There’s one overriding comparison people make about Solasta 2 and that’s it looks a lot like Baldur’s Gate 3 – which to be fair, it does. It’s Dungeons & Dragons, isometric-ish, party-based and turn-based. It’s even got some of the same voice actors in it (Amelia Tyler, the narrator from Baldur’s Gate 3; and Devora Wilde, who played Lae’zel). Glance from one game to the other and they could be the same, and if you’re a fan of Baldur’s Gate 3, which millions of people are, that’s exciting. I expect it’s a major reason Solasta 2 has 500,000 Steam Wishlists. Some of the glow from Baldur’s Gate 3 has spilled over. But comparisons are tricksy things, thorny with expectation, and – as I discovered talking to the Solasta 2 studio ahead of the game’s early access release tomorrow (Thursday 12th March) and from playing the game myself – there are important distinctions between the games to make.
Primarily, it’s a case of size and scope. French studio Tactical Adventures is a tenth of the size Larian was when it made Baldur’s Gate 3. Tactical Adventures employs approximately 40 people whereas Larian had around 400 people, plus outsourced help. That gulf in person-power and resource is evident across Solasta 2, but it’s specifically apparent, Tactical Adventures tells me, in narrative depth. Solasta 2 has choice and consequence but not to the degree Baldur’s Gate 3 does. Don’t expect, then, to be able to shape the world and have it follow your whims in the way that other game did.
But a bigger difference comes in companions and the relationships you can have with them. In Baldur’s Gate 3, companions are the heart of the game, pre-written and spotlighted. These are the Astarions and Shadowhearts of the adventure, who have become the faces of it. You form deep and often romantic relationships with them. In Solasta 2, it’s different. The characters aren’t pre-written individuals; instead, they are you. You play not as one character but four, as a family – a found family of orphans. You’re not related by blood, then, but your familial bonds still make the prospect of romance icky to deal with. “At some point we started with some romance but it was a bit tricky to handle,” CEO Mathieu Girard says in a video interview. Romance, therefore, is not an option in Solasta 2 and this changes the foundation of everything.
The heart of Solasta 2 is family. The game begins with the death of your orphanage ‘mother’, who has a shrouded and mysterious past, and who ‘mothered’ other people than just you, notably shady lady Deorcas (played by Devora Wilde) and mixed-up ‘brother’ Rickard (played by Ben Starr), whose appearance in the story shapes the journey you go on. An underlying mission in the game, then, is to keep your squabbling family together – which is motivation I don’t think I’ve ever encountered before, and I like that.
There’s a mechanical use for your family too. When you start the game, you don’t create a single character as in many other RPGs, who then meets and recruits other characters as you explore, but create an entire sibling squad of four from the outset, each of which you customise with the depth you would a solo hero. Character fidelity and customisation is an area Tactical Adventures has really pushed in Solasta 2, too, while moving to Unreal Engine 5. There’s appreciable detail here and a full suite of customisation options on offer. I think my moustachioed halfling, who sports a small dagger tattoo dripping a droplet of blood under their eye, is rather fetching.
Creating four D&D characters brings enormous possibilities for deliberate tactical synergy in the game, much like in those old CRPGs of the past. In fact, it’s probably more accurate to describe Solasta 2 as a tactical RPG, marketing director Pierre Worgague tells me, rather than as anything else. In theory, all of the depth of the Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook is here to deliberate over (“in theory” because there are some classes missing; the game isn’t content complete yet), but if that daunts you, don’t worry. One of the cleverest things about Solasta 2 is how it tidies detail away for those who want it, but doesn’t overwhelm those who don’t. If you don’t want to spend hours building each sibling at the beginning of the game, for example, you can let Solasta 2 do it for you, auto-generating the entire party, or some of it, with well-fitting complementary roles such as healers or tanks, depending on what you lack. It’s a nice touch in a game full of nice touches.
Take a step further in the game and you’ll soon experience the group dialogue approach, whereby your entire sibling group talks in conversation rather than one person. You’ll be able to assign personality markers to each of them, such as “Golden Kid” or “Scapegoat” or “Jester”, to define the role they play, itself determined by the role you think they played growing up. A Jester-coded character will likely make light of a situation, like I do, whereas a Golden Kid-coded character will want to do the right thing, like my editor Chris Tapsell would (Editor’s note: I didn’t make him say this). Their responses will clash and conflict, and it’s up to you which response to choose.
