Solasta: Crown of The Magister - Is it Worth Buying? (2023 Review After Beating Game)

hey everybody Welcome to my review of Celesta crown of the Magister this is gonna be a video focused on my experience with the base game without any of the DLC and you can watch all 18 episodes of my edited let's play on this channel so starting off with my general thoughts on my overall impressions of how I felt about Celesta kind of the Magister as a whole I would say that true to the name of the developers tactical Adventures the mechanics and combat of Celesta were absolutely the highlight of the whole experience at least for myself as someone who enjoys playing tabletop Dungeons and Dragons and also turn-based video games RPGs and strategy games it uses the DND 5th edition system as its mechanical basis and very successfully translates it into digital gameplay it feels exactly how I imagined a video game of DnD to be like with a lot of monster stat blocks that are ripped straight out of the monster manual and turn-based systems simply automated and being very faithful to its source material that being said slassa is very much its own world with its own unique monsters its own Gods a few Celesta specific spells and features its various factions and a decent helping of its very own setting exclusive lore and speaking of lore I want to go over the premise of the main story of Celesta crown of the Magister in a non-spoilery fashion while dedicating the end of the video for going over more specific details of the main campaign that may contain some spoilers for the plot celesteocrine and the Magister starts us off with four Plucky Adventures that you create meeting in a Tavern the classic star Zone the adventurers are basically looking for a job in Kara Kipling the major Hub City that will be the main place where you buy stuff and get new quests from the adventurers have come from distant lands to answer the call of the Legacy Council which wants deputies to go out into the Badlands and recover ancient artifacts magical relics and all other forms of powerful lost knowledge that they may encounter while also being capable of Exterminating monsters along the way so as a first mission the newly foreign party of deputies gets sent to a fortress of the council lost contact with in hopes of figuring out what went wrong the counselors think that this will be a pretty easy first quest to accomplish even for newbies but as you may imagine things go horribly wrong for our foolhardy party the four deputies battle their way through large swaths of the Hostile creatures in order to reach the Fortress only to realize that something is very wrong the soldier that are stationed at The Fortress seem to be extremely paranoid and the captain that you were supposed to make contact with is nowhere to be found after speaking to the soldiers some more they revealed that there are only a few of them left and the captain is probably dead and the survivors are currently being hunted by reptilian creatures known as the sorax the sorax are believed by many to be mere folktale and Boogeyman that mothers tell to their children but as our deputies are about to find out they are very very real and extremely deadly after our heroes hack and slash their way through hordes of Evil Lizard folk a deeper plot is slowly unraveled the sorak's true purpose is to tear open a sealed Rift that will bring endless hordes of sorax to invade and Conquer All of Celesta in order to unseal the rift the soraks need the crown of the Magister with all eight gems to empower it as that was the very same item that was used to seal the rift a thousand years ago luckily for the world the four deputies find the crown of Magister for themselves and learn of the sorex master plan and are now tasked with the goal of finding all eight gems of the crown before the sorax due in order to save the world of Celesta so that was the basic hook of the main campaign setting up the sorax as the main recurring antagonistic force that your party will have to face off against while also creating a pretty straightforward main quest plotline of hunting down to eight magical gems that can then save the world but now let's dive into what I think is the biggest draw of slasta crown of the Magister which is the mechanics the combat and level design the levels were really well designed for the most part and feature some really interesting verticality that matches well with the Spells abilities and selassa exclusive magical items that are scattered throughout the campaign not to mention that the main quest zones were also quite nice to visually look at and felt distinct enough from each other the enemies that you encountered often also had cool environmental interactions and smart positioning alongside things like being able to stick to the side of walls that made them far deadlier than what the stat block would initially suggest verticality height differences and line of sight were also major factors that I felt were done very well most of the time and it really helped Slash's Battlefield not just feel like a repetitive box every time you square up with the enemy in terms of what I would like to see more of I felt that many of the early main quest monsters that you fight have some form of light sensitivity with things like the devilers which are the slasta equivalent of vampire in other forms of Undead and various kinds of spiders and creepy creatures all suffering from disadvantage if you have a source of Bright Light which is fine as a mechanic it makes tortures much more valuable early on which is cool but I kind of wish for a little bit more variety in terms of monster weaknesses there were also some fun environmental objects that you could push over or pull down and hopefully crush the enemies caught directly underneath but I personally found that these stalactites or chandeliers very rarely made much of a difference the enemies May simply never walk into its area effect and the Damage that does to the enemies is often disappointing especially in the later parts of the game where attacking normally with a weapon or can trip simply does so much more but that being said I still really enjoyed the idea of being able to interact and change the environment of a combat encounter I think that does add a lot to the creativity of turn-based games and I think that overall salassa does a pretty good job of integrating them into combat zones but I just would have liked to see