The new party-based RPG from Tactical Adventures is in many ways reminiscent of Sven Vincke's masterpiece: it features deep tactics based on D&D, excellent staging, and non-linearity. However, in Solasta II, you will control not random encounters, but a real family. We have completed all the available content and are telling you how ambitious role-playing mechanics coexist with catastrophic optimization and why it is too early to add the game to your library.
Family RPG
Solasta II is a tactical party-based RPG. Its peculiarity is that the player controls not random adventurers, but a real family. The squad is assembled from the adopted children of Lord Colluol.
It all starts with the main characters heading to their adoptive mother's funeral. But everything goes awry: a brawl starts, the goddess Maraike is announced, and teleports us to the distant continent of Neokos.
There, the family will have to deal with problems, find another sister, and fulfill the mission of the goddess whom the protagonists' mother worshiped. They inherited a mysterious mission — they will have to confront the witch Shadwin, who is spreading corruption across the continent.
Funny, but the presentation of the story is somewhat reminiscent of Baldur’s Gate 3 in the early stages, when the main characters did not know what to do and often saw silhouettes of villains on a purple background in their dreams.
But unlike the Larian game, here the entire squad is responsible for the dialogues, not just one person. The answers depend on the characters of the protagonists and their roles in the family, which are distributed at the beginning of the game. You choose who will be who — from the always correct "Golden Child" to the outcast who is always going against everyone. This affects relationships with other characters, lines, and the intonation of the heroes.
Adventures in a family circle have a unique warm atmosphere. The protagonists constantly tease each other and discuss every little thing they encounter along the way, and involve other characters who have temporarily joined the squad in these squabbles. By the way, they can also be controlled both in exploration and in battle.
But there are no romances — an important ingredient in role-playing games — here, because all the characters are relatives. Perhaps in the future, the developers will add the ability to build relationships with outside companions.
The supporting characters are multifaceted. For example, Mrs. Anabasia tries to show herself in the best light, but you can see from her gaze that she is cunning. And her entourage only confirms these guesses.
The game is also related to Baldur’s Gate 3 by its cinematic staging. There are many well-staged cutscenes and simply well-directed dialogues. Watching the characters communicate is a pleasure.
The main plot of early access takes about seven hours to complete. And there are not many side quests yet. But they are well-written and reveal pieces of the lore of this world: about the continent, about creatures, about events, although they are completed quickly. Currently, the Tactical Adventures project can provide you with 10-15 hours of gameplay.
D&D in its universe
Solasta II is made in the spirit of Dungeons & Dragons. Everything is in place: a 20-sided die, the need to rest to restore combat effectiveness, various spells and cantrips, deep exploration, variable dialogues, and so on.
The game is based on the "open" fifth edition of D&D from 2024. This means that the developers from Tactical Adventures took the mechanics of the popular board game, but they had to come up with their own universe and some game elements.
Dice checks occur regularly, but unlike Baldur’s Gate 3, this is done in the background. The player is only notified of success or failure. On the one hand, it is convenient, but on the other hand, it is impossible to predict in advance when this will happen in dialogues. This means that it will be more difficult to "break" the game with saves. However, it sometimes records progress at such moments, so it depends on luck.
It all starts with character creation. The player will have to prepare the entire party of four heroes. There are four ways to do this:
- full creation: you manually select all the characteristics, background, class, race, and many details of the hero;
- simplified creation: you can only customize the appearance and choose the class, race, and origin;
- selection of a ready-made character created by the developers;
- automatic creation: you can get a ready-made party with one button — Solasta II will generate heroes randomly.
The set of classes and subclasses is limited by early access. There are only six classes: Warrior, Rogue, Paladin, Wizard, Priest, and Warlock. There are thirteen subclasses: two for each class, except for the Priest — he has three. Almost all of them are unique and created by Tactical Adventures either specifically for the second part or migrated from the first. The priest is again an exception, since his subclasses are close to D&D.
Multiclassing is possible, although there are only four levels in early access, and you won’t be able to roam around. But, according to the authors, they will raise this limit and expand the set of classes and subclasses later, even before the release. Therefore, experience continues to accumulate even after reaching the maximum level.
The world in the game is a set of small, straight locations with branches. You can move between them on the global map, as in Pathfinder. It is divided into hexagonal sectors. And movement is limited by energy, which must be restored by a long rest.
But since you have to rest often, you are given plenty of supplies. They can be obtained at levels, and characters sometimes find food on the way. This means that you can feel free to use the entire arsenal of heroes in battles. It will still recover after another rest.
The world map is full of events: both pre-made and scripted, and randomly generated. Somewhere you will be attacked, somewhere you will set up an ambush. And somewhere you will find a couple of dialogues with a dice roll — sometimes hilarious. I was especially amused by the meeting with the ettin guarding the bridge. It is very nice that they give a lot of experience for this, even for successful text scenes.
There are also factions in the game that can be leveled up. This is done through the right choices in dialogues and actions. The higher the trust in us, the greater the reward. I met three factions and even leveled up the relationship a little. But the reward is just a discount in stores. I hope it will be expanded later, otherwise it's kind of sad.
Exploration is simple and elegant, because chests are shown on the mini-map, and resources, such as clay or plants, are easily visible. Or you can hold down a separate button and highlight everything.
