Solasta: Crown of the Magister Paid Copy

Solasta: Crown of the Magister

Platforms: PC
Reviewed on: PC
Reviewer: Maiyannah Bishop
Review Play-Time: 17h
Developer: Tactical Adventures
Publisher: Tactical Adventures
Released: 2021-05-27
Review Published: 2023-08-04

Not Recommended
While Solasta achieves the admirable goal of making a decent framework for a CRPG off of only patreon funds, a hope, and a dream, it fails to make an engaging game with the tools it has fashioned itself. This is on the bad side of neutral, ultimately, the story it tells is rote and the game underneath is … just D&D 5th Edition, warts and all, which I don't think it gets to claim credit for. An alright timewaster on a deep sale, not worthy of consideration for full price.
Solasta: Crown of the Magister
Date published: Aug 4, 2023
2 / 3 stars

Solasta: Crown of the Magister is a traditional computer role-playing game developed and published by Tactical Adventures through fundraising from Patreon. I always somewhat cringe when I put myself to the task of reviewing a crowdfunded game if I am honest, because the thing about crowdfunded games, as we have aptly seen with examples like Star Citizen, is once a charlatan has power over someone, they are very unlikely to admit fault of these games. This review, frankly, is not for them however, it is for people asking whether Solasta is worth playing for someone whom, like me, is looking for a CRPG fix without paying the huge price tag certain other recent new releases command. In short? Solasta has made for itself fairly competent tools, a good (though not flawless) implementation of the 5th Edition D&D rules, but the game it presents and story it tells is middling at the best of times. It is not one I can recommend outside of a deep sale, and even then - buy it knowing you're not going to be blown away. This is a painfully average game at the best of times.

  • decent user interface in most places

  • items for “quick shopping” is very helpful in terms of expedience

  • crafting gets done/queued in the background while you travel overland

  • cannot queue items, so each and every item stops you to make another

  • user interface suffers from the (subjectively) ugly minimalist design that plagues games recently

  • a lot of false choice in the dialogue, whereby it appears you get multiple approaches to say something, but in reality theres the wrong approach that will then loop you back to the right one

  • this also carries over to both false choice and lack of choice in the main plot, most of this plot is on rails - this also leads to times it tells you that you MUST travel to a place, wehre you won’t have the food to properly do so, if youre not careful

  • have to backtrack through several screens (and lose progress) in character creation if you want to change equipment - front-loading equipment choice before you decide attributes and skills is a very strange choice (a 5th ed choice, to be fair, but we don’t have to inherit its weaknesses along with its strengths)

  • one section with an old imperial mage that keeps stopping you on the road really needs to learn that “intentionally annoying” is still annoying. This section really feels like “we’re trying to pad out the run-time of our story” - even moreso than the expedition dump I originally though it would be.

  • turn based fights quickly drag on a lot with any number of combatants
  • secondary presentation (ie, stopping for spell things etc) only adds onto this

  • metamagic feats mean you have to select to use or ignore them EVERY TIME YOU CAST - which is annoying and drags down flow even more

  • tutorial is good at explaining core concepts - several times over (compare being taught stealth as wizard to avoid orcs, and then having a stealth mission where it once again teaches stealth)

  • this along with the game stopping flow constantly for popup boxes make the tutorials more of the “annoying” than “helpful” variety, which reduces their effectiveness considerably

  • some core classes relegated to dlc
  • character appareances “like play-dough”
  • really bad lip-syncing