Introduction
A few years back, I was looking for something new to play, and by pure chance, I stumbled upon Endless Space – a sci-fi 4X strategy from Amplitude Studios. I ended up enjoying that game quite a bit, as well as its eventual spin-offs in Endless Legend and Dungeon of the Endless.
So, when Amplitude’s CEO Mathieu Girard announced his departure from the studio and the subsequent founding of Tactical Adventures – an RPG-focused outfit – I was very curious to see what they would come up with.
Fast-forward a few years and the studio’s debut project, Solasta: Crown of the Magister, is now live in early access, and you can find my thoughts on the currently available content below, along with some musings on the role-playing system fueling it all.
I Can’t Believe It’s Not THAC0
Solasta’s biggest draw is perhaps the fact that it’s a turn-based D&D game. A D&D game based on the fifth edition of Dungeons & Dragons. However, it’s important to note that Solasta uses the Dungeons and Dragons SRD 5.1 Ruleset, which is kind of like an abridged version of the Player’s Handbook distributed under the Open Gaming License.
Skipping past all the legalese, this means that Tactical Adventures has access to a limited number of races, classes, spells, and so on. On top of that, their game can’t take place anywhere near Forgotten Realms or some other official D&D world. At the same time, they’re free to expand the SRD with some unique content of their own.
Where does this leave us, then?
When it comes to races, we have Humans, Half-elves, and two flavors of Dwarves, Elves and Halflings. And probably for the first time ever in a D&D game, Humans are the single least desirable race of the bunch. I honestly don’t see a single reason why you would want to play a Human in Solasta. Not only are their racial bonuses beyond inconsequential, they’re also the only race without access to Darkvision, something that’s really nice to have in Solasta. I guess, after all these years of Humans being a great, if not the best option for pretty much any character, seeing them gutted to such a degree is just a bit strange.
As for classes, there are Fighters, Rangers, Paladins, Rogues, Clerics, and Wizards, with Sorcerers already promised as a free post-launch DLC. During the early access phase, you’ll be able to reach level 6, with the full game raising this cap all the way up to 10.
Beyond these two obvious pillars, the character creation process goes pretty deep, and the game even has a neat little character library where you can create a bunch of characters and then import 4 of them into your campaigns.
Even for something as simple as determining attribute scores, Solasta gives you more options than pretty much any other CRPG on the market. You can use a point-buy system, you can roll the dice, you can use the standard attribute array, or you can even manually set all your attributes to 18, if that’s your thing, and avoid rerolling the dice for three hours.
Then, you also get to edit your starting equipment, something very few games allow you to do. On top of all that, you also have 8 Backgrounds and the usual Alignment chart. Instead of just offering some roleplaying flavor, Backgrounds determine the character’s extra starting equipment and proficiencies, while both Backgrounds and Alignments provide you with a selection of personality tags.
Combining four of these tags creates a unique personality for the character, and this plays an important role in pretty much every interaction you’ll have in the game. Instead of any traditional dialogue system, Solasta has this thing where every interaction is voice-acted, with your characters doing most of the talking based purely on their personalities.
Now, you still get to make the decisions, but the options you get are based on who your characters are. So, for example, having a greedy character will give you an option to ask for a bigger reward, while having an aggressive one will allow you to turn some conversations into battles.
This unique conversation system flows really well and I was impressed with how vibrant and alive my characters felt despite being created simply by combining four tags and a Background.
Moving on to the roleplaying system itself. The fifth edition of D&D sits somewhere between the third and the second editions. Unfortunately, what I consider to be the main draw of the third edition, its hundreds upon hundreds of feats, is no longer a thing in the fifth. They’ve been replaced by a pitiful selection of supposedly game-changing feats you can opt to pick instead of extra attribute points when leveling up.
And you see, even the full 5E feats are for the most part very lackluster. But, since SRD doesn’t list any of those, Solasta’s developers had to come up with some feats of their own, and I don’t know if those are just placeholders, but the EA selection is beyond pathetic, with most feats simply providing an extra attribute point plus some minor bonus, like a bit of extra carrying capacity.
Skills also received a major rework compared to the earlier editions. Instead of putting points into skills as you level up, you have a Proficiency bonus that grows on its own once every few levels. When creating a character, you get to tag a number of skills, allowing that character to add their Proficiency bonus to the roll when using those skills.
Now, while this may seem pretty dire on the surface, 5E makes up for its lacking skill and feat variety with unique class features and archetypes that add a lot of flavor and some impactful choices to the leveling system.
