After a little more than seven months in Early Access, developer Tactical Adventures' Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition-inspired dungeon crawler, Solasta: Crown of the Magister, is fully released. Solasta has a lot in common with other popular TTRPGs like Baldur's Gate or Pathfinder: Kingmaker, but Solasta: Crown of the Magister instead feels like an evolution of the 5th Edition formula despite a few hiccups.
Solasta: Crown of the Magister takes places in the fictional country of Solasta, a nation once ruled by a powerful kingdom of elves that were wiped out by a mysterious event centuries ago. The main characters are sent on a quest by the ruling body of Solasta to investigate a shady circumstance, and somehow stumble into a larger quest to save the world. The game's story is chock full of dozens of fantasy tropes to explore and magical Macguffins to acquire, but Tactical Adventures manages to tell this familiar story well.
One of the best aspects of Solasta: Crown of the Magister is its character creation tools. The four person party in the game can be filled with either pre-built characters or ones that have been created from scratch. During this process the player can choose between several different races and sub-races, character classes, skill points, personality traits, and even religious affiliation. Almost all of the choices for constructing characters come straight out of the 5th Edition handbook, or they are built upon mechanics laid out in the rules. Even those with no experience at all with D&D should have no problems with this in-depth creation tool because everything is well-explained and tips are given about what skills and abilities would best suit a character. Character creation may not be as extensive as it is in Baldur's Gate 3, but Solasta ultimately feels more authentic to its source.
Another place Solasta: Crown of the Magister shines is in its combat encounters. The game truly translates Dungeons & Dragons combat fluently into video game form. It is a relatively simple affair of rolling for initiative when starting an encounter and then taking turns performing actions depending on the order of the rolls. All of the basic D&D combat mechanics are present here like bonus actions, opportunity attacks, and even special movement actions like dash or disengage. Combat encounters always feel important as one lapse in concentration or planning can get a party member killed.
Where combat gets interesting is the ways in which Solasta: Crown of the Magister adopts more complicated TTRPG mechanics. A core feature that the developers were excited to show off in previews of Solasta: Crown of the Magister was the verticality aspect of movement. Characters and enemies are able to move around on aspects of the terrain or use certain spells to attack each other from different heights. With the inclusion of height differences, many different attack or defense strategies are added to a player's arsenal. Another interesting addition is the lighting system, which many more casual D&D fans have probably never experimented with. In Solasta light spells and torches must be used in order to avoid having disadvantages in dark areas or to reveal hidden parts of the map.
There are a few issues that still need some work with Solasta, however. The leveling system feels a little unbalanced throughout the game. About halfway through the story characters are already pretty close to fully leveled up, which makes the progression system suffer a bit. There are also a few spells that either don't work the way they are intended to or have strange differences compared to their D&D counterparts. The biggest offender is the spell Mage Armor which grants its user an AC of 13 rather than making AC 13 plus the character's Dex modifier like it is in D&D, which renders what is usually one of the best first level wizard spells into one that is practically useless once the player acquires some equipment.
Overall Solasta: Crown of the Magister is one of the best attempts at bringing 5th Edition to a video game. Solasta: Crown of the Magister embraces its source material, and rather than replacing harder to translate concepts like lighting it properly modifies them to fit in with an already engaging combat system. Fans of Dungeons & Dragons and tactical RPGs alike will have a lot to be enjoy with Solasta: Crown of the Magister.
Solasta: Crown of the Magister is available now on PC. Screen Rant was provided with a digital download code for the purpose of this review.