{"id":9263,"date":"2021-08-02T00:50:47","date_gmt":"2021-08-02T00:50:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/?p=9263"},"modified":"2021-08-04T09:39:54","modified_gmt":"2021-08-04T09:39:54","slug":"solasta-crown-of-the-magister","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/solasta-crown-of-the-magister\/","title":{"rendered":"Solasta: Crown of the Magister"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Much like <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Icewind_Dale\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Icewind Dale<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gog.com\/game\/solasta_crown_of_the_magister\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Solasta<\/a> is a low-level <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Dungeons_%26_Dragons\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">D&#038;D<\/a> campaign focused primarily on combat.<\/p>\n<p>While the implementation of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Editions_of_Dungeons_%26_Dragons#Dungeons_&#038;_Dragons_5th_edition\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the 5e ruleset<\/a> is remarkably good, particularly in regards to movement and reaction abilities, the game suffers from a lack of party diversity; you can only have 4 party members, there&#8217;s no multiclassing, and the Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Monk, and Warlock <a href=\"https:\/\/www.dndbeyond.com\/classes\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">classes<\/a> aren&#8217;t available.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s also something of a lack of equipment variety, party due to this being a low-level campaign (meaning relatively little money with +1 enchantments being the norm) and partly because a lot of stuff is locked behind <a href=\"https:\/\/steamcommunity.com\/sharedfiles\/filedetails\/?id=2512865364\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Faction relationship levels<\/a>. So you kind of need to use <a href=\"https:\/\/steamcommunity.com\/sharedfiles\/filedetails\/?id=2514093149\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">crafting<\/a> to get the most out of whatever party composition you go for.<\/p>\n<p>I ended up playing through with a party consisting of sword\/shield Paladin (never do this), a 2H-Spellblade (decent-ish), a Marksman (okay), and a Shock Arcanist (pretty good).<\/p>\n<p>As it turns out, having a Paladin use a shield is a terrible idea for the simple reason that <em>nearly all of their spells<\/em> need a free hand to cast (2H weapons are fine since you can temporarily hold them with one hand). The Spellblade meanwhile suffers from a severe lack of defensive and melee-touch spells, but ends up remarkably mobile for a Fighter. Ranger is useful mainly for the Goodberry and Hunter&#8217;s Mark spells (the Marksman specialization didn&#8217;t add much)&#8230; although running a Greenmage might be a better idea in the end&#8230; and I have no complaints regarding Wizard&#8217;s Shock Arcanist variation.<\/p>\n<p>Putting aside mechanics we now come to the game&#8217;s primary flaw: Its storyline. The plot is&#8230; generic at best, while the character interactions and dialog in general are <em>atrocious<\/em>. Fortunately, unlike in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/dungeon-siege-ii-iron-danger-shard-of-time\/\" title=\"Dungeon Siege II &#038; IRON DANGER: Shard of time\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Iron Danger<\/a>, you don&#8217;t actually have to pay attention to any of that and can easily skip through it all.<\/p>\n<p>So is the game worth picking up? If you like turn-based D&#038;D combat and are willing to sort through a bunch of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nexusmods.com\/solastacrownofthemagister\/mods\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mods<\/a> to enhance variety, then by all means. If you want roleplaying choices and engaging developments however it would be best to avoid it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Much like Icewind Dale, Solasta is a low-level D&#038;D campaign focused primarily on combat. While the implementation of the 5e ruleset is remarkably good, particularly in regards to movement and reaction abilities, the game suffers from a lack of party diversity; you can only have 4 party members, there&#8217;s no multiclassing, and the Barbarian, Bard, Druid, Monk, and Warlock classes aren&#8217;t available. There&#8217;s also something of a lack of equipment variety, party due to this being a low-level campaign (meaning relatively little money with +1 enchantments being the norm) and partly because a lot of stuff is locked behind Faction relationship levels. So you kind of need to use crafting to get the most out of whatever party composition you go for. I ended up playing through with a party consisting of sword\/shield Paladin (never do this), a 2H-Spellblade (decent-ish), a Marksman (okay), and a Shock Arcanist (pretty good). As it turns out, having a Paladin use a shield is a terrible idea for the simple reason that nearly all of their spells need a free hand to cast (2H weapons are fine since you can temporarily hold them with one hand). The Spellblade meanwhile suffers from a severe lack [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,7],"tags":[24,28,121,120,473],"class_list":["post-9263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pc","category-video-game-related","tag-dungeons-dragons","tag-fantasy","tag-rpg","tag-tactical-rpg","tag-third-person-perspective"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9263\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.offkorn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}