more of them with different types of effects and be more you know powerful and useful as for my general feelings on the bump and grind of the combat that comprises the bulk of the gameplay experience I would say that Celesta does an excellent job of maintaining a smooth but still satisfyingly crunchy combat Loop the encounters never felt grindy and never felt drawn out and the Monsters often had neat tricks that can really up the ante of Any Given battle providing a good feeling of tension and danger for every turn the enemy is still standing the bosses with their legendary actions their powerful attacks and the abilities that they get were pretty well balanced it put pressure on me as a player to pay attention and to try and eke out as many advantages as I can while also never being annoyingly overbearing and feeling like everything is dependent on the RNG even though it is a dice based game I would say that the biggest pet peeve that I have that is sometimes related to the combat experience for Celesta would be the way that certain quests pair your party up with side characters maybe it was just me being a bad tactician but I felt that many side character NPC companions felt more like a liability half of the time due to them not having death saving throws meaning that once they've dropped a zero hit points they just instantly die and these are campaign important characters meaning that you have to keep them alive or else the game's over this is combined with their relatively low hit point pool at that point of the game making them really fragile and most likely forcing you to burn of a fight on them when the big boss battle comes the game to its credit does provide you with a lot of Resurrection fodder in terms of Scrolls diamonds and the crown of Magister but it still felt really bad when you had to waste precious resources on a teammate that was not going to stick around after you finish a quest so I personally felt that the quest companions should have been given some form of death saving throw in order to make them feel less frustrating to play around but overall I would have to say that I am thoroughly impressed with what I experienced from solasses combat the flow and Rhythm Of The Game's battles were outstanding being able to utilize the environment to my advantage was very refreshing line of sight blocking terrain made positioning even more important and the emphasis on verticality was definitely unique and helped make selassus monsters stand out in my memories another facet of game design that I want to talk about would be the way the quests side quests and the various factions interacted with the player and their significance to the story of Celesta I would say that the main quests constantly pushing the party forward and exploring the Badlands were done in a rather standard format but instead of a quest Giver it was the crown basically telling you where the deputies needed to go in order to progress the story there's not really anything particularly special about the way celasta handles their questing system it was basically scaffolding that moved players into the strongest point of Celesta which is the combat supported by interesting level designs however I will say that selassa's story was a lot more linear than I thought it was going to be the relationship that you have with the different factions didn't seem to impact the story options available to you at all the Affinity system was entirely economical Buffs giving you better buy and sell prices on the goods that the different factions sold alongside higher tier equipment for when you reach certain relationship thresholds with them the mechanics of the different vendors and how you have to prioritize certain factions over the others in order to buy their cooler equipment was honestly well done you only had a limited amount of relics that you could give each of them in order to improve your sanding with them meaning that the player needs to strategize which Merchants catalog is the most important for them to unlock and which Merchant you'll be fine without do you choose the antiquarians and their expertise and utility items that you can attune to such as magical Rings boots and cloaks or do you want to get on the good side of a faction like the Tower of knowledge that specializes in crafting West peas allowing the party to make their own items such as magical ammunition potions and other helpful consumables maybe you want to craft your own magical gear in that case you should go for the arcaneum a faction that primarily sells primed weapons and armor which is an essential ingredient for crafting magically enhanced equipment that you cannot find normally or maybe you just want a simple transaction and buy something that is already good such as a plus one long sword or a plus two Shield then you should consider being good friends with the circle of danitar those are the four main Merchant factions that you get to pick and choose from and the most consequential in terms of what type of gear that you want your party members to obtain the two other factions are the Scavengers and the principality of mascarath your relationship with them will naturally deepen as you progress through the story of Celesta so you don't have to worry about expending your finite relics on those two with the principality being kind of like the beginner faction that gives you access to General adventuring goods and some of the more common items and the Scavengers will give you gold depending on how much loot you leave on the ground because it was just too heavy and not worth encumbering your party to haul it back yourselves the Scavengers faction is actually quite an Innovative mechanic it relieves pressure on the player to not have to min max their inventory weight every time they go out adventuring it allows players to have a second chance to easily check if they left behind something interesting without having to click through all the different loot bags it is a brilliantly designed Merchant faction system it functions like a technology tree allowing the player to pick and choose which faction to Tech into at the cost of being locked out of the other options I just wish the same level of depth was afforded to the story side of things but unfortunately the stronger relationship never seemed to give you more dialogue with any of the merchants or their Associates it never gave you any super special exclusive side quests and it didn't