Solasta: Crown of the Magister

You can't play with the characters you create in this demo, so don't waste a lot of time tl making a party.

I played the Demo. This game is definitely worth your time if you're a D&D fan.

Demo was solid, looking forward to this one.

Started it up and I'm already very impressed. Your original characters are created with various personality attributes which shape the different dialogue options that are available to them. Yes... this is a game where your original characters are not mute but are, in fact, actual characters. The tutorial is done in the form of the old standby of 'group meets at an inn and tells a tale of a hardship they faced on the way there' where the most relevant character for each archetypical behaviour is used for the different solo segments.

The engine and way in which you interact with the world is top notch. Its actually better than the Baldur's Gate 3 one in many ways... The character graphics aren't anywhere near what you get from BG3, but this is a small developer and I'm willing to suspend my disbelief enough that it doesn't matter as much.

It seems as if they are fixing to have several possible 'campaigns' released for the game... maybe even stuff that is user created? Its a pretty exciting aspect of the 'start adventure' process as the character list is kept somewhat separate from the campaign adventure.

how much content is in the EA?

j00t said:

how much content is in the EA?

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About 10 hours worth in the EA

I am buying EA have to support these guys !

Nola said:

My complaints so far is no multiplayer, no multiclassing, character models is meh especially after playing BG3 and not having the licensing of DnD world. I'm not sure why they didn't add in multiplayer. Makes sense since it's DnD. The dev said the reason why they did not implement multiclassing it will break the game and too much of a balacining issue. The last is probably due to financial reasons. I'm sure it will cost a shit ton of money to use the DnD universe so don't expect anything from the Forgotten Realms universe to be in the game. What a shame since core of the game is done pretty damn good.

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i kind of think of it as a homebrew campaign. there's totally a place for that, as long as the core rules are still intact. this also gives them the freedom to change creature stats and stuff.

once a year my DM does a weekend blitz where like 20 of us get together and play as many 3 hours sessions as we can fit in. there's an over-arching story going on, but it's basically a convergence between as many fantasy worlds as he can think of. each session is in a different portal with the goal that we have to close as many as possible. but because we are leaving our home plane, the things we run into don't necessarily operate the same way. we might get a bugbear that has a dragon's acid breath, or dragons that operate like elementals, goblins that have the same ability as zombies that let them come back to life.

if you play enough dnd, you start to easily plan out battles when you see the same creatures all the time. with solasta not having a license, they can mix stuff up at will and keep it all fresh

Nola said:

My complaints so far is no multiplayer, no multiclassing, character models is meh especially after playing BG3 and not having the licensing of DnD world. I'm not sure why they didn't add in multiplayer. Makes sense since it's DnD. The dev said the reason why they did not implement multiclassing it will break the game and too much of a balacining issue. The last is probably due to financial reasons. I'm sure it will cost a shit ton of money to use the DnD universe so don't expect anything from the Forgotten Realms universe to be in the game. What a shame since core of the game is done pretty damn good.

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The document that they can draw from is only the core mechanics of 5E and not even the entirety of that. They're doing the best they can with what they have. Not to mention they're a tiny studio funded by a Kickstarter. The game is amazing given their circumstances.

Armadon said:

Why the fuck do I always get crit in any RPG tutorial and die. I was on the bridge tutorial and the god damn wolf rolled a 20 and killed me. Yup that's my RPG life.

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That's by design... It's a tutorial about using disengage to avoid the wolf. Disengage and then push the boulder.

This is a small indy developer. 17 people in the whole team. If they can do this with such a small group I have high hopes for whatever this will lead to down the road. They could be the next Larian in tadpole form.

Some talents and class abilities don't currently work properly, but that is to be expected with an Early Access game. They patched a bunch of them this AM but there are still a few I noticed as non-functional. Its a shame that their overall art is low quality as they really have nailed the D&D adventuring party aspect quite well. I'm still shocked at how my created characters have voices and personalities that are consistent with how I made them.

Its like they took the white paper for StoryBricks and said 'oh yeah... we can totally do that' and then promptly succeeded.

Were I Larian I would swiftly acquire these people with a fraction of my BG3 EA bux and throw my art interns on the project.

One thing to note is that light is incredibly important in this game. If your target is in dim light you are at a disadvantage when attacking and that is huge. It means that having a party member with a torch or a caster that had used a Light cantrip on one of their equipped items is a big deal as is keeping that person near anyone who needs to see.

What this also means is that having a rogue who can see in the dark is similarly a massive advantage because they can sneak up to baddies and eviscerate them while everything without darkvision is at a disadvantage to hit them.

Man, I am just getting started but it feels so D&D, so far so good. I am in the initial starting area and really capturing 5e playstyle.

No multiplayer is disappointing, especially after how fun the Original Sin is coop, but can live with it. Making any game multiplayer is exponentially harder.