But because the actual class is so important to how a character plays, it’s kind of unfortunate that we get such a limited number of classes. With 4 character slots and no multiclassing, you’ll probably want at least one divine caster, one arcane caster, one specialist, and someone to hold the line. This means you’re pretty much forced to pick a Cleric, a Wizard, and a Rogue unless you’re going for some challenge run. And to add insult to injury, the one already unveiled DLC class is the Sorcerer.
And let me tell you, in 5E, the Sorcerer and the Wizard are essentially the same class. There are some minor differences in how they memorize their spells, but basically, one of them is a specialist wizard, and the other one is a metamagic wizard.
It makes no sense to me why these are the classes that made the cut when the SRD has Barbarians, Bards, and Druids. How do you have only one divine spellcaster? How do you have three martial classes, and not one of them is the Barbarian? How do you have two arcane casters planned, but one of them isn’t the Bard, who can double as a specialist and is considered by some to be the strongest spellcaster in the game?
I understand budgetary concerns limiting the number of available classes, but the actual picks are beyond puzzling to me.
Then, of course, there’s the Rogue. You see, while no one was watching, Rogues somehow managed to go from trap monkeys you had to pick purely for exploration reasons to unstoppable killing machines.
Seriously, it’s like between Pathfinder: Kingmaker and Solasta the developers were competing to see who could create a more overpowered Rogue. And while Kingmaker takes the cake there thanks to its high-level campaign and abundance of magic items, Solasta’s Rogues aren’t far behind.
At one point, I was using my Rogue to scout ahead when the lights magically turned on, leaving the Rogue surrounded by ghouls, while the rest of the party was left dealing with some rabble a few rooms behind. By the time the party reached the Rogue, they witnessed what could only be described as a reenactment of that “I’m not locked in here with you, you’re locked in here with me” Watchmen scene.
You see, with how armor and attack bonuses work in 5E, it’s very easy to build a Rogue that’s all but unhittable by common enemies, while the Rogue is just a good as a Fighter at landing attacks. Not to mention that sneak attack now works on pretty much everything, including the undead. And, it seems to be very easy to qualify for it.
As an aside, the developers really need to add some indicator for when you’re about to sneak attack, because occasionally I would get one when I wasn’t expecting it, or don’t get it when I thought I should.
And the funny thing is, none of this is on the Solasta guys. I have some familiarity with tabletop 5E, but my knowledge of it is far from encyclopedic. Occasionally, some Solasta feature would raise my eyebrow, and I would go straight to the source, convinced that things must have been altered in some way. But nope, every single time, everything worked exactly as stated in the rulebook.
Still, if you’re only familiar with the video game side of Dungeons & Dragons, where up to this point it had all been about the second and third editions, you might find yourself slightly confused, since a lot of little things seem similar but in reality, are anything but.
Concentration, for example, still exists, but it’s now a way to limit the number of lingering spells you can have active at any given time. The stronger magic items now require attunement during a long rest before you can actually use them. And some things, like Weapon Finesse or extra damage for two-handing a weapon, are now baked into weapons as special tags.
But, even in the game’s current early access state, it was fun figuring out all these little differences and learning how to make them work for you. This stuff is one of the biggest draws RPGs have for me, and Solasta already has plenty of it.
All of it comes together to create a mighty satisfying combat system with a lot of potential. Back when the game was just announced, things like illumination and verticality were listed among its key features. And let me tell you, I haven’t felt as giddy when playing a new game in a very long time as I did when an enemy casually jumped up on a wall and crawled to a spot where my melee guys couldn’t reach it but it could attack my mage.
The game really makes you think in three dimensions and that feature is anything but a gimmick, even if it inadvertently results in levels filled with gaps and pillars that force your party to jump around like a herd of mountain goats while grunting suggestively. That stuff is a small price to pay for all the great encounter opportunities this whole verticality angle provides.
And while there’s not enough content in the early access build to discuss Solasta’s actual encounter design with any degree of certainty, the final dungeon you get to explore right now is already quite promising. You have some optional quests, multiple secret passages, fights you can completely avoid, fights you can talk your way out of, and even a not half-bad puzzle.
If the rest of the game can at least reach the same level, we can be looking at something spectacular here, at least when it comes to combat. However, there’s also the question of difficulty. The early access build is beyond easy, even if you opt not to rest inside dungeons, but that’s to be expected. But when it comes to the full game, I’m just not sure how realistic it is to expect encounters to be completely redesigned based on the difficulty level. I guess we’ll have to wait and see.
Regardless, what we already have in early access is a pretty faithful adaptation of the tabletop system that works really well as a tactical experience.