impact the story of selassa at all there was this little subtext under your relationship bar that told the player that this faction will fight alongside them but that never seemed to have actually happened at least in my playthrough and so I thought that this was kind of a bummer I would have liked more to do with the role-playing aspect of the game and have the mechanics that the players interact with to actually influence the outcome of certain events a lot of the quests and events that you seem to get seem to be extremely self-contained and the minor NPC characters that you save or help along the way never really show up again and you never have any sort of follow-up quests that built on the previous experiences that you had with them with the minor exception of robar sharp and Arwen Merton's questline with scavengers unfortunately the only side character with any sort of development was Arwin Martin his backstory as the first scavenger of the Badlands and unique questline about Redemption was kind of cool actually but also didn't really impact much of the main story except for being able to recruit him in one of the later battles and another weakness of selassa's questing structure would be the way side quests are handled these side quests are almost all exclusively fetch quests that lead you to a combat encounter at the end and this exact same pattern played out over and over again which became repetitive pretty quickly although the comma itself was still enjoyable most of the side quests also forced you to backtrack the previously discovered locations which is not that bad in Celesta because each major zone is quite nice to look at and having another chance to look for chests that you were unable to lock pick or reach in the past is also welcome although I would have liked to have seen some newer locations reserved specifically for some side quests in order to make them feel more special and more meaningful I would say that the best of the side quests came from your players characters background quest lines with things like the wander under our background giving your character An Origin story of how they became an adventurer because their parents were killed when they were young or the Philosopher's questline where you find out that your old teacher fell in love with a woman that is part of an evil cult the background quests are far better than the standard side quests that you get from your job board because they actually expand on what you know of certain characters and gives you a sense of how your character fits in the world it builds a sense of history and purpose to the quest that makes you feel less about the reward and more about the story it's trying to tell and unfortunately that level of quality was few and far between when it came to the side quests experience since the last decrying the Magister but overall I would say that the main quests combined with fun battles did lift some of the bird in a way I just would have liked to have seen more ways to shift the direction of the story and have more discoverable dialogue options with the minor characters to make the questing experience feel less linear and less unresponsive to the player's actions another gameplay feature that I want to touch on would be the crafting system of Celesta I would say that in Broad terms the crafting system is quite robust and features a nice variety of craftable gear Scrolls and consumables as long as you're able to find the prerequisite a crafting recipe and have the required tools proficiency I would say that it's basically exactly how I imagine a crafting system should function except with the annoyance that the tooltip doesn't actually tell you the properties of the craftable item so you actually have no way of knowing if the thing you are in crafting is something that you want until you finish the crafting sessions consuming the ingredients in the process I guess you could say that this is a fun way to push people to take risks but I would say that this is more of an oversight than a gameplay feature it just doesn't feel good to craft something that's not as good as what you already have especially since the crafting process consumes the finite resources required for other craftable items so unless you cozy up with the arcanium you're probably going to be strapped for primed weapons and armor and taking that chance to make something potentially worthless is in my opinion not a great experience I think Celesta should give players more information on what the craftable items actually do their properties the stats and so that the player can learn and properly strategize on where to expend their limited resources one thing I did not really expect from an indie Studios first RPG was actually how nice everything looked and felt when adventuring with your your party the lighting sound effects magic casting animations special effects and general look of the game was honestly very pretty especially for an isometric RPG there was good contrast between different zones the colors that were used always match the atmosphere that they were going for and everything felt like they belonged in the same world there were areas where the environments were genuinely gorgeous to look at and really helped me get excited for when we were off exploring to new Fantastical places because they actually looked like fantastic places to explore and I know that some people aren't going to be as appreciative of this especially for a more mechanics driven game of Celesta but I do think there is something to be said of making sure that the player is invested in the environment that they'd Venture through I think that being able to instill the spirit of wonder in the player is something that does make a difference when talking about RPGs because it makes exploration more satisfying and it makes questing in those areas more memorable even if the quests themselves are not as for the music and original soundtrack of the game I felt that they were always very decent it helps out that classic High fantasy atmosphere and was usually not intrusive to the immersion of the game but none of the music really stood up to me in any special way except for the main theme when it kicks in and the trumpets and the brass instruments start blasting your ears I will say though that certain parts of the track were really quiet perhaps too soft especially when you're out of combat and just going around looting stuff but even in combat