Great start for a small studio. They nailed the combat and verticality, while story and graphics took a bit of a hit. Basically a diamond in the rough. Looking forward to see them hone their craft.
Verticality was great but badly managed at times: like spider walk made you walk through walls, and you couldn't exactly "fly up" in combat, while the enemies could, you could only, as without fly, click on the tile you wanted to go to. Obviously I don't know how they could fix that fly issue and game was great nonetheless, just a few thoughts.
I thoroughly enjoyed the game. The core mechanics worked amazingly well. The animations and voice acting and dialogue were passable in most cases and downright bad in others. With the core gameplay working so well, I can look past all the flaws and had a great time. Looking forward to more classes in the game as DLC
I loved everything but the character models/facial animations. I'm not a stickler for graphics per se, but I do rely on some good aesthetic to bring me fully into a world. Knowing their budget limitations, I wish they would have taken a less ambitious approach to their character models and made them less "realistic" and more "stylistic", if that makes sense. My first time playing, I created an elven ranger and basically chose the one face model that I didn't hate. I then decided to try another class as a human...and couldn't find a single model that I could stand. Thought maybe I could make it passable with a beard...but then I saw the beard models and it made things worse. I feel bad criticizing it that way, because everything else is pretty damn impressive. But yeah...couldn't get into it based on those character models.
i watched your playthrough and i bought it. it's really great. thanks for doing what you do, you make it so much easier to decide whether to buy it or just watch your vids and enjoy it one time from a spectator perspective.
To add a point because I do not believe it was fully fleshed out when Cohh made this review, Solasta now has a pretty extensive creation system that you can use to create and play user-generated campaigns after you finish the main game. Some of the stuff on the workshop is also good enough to come back to the game if you have already finished it.
The game devs are incredibly talented and got so many things right with a limited budget. Face animation, voice acting and other things is a very small thing in a CRPG. We fans of this type of game want the combat to work, a great map system and lots of loot. (at least I do, but I think I speak for many others out there). Quests can be expanded to be more involved in the story, even side quests, but that takes a LOT of work and some real imagination. With a bit of success in this game, maybe and hopefully they can deliver a sequel, that better this, but still sits in same norm as they created. I love it! Baldurs Gate 2 and Planescape Torment are 2 of my favs all time, in this genre. :)
i had never heard of it. saw it on gamepass, looked into it, it's literally the D&D game i've been waiting for since neverwinter nights. pathfinder kingmaker, i know a lot of people liked. i havent tried it and i'm very trepidatious because it's a system i dont know/understand and watching cohh play it made it look like combat is terrible cos no one hits anything. this game is based on D&D5e and its freaking fantastic. i love it, my complaints are only two: class number: something that i love about D&D is the massive number of classes that exist, sadly this game does only have 6 although cohh didn't mention, there is apparently a 7th coming soon-ish according to the website. This is an "ok" selection but i'd like to see more, especially as this means you have the majority of the classes in a single run, lowering replayability. That said there are some sub-classes, unless you count the cleric ones, who has an ungodly amount (pun intended) Scenario: simply this, it's a single scenario, a single story. Again only effects replayability but with things like Divinity: Original Sin 2, it became very samey to replay over and over again. None the less, amazing game, like to see more added to it with expansions over time. (to be clear i mean paid expansions, not just patches like the 7th class is apparently going to be)
Keep in mind, that Cohh played Pathfinder on very hard difficulty, so everything had higher AC and such. You can customise the difficulty to your liking with a whole lot of options to choose from. And I wouldn't worry too much about it being a different system, if you know the 5e rules for d&d, you'll definitely get Pathfinder. It's quite often on sale and I can't recommend it enough. Have a nice day!^^
@@oldharlock7760 Just heading to bed but saw your message. Does pathfinder use the same dice/modifer system though? i'm sure you saw but in 5e it's a simple +1(or -1) for every 2 points in the stat above/below 10. Doesn't pathfinder use one of the really old D&D systems which requires like, a look up table to figure out what your modifer is? I didn't actually realise the difficulty he had it on contributed to the "no body hits" situation i saw in Cohh's vods. I may have to look at it again, i got very quickly put off by the way no one ever hit each other and never really gave it a proper look. If it's simply that everyone had high AC because of the difficulty, that changes things. Will look into it more tomorrow, thanks for the tip :) Hope you enjoy the rest of your evening/day too :)
@@AkkarinDarkmoor Yes, the way modifiers are applied is identical. Altough your stats get significantly higher in Pathfinder, they work basically identical. Pleasant dreams!^^
@@AkkarinDarkmoor I am playing kingmaker right now on Normal difficulty, I hit a lot with buffs. It’s very enjoyable and not frustrating at all. Deep game, very interesting. Better than dos2 and poe2.
