Tactical Lack of Words
What are the main pluses of Solasta: Crown of the Magister? Well, first of all, it’s a hardcore party RPG, the authors of which are themselves veteran role-players and therefore immediately declared the desire “to create the most accurate adaptation of the board game. Accordingly, the rules of SRD 5.1 are faithfully reproduced here.
This also concerns the process of the character generation – we choose not only the race and class, but also the hereditary traits (half-orcs, for example, are able to intimidate just by their appearance and huge height) and the prehistory (aristocrat, philosopher, wanderer, outcast, and so on). And the latter among other things affects even how often your character will swear, will he understand other languages (otherwise you just can’t talk to some races), will he become a formalist, using a lot of scientific terms, an atheist or an egoist.
And, of course, this is reflected in the turn-based tactical battles that are the main dish of Solasta. In addition to all the obligatory elements (use of height, expendable spells that can be interrupted, cover, attacking when possible when damaging those who pass the fighter, and so on) there are also many other nuances taken into account – even how lit the character your archer is trying to hit.
In addition, a lot of attention is paid to tests of reaction, surprise, initiative and anything else that allows you to catch your enemies unawares, ambush them with the right of first move (and on the global map with random encounters you can avoid battles altogether), while discouraged enemies will come to their senses and skip their turn. Finally, it’s a real vertical tactic, where not only all sorts of monsters, birds, spiders and other creatures, but your charges are able to float in the air, crawl on walls and ceilings – there are special spells for this. Or you can suspend enemies in the air, using this for your tactical purposes.
Importantly, Solasta: Crown of the Magister can and should be played in co-op. It also allows you to create your own adventures in the built-in editor.
On the downside, against this background, unfortunately, look quests (albeit non-linear, but inherently primitive), the limit of simple dialogue and pale characters who only occasionally try to bring life to the events. That is, they may utter a line to suit the mood of the character, but as a rule, it will still sound primitive. In short and to the point, Solasta: Crown of the Magister is certainly not Dragon Age, Baldur’s Gate or even Icewind Dale. Rather, it is closer to the ancient Pool of Radiance: Ruins of Myth Drannor, that is, it focuses on battles, and the non-linearity of dialogues and quests is only a tool of the tabletop system and simultaneously a consequence of its work. The tool is correct, accurately working, but implemented without soul.
Can they even talk?
And so in the Lost Valley add-on, all of these features of the game, you might say, have been expanded upon. Let’s start with the not-so-good news. The new story campaign (20 hours of passing) in terms of the quality of quests, dialogues and characters became even more dry and formal, applied.
Our group of adventurers find themselves trapped in a godforsaken valley, where they are asked to find a certain important character. As a result, we find ourselves embroiled in a showdown between the ruling despot, the rebels among his political opponents and some secret organization that is willing to pit the others against each other and frame innocent people for its own interests.
Plus there are the ordinary, peaceful citizens (considered a separate group) and the merchants/entrepreneurs from the Forge who are neutral to all. With each of us build their own relationship, which depend on discounts from merchants, the availability of tasks and the likelihood that the fighters of this faction in case of something to join our squad.
However, there are fewer options to decide who is our enemy and who is our friend than we would like. For a long time everything is subject to the will of the scriptwriters. The local ruler almost initially our enemy. In one situation, we just won’t be released from the city until we go to rescue the leader of a faction from captivity, after which all the guards and members of the government faction will start to hate us.
The quests themselves basically boil down to the classics – destroy, clean up, find, save an important character, deliver a package/message. And the ruler, instead of entrusting us to solve some conspiracy, asks us to bring him a couple of rare herbs and the heads of some particularly badass monsters that live in the valley… It’s always been a dream.
Other kinds of errands are also very simple, if not primitive. For example, we were asked to get rid of the officer, which has brought much evil to the civilians. She is standing about ten meters away, so we approach and challenge her to a fight or try to convince / intimidate. You can also steal from her ring, which she herself had cut from an important man – so she becomes more cooperative. That’s it.
Or once I was asked to convince a nobleman not to get drunk every night and not to bully everyone at the tavern. There, too, choose from a couple of options, calculating by rolling the dice the chances to talk, threaten or appeal to conscience. In the latter case, the dialogue sounds something like this: “Go away yourself, do not embarrass yourself. – “Yes, because my mother…” And he leaves. Curtain.
In general, the dialogues rarely go beyond simple lines, which are often interrupted in half a word – at times there is even a doubt in the mental abilities not only the giants with difficulty selecting words (they made their debut in the supplement), but all the characters. Talk about vivid characters, the fact that our wards are joking and animatedly arguing with each other, in general, it is just “talking heads”, responsible for one or two of their primitive lines in every conversation.
Fighting is interesting, but long.
On the other hand, that’s not to say that Lost Valley isn’t interesting. Yes, there aren’t any literary and other creative flourishes from Planescape: Torment and Pillars of Eternity, but the quests, locations, enemies, puzzles, traps, and challenges are enough to make the game fun. And when you finally find the two strange keys from the cave entrance that you saw a few hours ago, you won’t regret that there’s no long monologue or text quest about it, but rather run to check what’s hiding behind its doors.
Entering an inconspicuous looking swamp, you can go deeper, stumble upon abandoned temples, huts of witches closed by a magical barrier (a new quest will appear), strange runes (another quest), run into the Dryad Queen (also a quest) or see the strange tracks leading to the cave with trolls and spiders – there you will find a dead body and a love letter, which should be taken to the recipient in the city, to pass another unexpected mission.
In general, there are enough adventures. And they’re all the more interesting because new features have appeared not only in the multiplayer and dungeon editor, but also in the role-playing and combat mechanics. So, to the new classes (druids, barbarians and spellcasters made their debut in the past, smaller DLC) added subclasses for each of the nine specializations. For example, barbarians who follow the path of the Claw got unique dragon skills, and the druids of the Equilibrium circle can heal themselves / allies, and a variety of animals call, and can turn into a wolf, spider, bear, and other animals of various levels.
Accordingly, the battles now have more options for the application of certain abilities / spells, increased their arsenal itself, appeared more powerful enemies. Also the authors redesigned the surprise system to make it more in line with the board rules and make the battles more balanced. As a result, even in story mode, you can not really relax – not to mention the difficulty levels “Authentic” and above. The only thing I could really use the ability to speed up animation in fights (I could not find such a feature). With increasing difficulty the enemies become “fatter”, and our fighters begin to miss more often – as a result, one battle can take an hour – an hour and a half of real time.
Solasta: Lost Valley – it’s really not very verbose, not too creative in terms of quests, texts and dialogue party RPG (or rather, a large story supplement to it), which nevertheless performs its main function, for which the project went through the crucible of “Kickstarter” and the early access – even more accurately transfers the rules SRD 5.1 and allows to pass a lot of tough challenges. All fans of this role-playing system will be if not happy (some things are still missing), then certainly happy.
Pros: a great new story campaign, offering many adventures; new subclasses, enemies, locations, and opportunities in battles, as well as in the dungeon editor; exciting tactical battles; deep, nuanced role-playing system.
Cons: Simplistic quests, dialogue, and character portrayals; less non-linearity than desired; battles seem drawn out at times.