Solasta: Crown of the Magister Features Trailer and Previews

Tactical Adventures’ latest trailer for their D&D-based CRPG Solasta: Crown of the Magister highlights the game’s character customization options, shows off a few bits of the game’s tactical turn-based combat, and presents some nice environments. Check it out:

Here are the relevant parts of the accompanying press release:

French independent developer Tactical Adventures has released a new features trailer for its upcoming Tactical RPG Solasta: Crown of the Magister, the first look at new features and gameplay since its successful Kickstarter last summer. The trailer dives into the character creator to assemble a team of four heroes, outfitting and preparing them to explore the uncharted world of Solasta, and engage in highly tactical and vertical combat.

Enjoy a first look at how to create a fully customized party, by choosing among a wide range of races, classes and subclasses, background stories and abilities, to maximize synergies and potential while adventuring. Wizards of the Coast has granted Tactical Adventures a license to use the Dungeons & Dragons SRD 5.1 content and rules in Solasta: Crown of the Magister.

Solasta is a team-based adventure game where each character plays a critical role in the campaign and can be a hero. The dynamic and mysterious world features elements of verticality, allowing players to use their surroundings as an element of strategy. Players can position ranged characters on high vantage points or send their thief down into shafts and caverns to scope out what’s ahead. In Solasta, light is a tool to explore the depths and hollows of dungeons or can be used as a weapon against the creatures of the dark, but if players aren’t careful, it will give away the party’s position to nasty creatures bent on their demise.

Solasta: Crown of the Magister Features:

• Verticality: Solasta is a three-dimensional world, rather than a series of flat maps. Locations can be explored by climbing walls, flying, teleporting, crawling through tunnels, finding secret passages, or falling through unstable ground, allowing the player to use the environment to take on encounters in multiple different ways.
• Team Based Adventure: Players will have many options to choose races, classes, backgrounds, and can even roll for stats as they create their party. All members are essential – together you will adventure through Solasta as a group, where you must work together in pursuit of your quest.
• Tactical CRPG: Each encounter can be handled in multiple ways. Will you use the high ground to strike your enemies from above as a Darkweaver Rogue, or shove your enemies into deep chasms as a Mountaineer Fighter? Your choices alone will determine the destiny of your party.
• Light: Light will not only help to see your surroundings as you explore deep underground or in a dungeon. It can also be used as a weapon against the light-fearing creatures you will encounter along your journey. Careful, though – light can also give away your position.
• Created by Tabletop Players: Tactical Adventures is a team of highly experienced Tabletop players and veteran game developers who are passionate about the genre, striving to create the best Tactical RPG video game

Then, you might also be interested in reading a couple of hands-on previews for the game. First, here’s Screen Rant with some quotes from Tactical Adventures’ founder Mathieu Girard. An excerpt:

During the course of the preview, Girard gave us the option of deciding which character and class we wanted to see shown off. After choosing a Snow Dwarf Cleric, Girard informed us, “You actually chose very well, because Dwarves and Clerics have the most customization options in the game so far.” He wasn’t wrong either as Clerics in the game have a range of different gods to choose from, which provide them with different skills and spells. There were many options for designing a character’s looks as well, including different beards and hair styles.

Tactical Adventures has remained faithful to 5th Edition when it comes to backgrounds, but also adapted them into Solasta: Crown of the Magister in new ways. “Each background is going to define a story arc for this character, so players will have four different story arcs for their party. Each one will give the player a sidequest that unlocks a different part of the game,” explains Girard. Just like in D&D, backgrounds grant players different skill proficiencies and abilities. Solasta also has a new system called “personality flags.” Depending on what alignment and background the player chooses, they will receive specific personality traits that influence how the character behaves during cutscenes and narration. There will also be different dialogue options based on what a character’s personality is.

And here are a few sample paragraphs from Gamereactor’s preview:

Ability scores are the next step in creating a character and it’s most definitely one of the most critical areas. Players start with some points already distributed, yet there are 27 points to freely distribute anywhere across the six classic categories (strength, dexterity, constitution, intelligence, wisdom and charisma), and this will, of course, create the core of your character. Those wanting to embrace that extra tabletop flair can actually use a random dice roll function to set their stat scores, which we thought was a fantastic feature. This then ties into proficiencies and it’s in this category you’ll get to pick from a vast array of skill combinations and skill sub-trees – all determined via initiative rolls and tied to your stats, of course.

Finally, it’s time to create the visual aspect of your character, naming him or her, altering the shape of their face, skin, hair, hair colour, eye colour and muscular build. While plenty of features are already available, we were told that our options would expand further during development.