First of all, yes, Solasta is ugly and the story is not very interesting.
They also do not have the full DnD licence, so there are only a few races and classes.
Now lets talk about the things that were good:
user interface:
Solasta is way better than BG3.
As I have written even before playing Solasta, BG3 needs a spell menu. The hotbar in BG3 is a total mess. Its even worse when a new icon comes up "cast spell x again", probably some hotbar pages later.
A menu for class abilities would also be great.
In Solasta I never had a problem to find the spell or ability I was looking for. (except help actions, see later)
Sorting and searching several pages of hotbars in BG3 is annoying.
game mechanics:
- BG3 is proud of being vertical. Then please add fly and spiderwalk too, this was great in Solasta.
When I see BG3 now, "fly" being a big jump feels just wrong.
- Please use actions, bonus actions and reactions properly, as written in the DnD rules. Solasta felt like a well balanced game. BG3 feels like complete cheese in comparison. Jumping behind enemies for backstab or shoot/hide while enemies stand there and do nthing feels so wrong.
- The way reaction are managed in Solasta is good. A window popping up "do you want to use this reaction now?" does not disturb the game flow. It does not happen every round and you can ask about several reactions at once.
- Solasta shows you at character creation and at every level up what your character can learn at later levels, what subclasses you can select and what these subclasses will give you.
In BG3 its much harder to plan your character if you do not look in the wiki.
- When combat starts it should start for everybody. It feels wrong when one char is locked in turn based combat while others can sneak around and start another alpha strike from a good position.
Place your characters before combat and get a surprize round if you act first, but do not allow characters to sneak around between enemies while they are frozen in time.
- Proper use of (dis)advantage. BG3 gives way too many advantages. Solasta uses cover for ranged attacks, but you do not get advantage for attacking from above or behind. You only get (dis)advantage when the target is not aware of the attacker or an ability is used that causes (dis) advantage.
- Fast travel: In Solasta you can fast travel on the map if the path to your target is free. This feels OK. In BG3 it feels wrong that you can instandly teleport to any waypoint from anywhere, even from the underdark to the top of a mountain.
- Resting: It is OK if you can rest at dedicated rest points (or you build them up as in Kingmaker) or if you have to walk back to your camp. In BG3 it feels wrong that you can instantly teleport to camp, sleep and teleport right back to the position you have been before. It feels also wrong in BG3 that the camp is NOT a place anywhere on the normal map. I hope you will use a different camp when you have more acts and visit other regions.
- There is one thing that BG3 does better: It has a dedicated help action button. In Solasta you can wake up sleeping chars or stop them from burning, but it took some time for me to find this out and I lost one battle because of it. Help should NOT reanimate a downed char. Since any form of healing can bring back a char, help is not needed for this.
Just to be sure: BG3 is a great game and I enjoyed playing it.
BG3 has a much better graphic, better characters, hopefully a better story, very interactive environment, tons of choices and many ways to approach most quests.
But I would enjoy all of this much more if it was combined with a proper use of the DnD rules.
I do not say this because I am a DnD fan. I never played PnP. I say this because Solasta felt much better balanced and combat in Solasta felt more satisfying.
One more thing:
DOS 1+2 used a few different difficulty levels.
I really like that Solasta and Kingmaker/wotr use many different setting so each player can define its own difficulty.
It would be great if you can select enemy/player stats or your own adjustment of the rules separately.
Prof. Dr. Dr. Mad S. Tist
World leading expert of artificial stupidity.
Because there are too many people who work on artificial intelligence already