Story and Quests
I’m afraid the same can’t be said about the game’s narrative side. Due to a multitude of reasons, the story bits present in the current build feel disjointed at best, occasionally dipping into incoherent.
The game takes place in a fantasy world that’s been ravaged by a major cataclysm that shattered a vast elven empire, caused great chaos, and added a whole bunch of humans, gods, and assorted monsters into the mix.
And if you stop and think about the game’s setting and the campaign’s events for a moment, none of it makes any sense. You see, these humans from another world apparently fled from their ancient lizard enemies. Those enemies naturally followed them. But even though there are still elves around who lived through the whole thing, these lizards are seen as legendary creatures that don’t exist, and your early quests are focused on proving that they do. While at the same time, there’s a Paladin archetype built around an old Human tradition of fighting the very same lizards.
And don’t even get me started on how everyone seems perfectly fine with humans now living in their world, even though their arrival turned like two-thirds of the map into the barely inhabitable Badlands.
Beyond just the setting, the game’s hook is extremely weak. The game starts when your party is hired as “deputies” tasked with patrolling the above-mentioned Badlands. The job is described as highly dangerous, bordering on suicidal, but you’re not given a single good reason for doing it. In fact, for the first couple of quests, you don’t even get paid.
I could honestly go on and on about every little thing, but I hope by now you get the idea. The game’s story still needs a lot of work to become in any way satisfying.
But here’s the thing, right now the game handles its conversations in such a way, where every dialogue is like this interactable cutscene. This voice acting-heavy setup makes editing quite tricky, not to mention how annoying it makes dealing with shopkeepers.
I say the developers should keep this system for important story conversations only. Then, they should add a simple, easily edited text box for everything else, including the shops.
This approach should hopefully make it easier to pad the game with some extra NPCs too because right now, even the main hub city can feel a bit empty. And while they’re at it, the developers should really add some extra side content. At the moment, there’s not a lot of it, and what’s there is extremely basic. This results in you going from one story mission to the next in a very rushed manner. You really need some optional locations and red herrings there to not feel like you’re being given a CliffsNotes version of the campaign.
Hopefully, all that stuff is still coming. And seeing how there’s already a campaign selection screen, we may be getting some DLC or custom campaigns at some point in the future.
Technical Information
Back in the day, Endless Space was notable not only for being a competent and fun 4X strategy but also for the fact that it was a Unity Engine game that worked like an actual piece of real software and not a bunch of spaghetti code held together with duct tape. Because of this, I’m optimistic that come launch, Solasta will be able to avoid the usual pitfalls.
At the moment, it already runs well but is a bit too taxing on the GPU. And even on an SSD, the bigger levels can take a while to load.
The options menu, though, is already looking good. Beyond just robust video settings and adjustable quick and auto-save slots, there’s a separate tab for gameplay-related options where you can decide if you want your enemies to be grouped based on their initiative and whether you’d like your roll seeds to be preserved through loading. And, there’s also a tab where you can customize how the game presents its many dice rolls to you.
This being an early access release, there are bugs of course, but at the very least, the game never froze or crashed on me. Most of the bugs were just mildly annoying, like when I had to change areas for the feats I picked to start working.
Inventory management is also quite janky right now, both because of some minor bugs and the fact that the game has a crafting system that fills your bags with lots of useless junk. At the very least, that stuff should have its own inventory tab.
Speaking of crafting, right now it looks like the best way to get magic gear is to craft it, and that’s a huge negative as far as I’m concerned. Throughout all my years of playing RPGs, I’ve never met a single person who actively enjoyed crafting. At most, some people don’t mind it. I honestly have no idea why developers keep adding crafting systems to their games. I fully agree with Richard Cobbett on this one – heroes don’t craft.
Moving past that, the game’s visuals are also not where they should be just yet. The environments are sharp and pleasant, but are a bit on the generic side and lack a certain sense of artistic cohesion. The character models, though, are outright bad. And while usually, this wouldn’t be a problem at all in an isometric game, Solasta’s cinematic conversation system doesn’t quite synergize with the subpar models.
Conclusion
The early access build of Solasta: Crown of the Magister is but a taste of what’s to come. But with its fateful adaptation of the ruleset and an extremely satisfying combat engine, it’s already starting to look like a CRPG no self-respecting enthusiast would want to miss.
However, in order for Solasta to truly shine, the Tactical Adventures team still needs to polish some rough edges and take a good long look at the game’s narrative side. And if they manage that, they’ll have something spectacular on their hands.
