Both games offer a multiplayer experience
through cooperative play This means you and your friends can play through
the games together, and both of them support co-op for up to 4 players In Solasta, the co-op implementation is quite
solid During combat, there's a noticeable banner
in the center of the screen that announces the actions of other players You can even see their cursor movements as
they aim at targets While it would be nice to have a more detailed
view of your partners' actions, the current implementation works well Outside of combat, you can access and view
each other's characters and inventories, exchange items, and so on You know, things you’d expect from a proper
cooperative experience Every dialogue and event in the game is designed
for the whole party So, if one player engages in a conversation
or enters an event location, all other players are automatically brought there as well so it is impossible for someone to skip important
bits During dialogues, when there is a choice to
be made, only the host decides what the party will say Other players can offer their opinions through
voting, and the host sees these votes Regardless, they can choose to ignore them
and proceed as they prefer I see why it is done this way, but it would
be a welcome addition to have an option for a dice roll when disagreements arise, rather
than leaving the final decision solely to the host The main negative regarding co-op is that
there are some technical challenges with the experience Various issues can arise Such as desyncs, where what other players
see doesn't match what happened on the host's screen You might have items in your inventory that
shouldn't be there or miss attacks that should have landed The positive side is that addressing these
problems was relatively straightforward by using a simple save and reload You don't even need to rehost the game, everything
just gets back to normal And desyncs like these were a very rare occurrence Another technical concern was occasional lagging At certain points, the game could start slowing
down and lagging without any apparent cause. Although the FPS for both of us was consistently
above a hundred, the visual experience seemed more like running at 15 fps At times, the lag became so pronounced that
the game practically became unplayable Unfortunately, saving and reloading didn't
remedy this issue It would appear randomly and then disappear
just as randomly Sometimes after a minute, sometimes after
fifteen We did some investigating and concluded that
the likely culprit was server overload The European server, in particular, experienced
problems during peak evening hours when the majority of players were active Switching to a different server, resolved
the problem entirely Cooperative in Baldur’s Gate 3 has a bit
different picture I would say that the technical implementation
seems fine If you ever played Divinity Original Sin 2
- you know exactly what to expect from this one It is very similar with some improvements
here and there In combat, unlike Solasta, there's no way
to know the intentions of other players The huge plus though is
that there are simultaneous turns If you are going one after another in the turn order - you can make
your turns simultaneously This is really nice, makes combat faster and
the downtime between turns is almost non-existent However, sometimes it can lead to confusing
situations if there is no proper communication Outside of combat, you always can see other
players and their actions Their character sheets, including stats, are
readily available, and you can even access their inventories What’s weird is that you have full control
of their inventories and can just freely take their items or place your
items in their inventories At first, there was also quite a serious problem
with co-op When someone started a dialogue - there was no way to bring other
players into it automatically Each player had to manually click to overhear
the conversation This setup could easily lead to missing out
on important dialogues that someone else is engaged in Fortunately, Patch 3 addressed this by enabling
automatic overhearing when a party member enters a dialogue When I say “overhear” the conversation
I mean precisely that – not participate Other players, their characters, and companions
don't make any appearance during your dialogues Other players can vote on dialogue options,
but only the initiator decides the outcome This weird dialogue system is the main drawback
of the whole co-op experience It makes it so that playing in co-op makes
companions noticeably less reactive With two players each controlling a single
companion, the experience feels like two separate parties, rather than a cohesive group of four This divide means that companions will be
far less engaged with events in the game world and offer fewer comments Additionally, the interactions and banter
between companions will be notably reduced In general, I'd say that playing co-op in
Baldur’s Gate while enhances the combat, unfortunately, detracts from the storytelling
aspect, thus diminishing the overall enjoyment When someone else initiates a conversation,
you're completely excluded from the story Fewer companion interactions make the game
noticeably worse You get less character development, less world-building,
and less immersion The whole world of Baldur’s Gate 3 feels
less responsive and dynamic, companions seem much less relevant Therefore, if you prioritize a coherent story
and immersive world-building over combat and group enjoyment, I would highly recommend
embarking at least on your first playthrough solo In my opinion, this offers a much more immersive
experience, which is essential in a game like this Conversely, in Solasta, the scenario is rather
reversed Immersion never was that important in this
game, so co-op significantly enhances the experience, rendering it more enjoyable When you're playing with someone else, it
makes the game more fun, you tend to overlook the narrative and world-building issues as
well as the occasional visual hiccups Hence, if the opportunity presents itself,
I strongly advise opting for co-op play in Solasta Thank you for watching till the end If you enjoyed this content, please
consider liking and subscribing I'm a very small channel,
and your support means a lot This video was just a slice of my comprehensive
comparison between Solasta and Baldur’s Gate 3 If I've completed the full video, you can watch it
here. If not, check out another slice right here.
