Solasta: Crown of the Magister Review - Page 4
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As a result, the game's pillars come together to create a unique and memorable experience both in and out of combat. I do, however, wish there was a way to speed up combat animations. I also wouldn't mind it if Solasta focused more on non-combat challenges like traps and puzzles.
And, if you're someone who enjoys crafting adventures of your own, there's always the Dungeon Maker tool. I don't really know if it will ever have the impressive functionality of Neverwinter Nights' editor, but even in beta, it allows you to easily create and share custom dungeons. With the currently available tools, I can easily see some people putting together tense combat-focused modules where resources are scarce and each encounter is deadly, and that's as good a start as any.
Technical Information
Solasta is built using the Unity Engine, but for the most part, it doesn't run too bad. As mentioned earlier, there are plenty of knobs to adjust and sliders to fine-tune, so you should theoretically be fine here performance-wise. There were however a couple of areas where no matter what I did, my frames tanked way below acceptable levels, but that didn't happen too often.
Having played Solasta for the first time as a pre-Kickstarter demo, camera controls were one of my biggest worries about this project. But those issues seem to have been fixed by now. There was a couple of spots in the release build where the camera refused to cooperate, but once again, those were the rare exceptions.
I did encounter quite a few bugs, but they were fairly minor, like a certain special attack not dealing full damage or a particular attribute tome being unusable. Hopefully, these will get sorted out shortly, because right now, they're not exactly few and far between. Still, at least the game itself is stable and doesn't seem prone to crashing.
Visually, Solasta looks mighty fine when observed from the usual isometric angle. During the conversational close-ups however, the game's modest budget becomes more apparent, which once again raises the question of why even go the cinematic route. Other than that, some animations can be a bit wonky, especially when firing bows and using the Spider Climb spell.
The save system is pretty much ideal with manual, quick, and autosaves. Though if you're someone who doesn't use a couple of rotating save slots, you should be aware that they're capped at 50 in Solasta.
And one last thing to mention here is the game's UI. It's really well-made and functional, but perhaps a bit too functional. This is a fantasy game. And while that doesn't necessarily mean everything should be stylized to look like ancient scrolls and parchments, I do expect item descriptions of more than a single dry sentence. And even for those rare items that do have detailed descriptions, their text box is tiny and annoying to scroll.
Conclusion
While at times it can feel like Solasta: Crown of the Magister is trying to bite off more than it can chew, the overall experience remains enjoyable throughout this D&D-based title. The developers seem to understand what makes an RPG fun to play and they do their best to stay true to their creative vision. You add to that an opportunity to play a digital adaptation of the 5th Edition of Dungeons & Dragons, and you get a game no RPG enthusiast should overlook. This here is a new RPG from a passionate team with fresh ideas. Let's just hope that for their next project, Tactical Adventures manages to implement those ideas a bit better.
