Why I recommend playing Solasta: Crown of the Magester

Solasta: Crown of the Magister (which I am going to refer to as just Solasta from now on) is a multiplayer, tactical, turn-based, adventure, roleplaying game. It is the first game developed by Tactical Adventures, runs on the Unity engine, and was released in October 2020.

Now keep in mind that I have not completed the game yet, I’m actually not even sure if I’m even halfway through to be completely honest. But that doesn’t matter because I am already beyond impressed with this game.

Solasta starts you off with one of the most complex character-creation processes I’ve ever seen and I love it! The first time I launched the game it took me almost an hour to create my character, and when I found out I could run a party of 4 created characters (Baldurs Gate 3 take note please!) I spent the rest of the day making characters.

Once I was actually in the game and stumbled into my first non-tutorial combat I was amazed by the quality of the animation of the spells as well as the animations for character afflictions, for example: When casting Chill Touch (a spell that summons a spectral hand to slap an enemy dealing damage and preventing that character from healing) green smokey hands emerge from the ground and assault the target character and then wrap around said character to indicate they are affected by Chill Touch and cant heal. In other games, the character would maybe glow a bit or have smoke surrounding them, but in Solasta you can see the hands moving along the afflicted character until the effect ends.

The animations aren’t the only thing I noticed and was impressed by. Tactical Adventures has done a fantastic job of paying attention to the small details too. One of my biggest annoyances with turn-based games is that your character’s attack animation is usually the same for a hit or a miss, you click the attack or spell you want to use, your character swings their weapon or launches a spell at their target, it LOOKS like you’ve made contact but then the game says you’ve missed. In Solasta, the hit or miss is determined before the animation happens, and the projectile doesn’t go anywhere near the target. It’s an incredibly nice detail to see and really adds to the immersion of the game.

Finally, my absolute favorite thing about this game is that you need to be smart and plan ahead. You need to make sure you have rations before you travel. You need to cast Detect Magic regularly after finding loot because some items look just like regular items when you pick them up. Once you discover you have magical items you then have to cast Identify on them to figure out what they are and what they do. You have to plan your travel time from one location to the next, while also anticipating ambushes or encounters along the way. Crafting even takes days sometimes depending on what you want to make, instead of the 10 seconds it takes in other games.

If you get the chance to play Solasta: Crown of the Magister I highly recommend you take the chance to try it!

Image credit to Nic Fata

Comments