Does Wrath of the Righteous win this now? I haven’t followed any of the games other than watching a few minutes of gameplay. If I had to pick a CRPG, I think that would be it.
Thank you Shiva, sounds like they have a bit of mess on their hands and disappointing…
Probably. At least once they get all the issues ironed out.
It also depends on what you’re looking for. BG3 is more of a “hard” RPG. As in you’re playing a character and interacting with NPCs and the like a lot more. Solasta is a hard simulation of table top and extremely linear. Wrath is in between. You have a lot more roleplaying options in Wrath than Solasta, but a lot less than BG3 (well probably, hard to say at this stage for BG3).
Again, it’s super early. It’s a proper Alpha in a lot of ways. I’m not super thrilled with it right now, but I’ll also be amazed if it comes out before 2023.
What little I played of BG3 and not being a diehard BG/D&D fan - I feel that the BG3 story is very well done.
Yes, that’s very much a strength so far. Plus, production value is through the roof.
The more I play Wrath of the Righteous, the more I pine for Solasta’s UI. It’s just leagues better in terms of usability. Sorting abilities by what you can use, when is just so much better than hunting through multiple hot bars and trying to remember what is a free action, vs swift, vs move action, vs standard, vs full.
Agree completely.
Just got Solasta, and you are spot on regarding description. I’m loving it.
After finally playing all three games mentioned, I like to think I am landing in roughly the same ballpark as @Scotch_Lufkin. As I heavily lean toward gameplay first and BG3 is tiresome to play compared to the others.
Baldur’s Gate 3 suffers from just plain awful UI/UX. I think the first thing everyone has to do is unlock the interface and start rearranging that absolute mess of multi-colored icons that all come pre-jumbled together FOR EVERY SINGLE CHARACTER.
Solasta truly is an absolute dream in comparison. Can I export Solasta’s UI into BG3 please! It’s smart and only shows you what you can do as an Action or Bonus Action at any given point in time, which are cleanly separated out. Everything else is simply not shown. It’s magical. Finally, reactions as actions, which Larian removed from BG3 for some stupid reason. (truly the cornerstone of D&D5e…aborted!)
Wrath of the Righteous just plays like an Infinite Engine game/Classic Baldur’s Gate, with D&D 3.5++ which I am bias for. It’s my formative and preferred D&D system. Turn-base mode works surprisingly well though. So well in fact it feels like the game could have been made only turn-base and I wouldn’t have batted an eye.
Rather than giving scores, I’d rank them like this:
Gameplay
- Solasta
- WotR
- BG3
Audio-visual
- BG3
- WotR
- Solasta
Storytelling
- WotR
- BG3
- Solasta*
*I haven’t actually finished Solasta yet but it doesn’t have companion NPCs. You make every character of the party a la Icewind Dale, and it is linear…so it’s probably the weakest.
So what’s the best Solasta campaign to jump into for overall fun?
I asked a similar question recently on the Solasta thread. Here’s the summary I copied for my own notes.
From vinraith: I asked around here awhile back and got a few suggestions:
- lostcawz: There are quite a few good ones. Some as long or longer than the main campaign. I think I have most of not all of Silverquicks stuff. And Eiru stuff but I don’t recalll if that’s the same modder or not. Usually I just search most pop over the last three months for a list of campaigns. Also look into the Unfinished Business mod but I think you have to get it on Nexus. And I’ve never gotten the 6 player campaigns to work but I haven’t really tried too hard either.
- Warfran: Two user made campaigns that I’ve played recently and really enjoyed (more than the original campaign) as they were very well done were…Morrows Deep and Temple of Evil
- eliandi: I play alot of user made mods…currently playing Morrows Deep single player and the beginning Eiru adventure multiplayer (~weekly) with my tabletop group. Upstream is mentioned the mod to fix being able to see item details without holding a key.
From morlac:
Get Unfinished business mod first. It is spectacular and allows the tweaking of almost everything even adding more party members.
My favorites:
Temple of Elemental Evil
Morrow’s deep
Forsaken Isle (tough one)
Depths of Darkness
Ruins of Ilthismar
Interdimensional Escalations
Shadows over BrightreachSome of them have 6 player version that up the encounters to match 6 man parties. I love those!
I just went through the steam workshop and added all the five star campaigns. There’s only about a dozen or so.
I should’ve specified that I meant the retail stuff. I’ve yet to buy the Ice campaign, but it’s $10 on Steam this weekend.
Hmm, I just bought Ice, not b/c I really wanted the campaign (I’ve gotten about halfway through the original campaign) but it offers new faces. And one of the reasons I hit a wall with Solasta was those dang faces. The base faces are just horribad.
Many of the user made campaigns use some or all the official dlc. So if you find it on sale I’d grab it regardless of wanting to play the actual dlc.
Something that others don’t do well and the DLC showcases is how much better characters that have a short rest mechanic are in sustainability. If you can power through the comparatively mediocre main campaign the DLC is a decent high level D&D adventure where the power creep doesn’t get out of hand.
Right. Specifically, Palace of Ice raises the level cap to 16 and adds all the corresponding skills/spells/equipment etc to support that, which is important for any user campaign that wants to go up to higher levels.
So I just bought the Lightbringers Edition. It better be good! ;-D
Well, on sale. Game did fly under my radar since I had no idea there were user made campaigns/it was that well received here.
Thanks @roguefrog for bringing up that old thread. (And putting BG3 into perspective to whom it may conscerns. Me!)
@Scotch_Lufkin did most of the work.
Solasta might be the most faithful adaption of 5e, combat is tight and the UI is really good, but basically “everything” else is worse in comparison to BG3. I’d argue that goes for pretty much any other CRPG though. Nothing has those production values.
Huh, I didn’t realize that Solasta had such a robust modding scene. I used to like occasionally running through a downloaded Neverwinter Nights module (usually a pen-and-paper adaptation) when I was craving a dungeon crawl or an RPG of manageable length over a weekend or so, but haven’t done that in years.
On the wishlist it goes until the next sale. Thanks for the bump because this game had slipped completely off my radar and likely would have stayed off.