Solasta: Crown of the Magister Early Access Preview - Page 3
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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.