I did notice some lulls in the epic battle music and this was sometimes jarringly contrasted by large spikes of volume in certain areas like for example the main theme when you load UPS elasta is incredibly loud compared to the rest of the game and the soundtrack for character Flynn also had some pretty high notes that kind of comes out of nowhere however those are very much minor faults in the Solas OST and I doubt the average player will care that much [Music] another important aspect of slasta that pertains to its overall ability to immerse you into the world of Celesta and really get players since then monster slaying mood would probably be its voice acting I would say that the best voice acting as Alaska came from the four main characters that you create which is a good thing since your party talks the most out of any of the characters but it does give a slight sense of whiplash when many of the side characters that you interact with will have a noticeably different level of quality to them not necessarily terrible but definitely uneven and a little choppy and that's not me knocking down the people that voice the NPCs and minor characters it's just that you could sense that the voice actors for the protagonists of the story had really strong control over their voices and knew when to hold back to make your character sound more grounded in the world that they are experiencing which unfortunately sometimes clashes sharply with the way others sounded there are times when the side characters sounded fine and other times where it sounded like the voice actor was Hamming it up way too much or 4 forcing emotions in an artificial and jarring way this but come on now there's a trophy by the way who's crazy now all right you were right and we were wrong they do exist happy now thanks Phil I've seen more than anyone in this town yet nobody seems to believe me maybe it's a curse is surrounded by idiots if you don't mind Merton we have business to attend to that's right say hello to the old lady for Me Karen hmm interesting very nice find it's quite massive clearly Imperial in style these ruins remind me of the Imperial schools of magic it's the least we can do for the deputies who prove that there are still sorax on Celesta I'm sorry to say after a thousand years only a few of us remain now most people believe zorax are a mere Legend you're welcome deputies there are also quite a few cutscenes where the animation or 3D models kind of bug out and create some goofy moments that are relatively harmless to the overall experience but still noticeable during the zoom in cutscenes my lords this Deputy is clearly unwell what time I would say that the biggest issue that I personally had was the lastest cutscenes and character speaking moments would probably be the way that it was written especially some of the later scenes where crack started to show I think a lot of the rougher dialogue that occurs in the game is due to the developers trying to create different dialogue paths for the characters that are based off of the backgrounds and Alignment that you chose for them during the character creation this is a great idea on paper but the implementation during Solosis cutscenes left a lot to be desired there were many times when the party just started talking about random subject matter that had no bearing on what they were actually doing or left me completely confused as to what they were even referring to in the first place because oftentimes they just utter words with no context behind them turning entire conversations into a jumbled mess the branching dialogue that is based off of the personalities that you chose for your party primers is definitely an interesting concept but one that needs a lot of refinement because the way that's the last that crown of the Magister does it is to essentially record a bunch of phrases and sentences that are thematically connected to the character's alignment but has no regard for the actual context in which they are used causing strange discordant dialogue between the characters where one character talks about one thing and then the other party member just starts blabbing about completely random topics that makes it feel like each of your playingable characters are just ranting to themselves more than anything else this this is the place what do you mean but it's impossible how do you feel I propose we set up camp and get some rest I don't think that's a good idea I must find the master well he doesn't think it's a good idea I say we go yes okay that's really awkward this is the place I have a bad feeling about this where am I are you kidding me I must find the master are you okay yes she is crazy damn right let's get on with it oh come on that's bitching and more hacking space language I so love manual labor I'll stop moaning it was just a nice warm-up I've dealt with worse not often though hard to believe Enos strike me if I lie where are we yeah friends we'll have to think this through we're a team and watch where you put your hands in the future exactly scavenger mind you stop it even the most mundane tasks can be the expression of true nobility when done to the fullest I shall remind you at next Camp when the dishes come up despite your face is also shiny those servants would come in handy for your highnesses household all right stop your silliness cover with all of that being said I'd really do appreciate the effort to provide voice actor dialogue throughout the entirety of the campaign even some side quests had voice lines which is something that you don't see too often in smaller budget games I actually think that's great that Indie RPG goes the extra mile and tries to record as much dialogue as possible rather than relying on walls of text I have nothing against walls of text but when it comes to spouting Exposition and presenting the World building elements of an unknown fantasy world to a brand new player I think it actually does help people retain memory of what is going on benefits the player's immersion and assists in crafting and intuitive understanding of where the story is going and keep the motivations and relationships of relevant characters alive and the head of the player better than what techs can accomplish and so overall I think that the voice acting for Celesta was positive it just needed a bit more polish and the final aspect that I want to talk about would be the way that the story sort of wraps itself up and the unresolved