@@oldharlock7760 been doing a little research on pathfinder: kingmaker. the class selection is outstanding! i wish solasta had such a good class selection! i do remember watching cohh in character creation and thinking it looked amazing. Think i'll pick it up (and all the DLC) when it's on sale! thanks for making me look at it again :) good day to you sir
To me this game is an Icewind Dale spiritual successor with it’s idea of combat and interesting arenas to fight in and basic story about the invasion. Also it gave me strong Dragonlance vibes with us fighting what is basically a Draconid invasion and a spin on the nature of Gods and their place in world. So yeh, heretical to say, but I like this dungeon crawl more than sheer epicness of the other CRPG. Sometimes you don’t want to have the epic and six pages long backstory for each NPC, sometimes you don’t want the characters to be their own unique snowflakes who has an opinion about each rock you encounter. Sometimes you just want to kick ass, blow the bastards to kingdom come without any moral dilemmas and claim names. And Solasta delivers. Wish there was less bugs though and RNG being not such an a** in the actual rare moment of non-violent challenges. But, what do I know?
Just finished this myself over the weekend, and I think Cohh's appraisal is fairly spot-on. Though I will say, notwithstanding all the "for a small studio" and "given the budget limitations" caveats everyone is using to qualify their critiques of this game, you'd never know it from the length of the ending credits. 👀
I preferred Solasta to BG3 to be honest, ok, the voice acting could be a little cheesy at times and the Arwen Merton dood was definitely dodgy, but I really enjoyed the whole experience
Watched you play it for a few minutes, decided to do it before watching your playthrough of it. Loved it, same things as you said, animations, voice actors, stuff like that can be awkward at times, but it was a great game nonetheless. My only other issue that you didn't mention is the end of the story felt a little rushed, and it ends on a kind of cliffhanger (maybe DLC?). Also a bit sad that the max level was only 10, felt a little limited in terms of progression. Still a great game overall, definitely recommend it as well :)
Cohh i have to say. I am so glad i have people like you playing and reviewing games. Although your gameplay runs are a little slow for me, i adore your honest opinions on games. I wish more game reviewers were just as thruthfull
I'm just finishing Pathfinder Kingmaker which I brought on your recommendation, so I'm going to buy this and wrath and the righteous. Your reviews are really on point, thanks for the excellent work and recommendations.
Is it bad I want a cohh doing a woman's voice, for a farm animal talking to the main character during a drug binge sequence to help the character come to terms with the fact they are indeed....the chosen one
In relation to the budget and resources the developers had for creating that game it was a top notch game. I played it 2 times with total different parties and it was total fun to play it twice. Combat was fun, building a character was fun, and those are for me the main criterias for such a game. Story was overall also pretty OK. And I definitively will play it again sometimes in the future Give the developers decent financial resources and decent manpower resources and they are able to create a game which can easily compete on all levels with such "big games" like BG3 or Pathfinder. That´s just my humble oppinion .
Superb game. Combat is far better than BG3 and pushing isn't your go to action and your characters aren't constantly leaping in and out of combat as if they were starring in a martial arts movie. Best of all you can prepare attacks of opportunity. Finally, not mentioned in the review you can create your own dungeons in an incredibly intuitive system with surprising depth and share them with other players. That alone is worth the price of the game.
The campaign itself is fun enough i guess, though a bit simplistic. It's clearly focused on the essential things of a CRPG with few bells&whistles. The greatest potential of Solasta is to function as a modding platform and toolkit to make other campaigns on and improve the assets. It could indeed function as the Skyrim of CRPGs if the devs enable it.
@@Cervando Indeed. The foundation is solid. Solasta 2 could have the devs focus their budget on content and assets more, as they have the engine already worked out. What i'd like to see are "campaign modules" released for the game instead of DLCs, which are as comparatively short as the current campaign, but released regularly, every 6 months or so, telling different stories in different settings. I simply don't have the stamina and patience to slog through 50 - 100+ hours long epic campaigns which grow stale and boring and become a chore halfway through.
@@axelhopfinger533 They have stated that there will be no more content for Solasta other than bug fixes. They are continuing to work on the Dungeon designer however.
I absolutely love this game! It is a cult classic for sure! I so want DLC's! I know there is going to be at least one that brings in the Sorcerer from 5e! Hopefully they do more!
I really like the game. Yes you can tell it was made by a small company with a limited budget but I actually prefer this game to say BG3. The problem, I think, is that too many people will try to compare Solosta to BG3 and similar games backed by much larger companies that have larger budgets to their games. That is a mistake. If you can separate Solosta from those larger games and enjoy it for what it is then I think you can enjoy it. Hopefully the game is successful enough that Tactical Adventures(the devs) can build on this game and possibly give us other quality games in the future. Just keep in mind game companies have to start somewhere and I think this is a great start.
This game is an absolute masterpiece for the budget and team size they had. The interface... oh lord is that interface peeerfect! I have never played a CRPG with such an intuitive, stylish, simplistic and fitting interface. They have kinda ugly animations? yeah. But that's because they used the budget in the things that really matter!
Fully agreed! - Facial animations, story, sound are certainly only at the top-end of Indie. - The underlying overall game design philosophy , however, rather makes most triple A studios blush: If I could make a steep comparison, then I would consider to argue that Tactical Adventures is probably the Bauhaus of game developers.