There’s also a major difference in the game’s world map and I’m a big fan of it. In short, Solasta 2 has one; there’s an overland map organised into hexagonal grids and shrouded by fog of war. You need to travel across it for quest purposes but also for exploration’s sake, during which you’ll discover surprise locations and encounter random events. “The idea was to replicate the fantasy of navigating on paper hexagonal maps from tabletop games,” Mathieu Girard says. I think it does. It makes travelling the world map something to look forward to, full of strategic deliberation, a sense of discovery, and unexpectedness from random events.
I highlight these differences to show that Solasta 2 is not a wannabe copycat. The series has always been slightly overshadowed by Baldur’s Gate 3, ever since Solasta 1 arrived in early access at almost exactly the same time Baldur’s Gate 3 did six years ago, but there’s genuine authenticity here. Solasta has a vision with strengths of its own. And while it falls slightly short of Baldur’s Gate 3 in certain areas, like narrative depth and character performances and cinematic presentation – it can be a bit bland – it more than holds its own in other areas. I actually prefer how Solasta 2 organises combat and the myriad options Dungeons & Dragons presents. It’s clearer here and easier to make sense of the options available to you, and the excellent interface works natively on gamepad, which is a minor marvel, meaning there are no radial menus to adjust to.
Another strong selling point for a Dungeons & Dragons player such as yours truly is that Solasta 2 is, as far as I’m aware, the first Dungeons & Dragons game to use the updated 2024 rules, which means updated spells, weapon masteries, tweaked classes, altered ancestries and backgrounds, and everything else. Home bases – “bastions” – are to be confirmed, because they’re not actually part of the Dungeons & Dragons Systems Reference Document (SRD), which forms the basis of what Solasta 2 is trying to offer, but Tactical Adventures is keen on adding them if it can. “That’s something that we still want to explore,” Worgague says. “We still have to make sure we can do it, so no commitment on that, but it’s really something that is tickling our curiosity internally.” There is plenty that will make Solasta 2 a unique role-playing game.
“I guess that from the start, we’ve tried to show our differences,” Girard says, “but everyone is comparing us to BG3, so there’s no way to avoid it. I think we are different and it’s going to feel it when you play the game. Obviously, it’s a huge team [Larian’s], and they have a narrative depth for example that we cannot have, but our combat is very interesting and deep and gritty – lots of possibilities. We have this world map exploration, which really makes you feel that you discover a world brought to life, with many options and many adventures. You play this full party and you live the story of a family instead of a personal quest of one character, so it’s a different way of telling a story. It’s more a tabletop story, actually, of four characters around the table telling the story of their party and their family.
“We’re two different beasts, and we just want to make sure that people understand the scope of Solasta 2 and have the right level of expectation around it” -Pierre Worgague
“It’s going to be a different feeling and [present] different gameplay situations, even if we don’t have the same scope and dimensions as the game you mentioned. But for the user, it’s still going to be a unique experience, and both games can coexist next to each other. Also, Baldur’s Gate 3 has created maybe an appetite for such games, so people may want to have more, and in that field we can cover it.”
“There’s definitely room for both,” Worgague adds (he diverts briefly to say the studio bought copies of Baldur’s Gate 3 for the team when it was released – “we absolutely love the game as well”). “But we’re two different beasts, and we just want to make sure that people understand the scope of Solasta 2 and have the right level of expectation around it.” This will be reflected in the game’s pricing when it arrives, by the way, with it pitched at “more of an indie pricing”, Girard says.
Most of all, you should know there’s some way to go. As Solasta 1 grew with the community through early access, so will Solasta 2. And while the game will eventually try to offer everything in the Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook, as Baldur’s Gate 3 famously once did – albeit an older version of the book – Solasta 2 isn’t there yet. This early access release has six of the 12 player classes available and caps at level four (the level-cap will rise to six during early access but Tactical Adventures won’t say what the level-cap will be at 1.0, which I find strange. Perhaps it’s still in flux. For reference, Solasta 1 launched with a level-cap of 12, and that’s the same level-cap as Baldur’s Gate 3).
Key features like multiplayer also aren’t there because they need more testing; the plan is to add it in the game’s first major update in Q3. Story acts, crafting, factions: there’s much to come. Really, the 10-15 hours of what is there is a taster, and an encouraging one at that. Solasta 2 plays a very good game of Dungeons & Dragons. To position Solasta 2 next to Baldur’s Gate 3 is an inevitability but it also creates a mismatched fight. It’s a (moustachioed) halfling against a giant. But as Bilbo Baggins once famously proved, you can never count a halfling out.
