Tl;dr - Solasta II is pretty, has some fun mechanics, but suffers immensely in the presentation of its story, and the encounter design/flow of an adventure is abysmal.

So, I'm a big enjoyer of TTRPGs, as well as CRPGs (all the BG games, Divinity, Pathfinder, etc...). While Solasta II offers a lot in terms of it's customization of the party (but not individual characters well, which is a problem) and fluid combat mechanics, it lacks a lot in writing.

Overall, the story 8 hours in is...simply not that interesting. The writers have decided our protagonists are (SPOILERS)







....related to one another, and we are supposed to accept it an immediately care? Many other games, even the first Solasta game, have stronger starts that hooks the player into the role of the party immediately in some way. This start is lack luster.

The other major, and I mean major problem is with encounter design. 5e and other adjacent systems are built on attrition. This is even more easily simulated in a video game than a tabletop game. It has become the norm for entertainment-based DnD games to have a single combat encounter per adventuring day. Sure. This is due to budget and a million other factors. However, DnD is not actually meant to be played this way, and your at-home games ought not reflect this practice. The reason for this, is because the players can simply rush through all their abilities and spells in a single encounter to "alpha strike" the monsters. What does a DM or a game designer do? Well, in order for that combat to be satisfying, the monsters need to hit extremely hard and be just as hardy.

This is a huge problem in Solasta II.

Every adventure has one, and I mean ONE single combat encounter. Imagine my surprise when I had my party almost wiped in one of the first combats, because the monsters can down a PC in a single turn. Mind you, I know how to build a DnD party...I've been a DM for almost a decade at this point.

Solasta II is suffering the same problem at-home games have when doing encounter design for a single combat in a single adventuring day. Everything has to be cranked to maximum difficulty in order to challenge the player.

Simply, this just isn't fun. Having to cast your spells from the top to the bottom, using every available power in every combat, it's just kind of exhausting. The first Solasta did a great job with dungeon crawls and other adventures more accurately using the 5e rules to simulate a typical adventuring day - some easy, some hard fights, which makes more variety.

personally, this is my number one reason not to recommend this game. I am baffled as to why the team went in on this design choice, when no other successful CRPG in the current market does this. There's a good reason why they don't, and it's because it's piss poor game design.

I am grateful for early access, but as a huge fan and supporter of Solasta I, I am very worried.
1) I tried for over an hour and while I could get the dwarf to look like a human little-person, the other 3 are not only extremely ugly, but were much worse when animated in the cutscenes. If there is a way to update their looks, I haven't found it, but if this is fantasy, it feels like horror... but I am the horror.
2) I loved Solasta 1 because it showed that 5e can be an excellent tactical game. So far, not feeling that at all here. The way cover worked was essential. The characters looked great "taking cover" which always had a special cover animation. The degree of cover was not only clear when moving a unit, but everywhere on the map. For planning, I need to know all of the cover angles, not just the ones of the moment.
3) changing to crossbow for my cleric to cast, then changing back to mace and shield... EVERY turn. Both violates 5e and is tedious and completely pointless.
4) lots of long cutscenes, most of which look bad, have bad scripts, and have little to do with the tactical excellence that 1 provided. In the first town there is a sailor lady who not only uses silly cliches of a pirate, but uses them over and over again. The effect of this is not funny or cute, but like a very bad movie that will never become a cult classic. I get that they want to be BG3, but they can't get anywhere near it, so I find myself skipping through it. This wouldn't be so bad if I didn't need to pay for a much diminished tactical experience to get things I skip.
5) UI feels laggy on my solid computer that runs everything well, in a game like this with so much movement, this is not a minor issue.
6) Yes, there are issues with political correctness that take away from immersion. I won't mention them, but there are a lot of them both in character creation and in the story. Note that BG3 has a 100% bisexual cast, plenty of ribald stuff, and options to create what you wanted, but it (almost) never felt forced or unnatural like this.
7) a lot of camera problems both during cutscenes, and moving around.

Bright spots? Not many. Some of the panoramas are quit nice, especially the stills between load screens.

Can it be fixed? Of course, and I'll change my review not when it is perfect, but if it gets to the point where I can believe it will be good on release. At the moment, I can't. Very sad, as this has been in the top 3 on my wishlist for years.

As a 40 purchase with about 10 hours of content I cannot in good conscience recommend Solasta 2 as it currently stands in its Early Access cycle right now. The only people who should be even considering this are either A) People who liked the first ones and are starving for more of it, knowing full well it will EVENTUALLY be done. Or B) People who really really like D&D Legal stuff and also understand that this is EXTREMELY BARREN right now.

"I really really liked Baldur's Gate 3, Flyer. Should I get this?" Not unless you are familiar with the first release of it where it was like half of Act 1 for a solid year+ and nothing else. Baldur's Gate 3 NOW is an entirely different beast than when it first released and even NOW it's not fully fully ironed out.

Is Solasta 2 an improvement on the first? I'd say yes for the most part. The potential and understanding is there for it to eclipse Crown of the Magister. I hope everything that it had after everything was said and done makes it. I hope there's more (I would like to make an Aarakocra or a Kenku or something that isn't just base human the end) and I'm looking forward to seeing what the devs do!

As for performance it runs pretty good on max for me with minimal slow dear or tearing or any kind of performance problems