You can profit from many things in the locations, but so far most of them will not be useful. Only if you sell it to a merchant and get some coins. This is because the game has a crafting system, but it has not yet been added — it will only appear in future updates.
It is possible to find unusual equipment, but the game doesn't explain how to use it. The game requires you to evaluate it, but it was not possible to figure out how to do it now. For example, I found a scroll with a spell that "studies" an item, but using the scroll had no effect. Bug, feature, or early access limitation? The question is open.
An Attempt to Reimagine D&D Battles
At first glance, the combat system in Solasta II is standard for tabletop role-playing games. On their turn, a character can move a limited distance, use an action, and a bonus action.
The unique "feature" of battles in Solasta II is the ability to prepare actions. The game allows you to set tactics for characters in advance. For example, if an enemy approaches a hero, they immediately use the prepared skill. Or if one of the allies approaches the priest, they can instantly heal them.
I liked the ability to hide. For example, behind a corner or behind some object: a tree, a stone, and so on. This reduces the enemy's chance of hitting you. The miss animations are cool: either the character shoots somewhere past, or the hero ducks and dodges the blow.
There are two difficulty levels in the game: "explorer mode" and "authentic". I sincerely praise the authors for the fact that they differ not just in damage or health numbers, but in various indicators: damage modifiers, attack rolls or characteristic checks, saving throws, as well as the effectiveness of healing and the effect of overload. Everything is finely tuned to suit you, and that's great! You can arrange both a pleasant walk and a severe test, where luck itself wants to destroy you!
The controls are well-suited for both keyboard and mouse, and gamepad. You can both give orders with the cursor, and directly control the heroes via WASD or stick. You can even zoom in the camera and get an almost full-fledged third-person view.
The interface is well thought out, but not everywhere. It is designed for a gamepad, and the skills are conveniently divided into categories. But some moments are not always easy to detect. I didn't immediately notice where it was shown how many spell slots a conditional wizard had left - and this is just one of the problems.
Cons of Early Access
The main problem with Solasta II is that it is early access. The technical condition is depressing.
Each time it is launched, the project greets the player with a compilation of shaders for several minutes, because in the sequel, the authors changed the engine from Unity to Unreal Engine 5. When restarting, the compilation is much faster, but only if you do not restart your PC.
And you will have to re-enter the game often, since crashes are common here. Solasta II "crashes" especially often when exiting to the global map. Left the location - welcome to the desktop.
Another disadvantage is the terrible frame rate. FPS constantly drops to unplayable single-digit numbers. Although the game is turn-based, exploring locations and watching cutscenes at six frames is painful.
"Upscalers" save the day. Even on my weak GTX 1660 Super, I managed to turn on FSR to "Quality" with frame generation and squeeze out 60-80 FPS. Even if I had to sacrifice resolution and image quality. Although in the latest early access locations it has become better.
There are bugs for every taste:
- Graphical ones, when the lighting can't understand what it wants, and the character's eye, hair, and even skin color changes in one scene. Here he is a brown-haired brown-eyed man, and here he is a blonde, shimmering with gold.
- Collision errors, when after a battle with a group of opponents, their lifeless bodies begin to "dance", twitching in different directions.
- Artificial intelligence bugs, when during a battle the enemy may freeze and decide not to take a turn. The battle turns into an endless stupor - you have to roll back the save.
- I also encountered a bug with saving, which merged with crashes: the game "crashed" again and again and I could not go further, no matter how many times I rebooted. But it was worth loading an earlier save, as everything passed.
- Interface problems, when it is not always possible to select an enemy or object, although nothing prevents it. You have to spin around and look for the right angle so that the action button appears.
There are also questions about the graphics, especially the faces of the characters. Their design is controversial and gloomy, and the facial expressions are weak. In combination with the specific lighting, they look plastic - the effect of the "uncanny valley" arises. But the developers promised to fix this.
Ordinary animations are the same - there is a dissonance with them. In a normal game, they are simple and sometimes jerky, and in cutscenes everything is smooth. But this is a problem of the game's budget, and not early access. Something was well staged, recording the movements of the actors, and some animations were finalized by hand.
Huge claims to the character editor. Heroes often turn out to be scary, because you have to create an appearance from a small set of pre-made assets. To sculpt really beautiful adventurers, you'll have to tinker a lot. But it is possible. The editor was also promised to be finalized.
The translation is good, but not complete. Sometimes you can find paragraphs of text in English. Even one of the interface elements remained untranslated.
Verdict
Solasta II is a good CRPG that tries to surprise. There is also the theme of family, reflected both in the plot and in the gameplay. And the unusual history of the universe and lore with deities. And battles with a special combat mode that diversifies the usual D&D combat.
I was pleased with the worthy role-playing of the character. For example, in early access, you can make friends with skeletons and harpies, passing the location almost without a fight, or destroy them all - this choice will change the attitude of one of the factions towards you.
Solasta II does the main thing - it draws you in and makes you forget about the time spent on it. Just like Baldur's Gate 3 once did. If it were not for the weak technical condition, constantly knocking out of immersion, there would be no major complaints - and this is taking into account that only 35 people work in the studio.
