keep latter?

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

so between module creator and derpy faces+pronouns they decided to keep latter?

People should be doing what their talent allows.

 

[Artyoan]

The switch to Unreal puts a lot of question marks on the whole thing. That was my biggest takeaway from the twitch dev Q&A. From subclasses, to modding capabilities, to verticality, to the dungeon maker, they don't seem sure of what they can actually accomplish or carry over. That's a whole lot of risk for a small company. Hope the pros outweigh the cons in the end.

 

[AdolfSatan]

Dark Sun SL is also an adventure for four characters and a top tier classic.
Party size is irrelevant, what makes or breaks an rpg is having great adventure modules.

A good tactical turn-based combat system is wasted on a mere four-character party. Solasta falls very much into the Tactical RPG subgenre; although there are many games with turn-based combat, most of them lack the focus on combat inherent in this subgenre (and the majority have combat that isn't tactical in nature). Although I'm urging the developers to attempt a semblance of exploration (at least for dungeons, and preferably for the wilderness as well) in the sequel, I expect the focus on combat to be maintained, and the best way to improve it is to increase party size.

My mention of KOTC1 still stands, RPGs don’t get much more combat focused than that, and there are plenty of situations to exercise one’s tacticool skillz in the game. I’m not against the idea of a bigger party, but if I had to choose, I would rather expend limited resources in developing a well-crafted module, based on one of the many excellent one-shot supplements for D&D than adding more flavors to what would otherwise remain a bland game.

 

[Roguey]

"Should we build on top of what we already made or start from scratch for our sequel?"

"Let's start from scratch."

 

[Artyoan]

"Should we build on top of what we already made or start from scratch for our sequel?"

"Let's start from scratch."

Also the case with the lore. New continent, not mentioned in the source book I believe.

I wonder if they will still have an emphasis on light. Soraks were a faction where light mattered to weaken them. Not sure I've seen anything about emphasis on a lighting system this time around.

 

[rojay]

The switch to Unreal puts a lot of question marks on the whole thing. That was my biggest takeaway from the twitch dev Q&A. From subclasses, to modding capabilities, to verticality, to the dungeon maker, they don't seem sure of what they can actually accomplish or carry over. That's a whole lot of risk for a small company. Hope the pros outweigh the cons in the end.

Surely they'll keep the verticality? It would be a real shame if they lose the dungeon maker or if it is less functional than what they made in the first game, but verticality is pretty key to the appeal.

 

[rogueknight333]

More important than a large number of character classes is having a larger party size than the meager four PCs in the first Solasta:

• Larger party size, at minimum 6 PCs versus the current 4, to boost diversity of party composition, increase replayability, and improve combat
• Wilderness exploration, rather than merely selecting a destination on a map
• Proper dungeons with non-linearity and puzzles, rather than a mostly linear sequence of fights
• More logistics and other effects to improve exploration
• Decent cosmetic aspects in the character creator (cf. Dragon's Dogma) with vastly improved faces

If the original game is any guide, any official content is going to be mediocre at best, but vastly better exploration, dungeons and logistics could be easily provided by player-created dungeons if the game included a toolset that was even half as good as that in NWN. I believe there is already a mod for Solasta 1 allowing one to play 6-character parties. Of course playing the official campaign with 6 would be a problem since the encounters were not balanced around having that many party members (and they are already far too easy), but again player created encounters could address that.

Cosmetic elements could also be addressed by an easily moddable game. Actually I was not myself much bothered by the faces in Solasta but that might be due to playing parties heavy on short people. Halfling and Gnome faces for whatever reason look relatively better than the other races, and traditionally dwarves are supposed to be ugly, so they looked just right.

 

[vota DC]

What if you get the 4 party mode exploration of Solasta only when you search artifacts but your 4 characters have a kingdom to run because this Is Birthright with Solasta incorporated?

 

[Artyoan]

The switch to Unreal puts a lot of question marks on the whole thing. That was my biggest takeaway from the twitch dev Q&A. From subclasses, to modding capabilities, to verticality, to the dungeon maker, they don't seem sure of what they can actually accomplish or carry over. That's a whole lot of risk for a small company. Hope the pros outweigh the cons in the end.

Surely they'll keep the verticality? It would be a real shame if they lose the dungeon maker or if it is less functional than what they made in the first game, but verticality is pretty key to the appeal.

I don't think they'll lose it entirely but they seemed to be unsure of how much of it there would be and in what form, as compared to the first game. Some of the screenshots show that it isn't entirely flat anyway.

 

[Alienman]

The switch to Unreal puts a lot of question marks on the whole thing. That was my biggest takeaway from the twitch dev Q&A. From subclasses, to modding capabilities, to verticality, to the dungeon maker, they don't seem sure of what they can actually accomplish or carry over. That's a whole lot of risk for a small company. Hope the pros outweigh the cons in the end.

And you will need a 6080 RTX to run it proper.

 

[Shrimp]

"Should we build on top of what we already made or start from scratch for our sequel?"

"Let's start from scratch."

Also the case with the lore. New continent, not mentioned in the source book I believe.

I wonder if they will still have an emphasis on light. Soraks were a faction where light mattered to weaken them. Not sure I've seen anything about emphasis on a lighting system this time around.

I'll fully admit I forgot the game even had a lighting system as one of its major combat mechanics, but didn't they already massively turn this down between its early access versions and the 1.0 launch?
I seem to vaguely recall them decreasing some of the darkness related disadvantages out of concern for either balancing or difficulty. No idea if it'll even be present in the sequel and I don't care enough to carefully inspect the gameplay frames in the trailer to see if I can find any traces that might indicate its inclusion

 

[Lacrymas]

"Should we build on top of what we already made or start from scratch for our sequel?"

"Let's start from scratch."

Also the case with the lore. New continent, not mentioned in the source book I believe.

I wonder if they will still have an emphasis on light. Soraks were a faction where light mattered to weaken them. Not sure I've seen anything about emphasis on a lighting system this time around.

I'll fully admit I forgot the game even had a lighting system as one of its major combat mechanics, but didn't they already massively turn this down between its early access versions and the 1.0 launch?
I seem to vaguely recall them decreasing some of the darkness related disadvantages out of concern for either balancing or difficulty. No idea if it'll even be present in the sequel and I don't care enough to carefully inspect the gameplay frames in the trailer to see if I can find any traces that might indicate its inclusion

The entire thing can be circumvented by playing races which have darkvision. Which is most of them. Maybe that's why you didn't notice the darkness mechanics.

 

[Lagole Gon]

I don't get the 6-person party fetish some people seem to have.
When replaying IE classics, I find myself gravitating towards 4-5 characters.

Eh, it depends on other game design elements, I suppose. Dungeon of Naheulbeuk worked great with 7-8.