Solasta: Crown of the Magister

 PC
User Score
7.2

Mixed or average reviews- based on 90 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 58 out of 90
  2. Mixed: 18 out of 90
  3. Negative: 14 out of 90

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  1. axxiusdecius
    May 12, 2022
    2
    - terrible, terrible camera;
    - bad graphics;
    - very lame story;
    - very ordinary fantasy world;
    - confusing minimap.
  2. ItsTheUnknown
    Jun 8, 2021
    2
    This game is no good. It's just meh.

    The mechanics are alright, but models look unpolished and poor consistency makes everything look out of place.

    2/10
  3. changfong
    Apr 11, 2022
    4
    A disappointing game that is nothing more than a combat simulator with mind numbingly and unthinking implementation of 5e rule to a computer game.

    Other than the combat aspect (which is marred by bugs and some issues), the adventuring gameplay aspect, the writing and plot, character development (or lack thereof), the lousy travel mechanics that do not allow you to change your    A disappointing game that is nothing more than a combat simulator with mind numbingly and unthinking implementation of 5e rule to a computer game.

    Other than the combat aspect (which is marred by bugs and some issues), the adventuring gameplay aspect, the writing and plot, character development (or lack thereof), the lousy travel mechanics that do not allow you to change your destination once set, the buggy travel mechanics that results in you getting exhausted and thus surprised every time you make camp if you do not set off at the "correct hours", ... all these are extremely lacking.

    Not the mention the very linear game play, the limited locale to visit that does not even open up until the plot progress (not even when you see the background image in game and get close to it .. NONE of them) ... the lack of exploration and adventure plus the mindless implementation of 5e rules that does not make sense in a computer game shows the lack of understanding of a good rpg game by the developer.

    So .. no .. this is a don't buy - unless you are looking for nothing more than a competent DnD combat simulator.    … Expand
  4. night4
    May 30, 2021
    3
    It's a 5th Edition D&D based, turn based CRPG with 4 characters you create (or you can choose from some premade ones - but they're not any more special than the ones you make). There's a little less combat focus vs most other CRPGs, and more of a focus on using skills, talking to people, jumping, climbing, flying, crafting, etc.

    Pros: - Good music/sound - Decent character creation    It's a 5th Edition D&D based, turn based CRPG with 4 characters you create (or you can choose from some premade ones - but they're not any more special than the ones you make). There's a little less combat focus vs most other CRPGs, and more of a focus on using skills, talking to people, jumping, climbing, flying, crafting, etc.

    Pros:

    - Good music/sound
    - Decent character creation on the whole, with problems below
    - Unique system where your created characters actually have a personality and actually participate in all conversations
    - Pushing enemies off ledges is fun
    - Spell animations are rather impressive
    - Fast travel is very nice to have in a CRPG
    - Scavengers that automatically loot and sell all the junk left on corpses is very convenient
    - The turn based combat is rather decent at first

    Cons:

    - Terrible camera
    - Severely limited class selection. I mean, no Bard, really? There's only one Charisma class yet a number of Charisma skills. It all feels bad.
    - 4 member party is too limiting for me. You're going to end up short on either skills or combat effectiveness with such a small group.
    - No way to play as evil beyond being kind of greedy/violent
    - No way to specialize in most magic besides Evocation
    - Classes feel pretty severely unbalanced. Rogues really get the short end of the stick here while casters are king.
    - Absolutely hideous character models and character color options (it's almost as bad as TES:Oblivion). Faces look like a 4 year old slapped silly putty on a potato. And those are the good looking ones.
    - Jumping/climbing mechanics don't add anything fun to the game, they're just tedious and it's often difficult to see what's going on.
    - Can't tell where to go often times with the camera constantly blocking what I want to see
    - Lighting mechanics don't add anything fun to the game, they're just tedious
    - Cover mechanics should be more visually obvious, both when attacking, and when choosing a square to stand on to not have cover
    - I feel like I'm fighting the camera more than enemies
    - Inventory management, especially for storage and crafting is an inexcusable *nightmare*. There's no way to automatically store crafting materials, the storage window is minuscule, and your storage is arbitrarily limited. There's no way to automatically take out what I need to craft, and no way to use stored materials to craft. Crafting feels incredibly bad, and it's mostly useless because by the time you unlock a recipe, you've already got items of that level or better.
    - Relatively low replayability value
    - Some bugs like getting stuck in objects, requiring a reload
    - Combat becomes rather boring very quickly except for casters as it's just repeatedly trading misses otherwise, and constantly moving to see if you can avoid cover penalties or not
    - They're deleting/removing multiple threads in the forums talking about the more controversial aspects of the game. If the devs didn't want people to talk about it, why include it at all? And at this point, the least they could do is have the guts to stand by their product instead of spinelessly deleting any mention of it. (For reference, I don't have any issue with pronouns... but I *do* have an issue with censorship and not standing by the product).
    - Can't skip the long tutorials at the start
    - Can't respec
    - Did I mention the terrible camera?