questions that linger this part of the video will contain spoilers with the main story so please feel free to skip to the conclusion segment of the video if you want to remain completely spoiled on the story of Celestia crown of the Magister but please watch his part if you're interested on my thoughts on the weaknesses of celesta's Storytelling very broadly speaking I think the storytelling element is Alaska started off pretty solidly like a classic High fantasy plotline about saving the world but then started speeding up haphazardly as it got closer to its ending it definitely felt like the developers were running out of time and decided to just start cramming multiple plot points into a few cut scenes as we got to the climax of the story an example would be the way that they structured the main quests to revolve around collecting all eight gems for the crown with each gem receiving their own unique location and Quest but then right after he received the fifth gem turns out that's the end game and the last three gems have already been found by the sorax and you don't need to collect them individually anymore everything will be decided by one last mean Quest and there were other cracks on the plot that started to really show as you reach the mid game things like the way that the sorax operated started to get a little bit fuzzy it was highly implied in the early game the sorax were able to shapeshift into regular people and that was how the infiltrated society it was also the reason why I thought that they dropped commoner clothes when you killed them however once you got to the second half of the game it was revealed that they can apparently corrupt and convert normal people of Celesta to their cause and they become fanatically devoted to sortar the sorak's dark God and if they can do that then there's really no reason for the sorex to pretend to be people because having Expendable soldiers would make much more sense right and that sort of leads to another problem where the story never really tells you how the conversion process actually works it never tells you how long it takes or how expensive it is it's also vague on whether or not this is like a brainwashing power or maybe simply they just convince people to convert by being persuasive however once a person is corrupted it seems like there's no way to bring them back and their eyes also start glowing which makes me think that's some sort of Mind Control spell but the story never really tells you so we just have to speculate other questions that I felt was left unanswered would be why did the dragons of manukalan pretend to be elves evolve the citizens of their empire were dragons like yeah they were the slaves but who cares if their slaves knew about their true identities why did an Empire of arrogant dragons choose an Elven form to hide behind how did a blue dragon become the princess of the principality of mascar did nobody notice that she didn't age in centuries or alternatively if she had only recently become the princess did nobody find it odd that the princess came out of nowhere who were her predecessors were they also dragons you know those are some of the questions I still have that I felt like were left unanswered the other notable aspect of Storytelling that I felt was kind of rushed would be the way that many major world building elements of Celesta never seem to have played much of a role at all in the actual campaign for crown of the Magister for example the Legacy Council comprises of multiple kingdoms and Nations such as the new Empire the snow Alliance and the kingdom of galavan all of which are established very early on and have their own unique Representatives as counselors which makes them seem very important but the different countries never actually had anything to do with the story until the very end when war between the principality of mascarth and the kingdom of galavan begins to brew but we don't actually see the war it was basically just mentioned in cutscenes and that's about it I understand that we will probably see more of these foreign Kingdoms in the DLC like for example the snow Alliance was show up for Palace of ice but I would have really liked to have seen the different nations have a bigger role to play in the base game for the crown of Manchester campaign because it really seemed like a ton of wasted potential on lore that had close to Zero Effect on its story with no way for the player to learn more about these foreign lands or to interact with them in any meaningful way it just made Celesta feel a lot more two-dimensional and shallower than it had to be but beyond all of my complaints the main Spotlight and attention of the game rightfully goes to the satisfyingly crunchy mechanics of its combat Loop it is quite obvious that this was the part of the game that received the most attention from the developers alongside interesting level design and challenging monsters to slay the overwhelming sentiment that I felt while playing Celestia crown of Magister was that this was a real Gem of the ndrpg with some admittedly rough edges here and there but the core of the experience was very solid and I personally had a good time playing it on this channel so my conclusion to this review video is that if you are looking for a turn-based tactical RPG that is focused on delivering really enjoyable and challenging battles with a rather unique consideration towards verticality in their level design with environments that are pleasing to the eye and feel very well supported with the level of polish that the animations special effects and sound design receive and are not bothered with a somewhat stilted storyline or some choppy voice acting here and there then I think Celesta crown of the Magister will be a good experience and a fun time for fans of turn-based games and as always I hope that anyone who watches my stuff enjoys what I create as much as I enjoyed creating it in the first place I'll see you guys next time but until then goodbye for now [Music]

Channel: Greyscales

Views: 8,428

Keywords: dungeons and dragons, dnd 5e, Greyscales, D&D, Solasta Edits, Let's Play Solasta, Solasta Playthrough, Greyscales Solasta, Greyscales Plays Solasta, Solasta:Crown of the magister, Edited Let's Play, Review of Solasta, Solasta 2023, Solasta Game review, game review solasta, full gameplay review

Id: HuNlSaIokKw

Length: 25min 36sec (1536 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 11 2023