Is this game going to be fully licenced by wizards of the coast for all the DnD features like class archetypes? I hope this game will be more successful than Baldur's Gate 3 because Larian and EA ruined the immersion breaking the rules for me by shoving a lvl 1 vampire spawn in my party which I can't replace with another rogue of different alignment and this further limits my freedom to build a good aligned party of adventurers.
hey ur not gonna get the same thing as triple a baldurs gate 3 priced at 60 bucks but if u pay 40 instead u get to relive the cyberpunk experience in a crpg
Even if the game was made by a small studio, it still needed extra time in the oven. There are several quality of life changes and bug fixes that are required. The lack of budget doesn't justify making an UI with several options and pretty much no hotkeys whatsoever other than "open spells" during combat. I've seen this game struggle to run in some older PCs that should have no problem with the subpar graphics. The load times are LONG and there are several. I've been softlocked and hardlocked in a couple of instances because of glitches, making me reload and lose progress. It's a solid experience if you manage to luck out and avoid many of the big glitches and locks. However, if you don't mind waiting a bit, I strongly recommend visiting the game in a few months after they patch some stuff and optimize it.
Solasta is a lot of fun! The issues that annoy me the most are actually related to D&D itself and implementing the rules to a CRPG. If you play a rogue in a P&P with friends you have so many roleplay options etc. but combat is always rather stale. And that translates really badly into a computer game. Playing a rogue in a game like Solasta or Pathfinder can be so boring. It is literally just auto attacks, no skills at all (yes you can mix and dip in Pathfinder for a bit more action). That is why I enjoy the DoS 1/2 approach so much. You just have stuff to do with every class!
I played the first few hrs and was impressed by the character creator and combat systems but the dialogue, models and overall story was so horrendous I had to put it down. I felt like I was playing a mod. It convinced me to try poe2 finally and have been loving it since.
While I haven't played PoE2, the gameplay in Solasta is much more enjoyable than PoE1, which I have played. I think it has the best RPG combat of any game I've played. It's the first game that has done reactions correctly. Having a properly implemented action economy system also makes it much more tactical than any other RPG, I feel. So I would give it another go, despite the dodgy models.
I put about 25 hours in it on Game Pass and just couldn't finish it to be honest. It's just way too rough and "unfinished" feeling for me. The UI is horrid. The camera movement with the weird acceleration was bad. The constant cutscene camera movement and VO were bad. I could go on, but it just felt like an empty game. The combat was fine, but that's about the only good thing I can say about it.
@@brothermutant7370 God no. Although both are supposed to be based on 5e, BG3 is really based on their previous games with a 5e skin. BG3 has far too many secondary actions and often the best melee choice is to shove enemies off ledges. Solasta is much closer to the tabletop version. You cannot prepare attacks in advance, unlike Solasta and the 3D environment is better used by the latter. Finally I absolutely hate the constant leaping in and out of combat in BG3 to avoid opportunity attacks. It looks ridiculous and breaks immersion. It is also more consistent. In BG3 you were never sure if talking was a good idea or if you should attack with surprise. It made sense to attack the Goblins by the windmill from stealth in BG3, as they would attack you immediately, whereas you could casually walk around their entire camp without fear. Not having initiative made encounters much harder, so it made sense to travel everywhere whilst stealthed, slowing you down considerably. It was often impossible to know if approaching in the open and talking, or fighting from stealth was the best option, unless you used trial and error. Whilst surprises can be good, they need to be fair, rational and logical. That was seldom the case in BG3.
@@Cervando Fair enough. I meant the 3d environment though. As compared to Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which is all top down fighting. I DO like how you can use your spells to affect the environment in BG3 but I hear they are toning that down a bit.
@@brothermutant7370 In terms of using 3D sure, but I preferred the Solasta use of it. I do like how BG3 uses spells to affect the environment, albeit it needs to toning down, but I loved the way Solasta used lighting to make a huge difference, without it feeling game breaking. Another difference is difficulty levels. On the equivalent ones, Solasta was much fairer and you seldom faced a wipe out if you walked into a group of mobs unprepared, whereas in BG3 you could got overwhelmed for a similar mistake. Bring experienced in D&D RPGs, going back as far as Eye of the Beholder, I am cautious in my approach, but I pity somebody new to the genre trying BG3. Solasta is much more beginner friendly and yet challenging enough for more experienced players as well. The more intuitive interface helps tremendously in this as does better game balance.
The cutscenes graphics are terrible, the voices are horrendous and the dialogs are mediocre. That being said, the combat is sooooo damn good. I usually take a long time to finish a RPG, several months. But solasta I did 60h in 2 weeks, its so fun. I hope this game get good sales, so the Devs can improve the weak points and we get a masterpiece in Solasta 2.
@@orbbb24 Fair point - if not for the fact that he either enjoyed and then forget; or just pretended to enjoy while playing it. For the 2nd time with that game, mind you.
@@AlexJones-ue1ll I think he enjoyed the game but it just didn't carry the interest to finish. I know I have plenty of games at 10 hours or less that I really enjoyed but they don't have what I personally need to drive me to finish. I'm sure it's a similar story for Cohh.
Cohh is being nice. The combat engine is absolutely superb, but the story and the voice acting are laughably bad. HOWEVER, the combat engine is absolutely good enough to make up for it.