    TL;DR: Devs wasted a lot of time and resources implementing tedious things from PnP that don't translate well to a video game... it's still maybe fun for those absolutely desperate for a CRPG (and if they've already played literally all others), but no one else.    … Expand
  5. mirowy
    Jun 16, 2021
    1
    Repulsive animations, stiff and uninteresting dialogues, dragging out prologue, not nearly as many fun combat options as advertised - pushing rocks on wolves can get you only so far.

    Even though I expected poor narration being an excuse for diverse and interesting combat-focus gameplay, I was disappointed not only by the story, but most importantly - by the impaired character creation    Repulsive animations, stiff and uninteresting dialogues, dragging out prologue, not nearly as many fun combat options as advertised - pushing rocks on wolves can get you only so far.

    Even though I expected poor narration being an excuse for diverse and interesting combat-focus gameplay, I was disappointed not only by the story, but most importantly - by the impaired character creation options where only the few most boring D&D archetypes are available.

    Giving a score of 1 instead of 0 because the game didn't crash.    … Expand
  6. Mrki93
    Jun 13, 2021
    4
    A well meaning game that mostly fails. It is not second incarnation of BG2, it is not better then NWN or NWN2. People who keep saying that are either paid by the devs or devs themselves. I can understand such a behavior but I will not condone it hence this post.

    Camera is terrible. It so bad that is detrimental to game play. It's reminiscent of the original Neverwinter nights but    A well meaning game that mostly fails. It is not second incarnation of BG2, it is not better then NWN or NWN2. People who keep saying that are either paid by the devs or devs themselves. I can understand such a behavior but I will not condone it hence this post.

    Camera is terrible. It so bad that is detrimental to game play. It's reminiscent of the original Neverwinter nights but somehow feels worse. There are bugs here and there, but mostly minor ones, nothing game breaking but the game has terrible loading times even on SSDs and game feels lagy and sluggish. Animations are nice but slow so you'll find yourself alt-tabing during painfully slow combats constantly (I am writing this while fighting some fire elementals). It relays heavily on reusing locations, I am surprised no one called them on this. Main quest locations are beeing reused for minor quest. Those fire elementals are at the same place I already went for the crown, I can only hope this is the last time. It reminds me of Dragon age 2, that how bad it is. Other technical details are mostly bad but I can live with bad voice acting, ugly faces and other stuff, it is after all an indie game. That I can live with that is one thing, that people are giving the game 10/10 is something else.

    Story is generic and writing and dialogs are nothing to write home about either. Why did they feel the need to insert some dialog "cut scenes" is beyond me. As stated faces in them are ugly and dialogs are average it would be better not to show that in close ups. Only thing they accomplish is spending devs time and money in showcasing deficiencies of the game. It invites comparison with NWN2 and it that comparison it loses badly. Tactical Adventures just isn't Obsidian. The minor quest are mostly fetch quests with added caviat of fetching things from the main quest's visited locations wehere you find a new mob to kill before fetching and going back. Very little efort is put in them, nothing is memorable, just there to pass the time.

    Combat is perhaps only thing that redeems the game, it is not Divinity original sin good, but good enough. Or it would be if it was not slow and sluggish as **** It came to a point that I just wished for an auto calculate feature. Especially random encounters on the world map. They firstly take a lot of time to load, then even more to finish boring generic combat with enemies you already saw hundred times before and then again to load back to the world map. I dread times when I have to travel far. RNG feel somewhat skewed in enemies favor but I have that feeling on most of the games so I can't confirm if that is rely the case. The verticality, I am sure devs are proud of works only in a sense that it prolongs combat duration by making enemies hard to reach. Unless you are a mage or ranged that is. Being a rouge in this game just has no point. The same verticality scrues pathfinding in game outside the combat. Unnecessary jumps, climbs, falls, crawls just add to the prevailing feeling of slowness. Thank good for the on map quick travels.

    The game prise it self for implementing 5th Edition D&D to the T. Implement it they maybe did (not realy, some classes are absent, darkvision is nerfed...) but what they also did is for example making Sleight of Hand useless. What's more: it is present in the character creation but you can use it anywhere. I just don't see the logic of having something and not using it. Sleight of Hand is not the only thing that get this treatment, but it is the one I miss the most.

    So in the end 4/10 mostly for the efort, anything else in this game...    … Expand
  7. TADodger
    Jun 1, 2021
    0
    Disappointing. It looked quite promising, but ended up being an unpolished, railroading RPG. Would have been an ok portfolio piece for the creators, but it isn't worth purchasing or playing.
  8. Goombaka
    May 31, 2021
    4
    I was playing this game really hoping that it would be good, i've been playing DnD for the past 18 years, and i still play every week with my friends, and we were having such a good line of games inspired on the tabletop lately.

