Overall, I agree. I didn't beat Solasta yet, but I definitely hope to see a sequel with better budget, move depth and dedicated writing team. Couple notes:
YES! Actions nicely sorted into main and bonus actions. All is easy to find, with no maintenence needed. I wish it was slicker, but foundations and design is solid. Please, please, please Larian. Remove action-bar chore from BG3. Keep hotbar for items only.
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.
Yeah, that would be cool. I am not sure if BG3 engine is set up for it. All of it seems to be revolving around flat planes, not cubes like in Solasta.
- 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.
I think it is nice for coop partners to jog over to join the fight, but yeah, I strongly beliece that combat bubble should apply to invisible party members and enemies.
- 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.
I don't feel it is a biggie - if implimented well, BG3 Solasta-like fast travel would work exactly the same as it does now - it would just account for travel-time rather then be explained by teleport magic. Considering that in BG3 time doesn't move forward, I am not really sure if it is worth spending time on. It's part of overall lack of interest in keeping things even remotely grounded and as such not an issue in itself.
