I played Solasta some more and IMO, it's a nice little game to scratch that turn-based tactical combat itch, but it's just not much more than that.



The world setup itself seems to be decent, but it's another trope of great Elven empire brought low by some sort of mysterious world destroying cataclysm, which both resulted in immense loss of knowledge and created many world-changing anomalies, including somehow introducing new races to the world (humans, dwarves...) which came from somewhere else. Now elves and other races pick the broken pieces together and create some young kingdoms and shaky alliances of convenience. It is almost Dragon Age world setup with more equality between kingdoms and races, they even have their own version of darkspawn there.

NPCs you encounter are largely forgettable - I'd struggle to name more than 2-3 NPCs off top of my head. Furthermore you don't have any companions - your whole party is 4 blank slate characters you create when you start, which IMO is a HUGE weakness - there won't be any party dynamics, romance, conflicts and nothing really - because all these 4 characters are all you get and they are all your main. The small upside is that whole party involves when you talk to NPCs and IMO that works well, but that's the only good thing about it, IMO.

The graphics are simplistic, but get the job done. It looks like something you'd expect out of 2010 game, but DA:O is a 2010 game too and IMO it's around that level give or take (more give really, but still good enough to get the job done). Characters look so-so, somewhat blocky, but not outright horrible - totally 2010 game standard there, where you already got faces and animations, but it's definitely nowhere near anything up to date there. Armors look decent, though.

Combat is ok-ish. Spells are flashy, they look ok, there is no "realistic" fire and such, but they are ok. My pet peeve mostly comes from their almost maniacal adherence to 5e, which includes pop ups every time you have some sort of valid reaction or action you can take. For example every time paladin attacks you get a popup mid attack asking if you want to use smite. I, personally, don't like it because you get that shit midswing and it makes you miss much of combat animation of swing itself there.

And holy crap... Act 1 EA is so TINY... literally 3 tunnel style quest areas - initial keep, library and then master's keep and city hub? That all???



I hope this game will do good enough to have a more invested sequel, but it ain't no BG3, not even close by far.

Last edited by Gaidax; 07/11/20 10:27 PM.