Tactical role-playing games like Baldur’s Gate are very popular. With Solasta II, a top alternative can currently be tested. MeinMMO editor Benedikt Schlotmann has dived into the adventure and was especially surprised by nasty crabs.
I am an old-school RPG gamer, loved the old parts of Baldur’s Gate. I have invested over 1,000 hours in the first two parts of the series, plus dozens of hours in Pathfinder. I have even dedicated some time to the rather mediocre Pillars of Eternity.
Now, after just 2 hours in the Solasta II demo, I can hardly wait to see the new game. However, the first 30 minutes were incredibly boring.
But after a fight against seemingly harmless crabs, Solasta II got me fully hooked. And that continued until the end after about 2 hours. Of the many demos from the “Steam Next” festival, none impressed me as positively as Solasta II – despite the slow start.
The Solasta II demo is currently free on Steam and definitely worth a look.
You can watch the official trailer for Solasta II here:
The boring “Shire” and the first crunchy fight
At the beginning of the game, you are thrown into a beautiful world. A cute village that somewhat resembles Hobbiton in the “Shire”. And probably just as boring. Graphically, the village and its surroundings are really impressive: steep cliffs with bridges connecting the village over deep gorges. Ruins where sunlight breaks through the destroyed windows. Water crashing against the rocks. What a backdrop!
However, everything else appears very sterile and almost too clean: Yes, everything is extremely pretty and looks great, but you can hardly use anything: NPCs walk around but cannot be interacted with, you cannot use the environment to defeat enemies or enter houses. This makes the start feel very tedious.
At first, I wonder: Man, everything looks great, but where is the gameplay?
But after about 30 minutes, the game picks up speed, because shortly after I reach the beach, where I am immediately surprised by several nasty crabs. And for some seemingly harmless crustaceans, they can deal quite a blow and take a beating, too.
The combat system finally shows what the game has to offer in terms of gameplay: I position my characters, strategically use higher areas, or blast my opponent with a fire spell. In the first fight, I immediately lose my thief because I overlooked that the stupid crabs have a ranged attack and can spit acid. Unfortunately, the lady does not survive that. At least I can bring her back to life.
Lost in thought, I then attack a giant crab with my melee fighters, only to be surprised by an area attack that I didn’t see coming. I survive the first fight more by luck than skill. After that, it goes significantly better.
After the fight, you get to make your first decision in the short demo. Because you have to decide how you want to solve the next quest:
- You can sneak into an enemy camp and free a prisoner held by goblins.
- Alternatively, you can choose the direct method and fight your way through the goblins.
- Or you try to discuss the matter with the goblins.
I chose the third option. But the goblins seem a bit like they have watched too much Star Wars: With the goblin leader, I feel as if I’m talking to Jar Jar Binks. I won’t reveal the consequences of the conversation in the end.
Until the end of the game, I am busy for another good 50 minutes. Especially successful is the final fight of the game, where the developers literally pulled all the stops. For those who want to play the fight spoiler-free, skip the next section:
Warning Spoiler: Here you read how the end looks.
You are tasked with defending a temple and must defeat all enemies. At the same time, the shrine threatens to explode and the ground disintegrates further every round. The enemies also have their own tricks and surprisingly caught me just as nasty as the annoying crabs did before.
After the final fight, the game ends very abruptly, but I felt very entertained just through the finale. It was worth not giving up on the demo after 30 minutes.
And that’s exactly what I also wish for the final game: More of the crunchy, beautifully staged fights and less wandering around in a pretty but far too sterile backdrop.
Empty game world, tedious beginning, and many questions about the performance
Pretty but empty game world: After about 2 hours, I overall feel very entertained and look forward to the start of the Early Access of Solasta II. But there are also a few things that I did not like.
The game world looks truly beautiful and is really appealing with the village, the steep cliffs, and the gorges. But at the same time, everything feels so sterile and lifeless. I hope the world will be fuller at the release. So far, everything has a very backdrop feel.
This makes the beginning of the game feel very tedious and does not motivate me to explore the world. Because I can’t use anything anyway.
The technology could become a problem: And another thing that occupies my mind: The game uses Unreal Engine 5 and looks really great because of it. The interplay between light and shadow is really cool, and the village by the coast looks truly good. But in the past, all games that used Unreal Engine 5 struggled with serious performance issues (via vg247.com).
The demo ran super smoothly and stably at 60 FPS, but the Early Access launch could be different again. In the end, it really depends on the optimization of the game by the developers.
By the way, I played with a Ryzen 7 7800x3D and an RX 6700 XT on an ultrawide monitor with UWQHD resolution. And everything ran perfectly at stable 60 FPS at max settings.
What I couldn’t test either: the multiplayer. Because the demo is only available in single-player mode. The single-player has significantly improved the predecessor. More about the predecessor, Solasta, can be read in the following article on MeinMMO: The new co-op mode is exactly what Solasta needs on Steam – A real RPG tip