    But boy was i mistaken... The character models look so bad, its quite impossible to distinguish one from another, is such a contrast with the rest of the    I was playing this game really hoping that it would be good, i've been playing DnD for the past 18 years, and i still play every week with my friends, and we were having such a good line of games inspired on the tabletop lately.

    But boy was i mistaken...

    The character models look so bad, its quite impossible to distinguish one from another, is such a contrast with the rest of the environment and world.
    The voice acting is quite awful, the camera is the worst. The animation is really weird. The Ui has some issues, the loading are longer than most triple A games (with an SSD) ,and the characters despite having "different characteristics" are blend and generic. That with a campaign more linear than it should is not a good combination. The difficult is way unbalanced, when you win you win easy, when you lose, the game beats you badly. It looks like the Dev's made a custom difficult option setting knowing that they screwed up with that.

    I'm pretty aware that this is not made by a triple A company but I've seen better on solo indie projects.

    They've tried to recreate the feeling of the tabletop but summarize all the bad DM's i've played with during my life.

    Do yourself a favor and go play tabletop DnD, you'll have a better time.    … Expand
  9. JimmyCricket
    Jun 24, 2021
    0
    Terrible - feels like something from 2008, but with worse voice acting. Clunky engine and annoying experience generally.
  10. Mizuiro
    May 5, 2022
    0
    Juego del montón, historia del montón, gameplay que se hace tedioso (batallas eternas contra enemigos debiluchos) , quest mal hechas, etc. No merece la pena.
  11. TruthSeaker
    Aug 14, 2023
    3
    Giving it a 3 just because of the small size of the dev. team.
    Absolutely shallow game that has NOTHING in it besides turnbased combat.
    Awful UI, non-existent story, characters or dialogues. Amateur level and sound designs.
    Was very underwhelmed after hearing good things about it - looks like only hardcore DnD nerds that care only about some pointless numbers will enjoy this mess.
  12. WanderinMelmoth
    Dec 4, 2022
    1
    Wow. They finally released an RPG that ditches the horrible real-time with pause combat in favor of turn-based tactical combat, then they botch the presentation. :S
    Solasta is an eye sore of a game: be it the character models which look like PC's first 3D attempts in the late 90s and a horrible UI which looks like Windows 8. Expect to do a lot of reading since there is hardly any voice    Wow. They finally released an RPG that ditches the horrible real-time with pause combat in favor of turn-based tactical combat, then they botch the presentation. :S
    Solasta is an eye sore of a game: be it the character models which look like PC's first 3D attempts in the late 90s and a horrible UI which looks like Windows 8. Expect to do a lot of reading since there is hardly any voice acting.
    Worst thing by far though: some classes and subclasses (Warlock) and races (Orc) as well as dungeon assets for the dungeon maker that should have been included in the base game (which is overpriced at $40 as it is) are only of available through DLC: 3 of them ranging from $8 to $13 each!
    I'm giving it an "average" 5: the combat is good but it's an ugly and clunky game that will take a lot of getting used to. It 's not a $60 game (full price is $40, which is still a bit steep for a C-class game) but at a discount for starved RPG fans it might be an ok purchase. Unfortunately if you want access to some of the better classes/races (warlock) you need to fork out extra $$ for DLC, so that's another point off the rating being a final 4 out of 10. You'll end up paying close to $70, more than a triple A game for a C-class game (at best)! This is an audacity!    … Expand

Awards & Rankings

53
#53 Most Discussed PC Game of 2021

Critic Reviews

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Metascore
77

Generally favorable reviews - based on 33 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 23 out of 33
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 33
  3. Negative: 0 out of 33
  1. Softpedia
    Jun 5, 2023
    85
    Solasta: Crown of the Magister is a great entry point for those looking to play a D&D-inspired game. The streamlined ruleset makes everything easy to understand and you don’t even have to spend hours creating your character (unless you really, really like to roll your stats until you get certain values). The only thing that I couldn’t get past are the character models, which look absolutely terrible. However, the dungeons, which are designed both horizontally and vertically, as well as some of the ground locations are beautiful and immersive for a D&D campaign. The voice acting is also top-notch most of time, and the same goes for the soundtrack.
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  2. RPGamer
    Nov 10, 2021
    70
    Overall, Solasta faithfully recreates much of the experience of a fifth edition Dungeons & Dragons adventure with a focus on satisfying combat. It also takes a fresh approach to some of the common tropes, though most of them clearly needed more time and focus to reach their full potential. The game provides an excellent introduction to not only its pen-and-paper counterpart but computer-style role-playing games as well. In the end, Solasta provides a fun, if somewhat short, ride that most will enjoy.
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  3. GameGrin
    Aug 23, 2021
    60
    SOLASTA: Crown of the Magister has its faults, but still manages to be an enjoyable RPG experience. if you just want a D&D-eqsue dungeon crawler to play through, there are certainly worse options to choose from.
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