Solasta: Crown of the Magister to get sorcerers and more in first big update
They're like wizards, but more party.
Solasta: Crown of the Magister left Early Access on May 27, and the turn-based RPG based on D&D's fifth edition rules has been quite well-received, with 90% positive user reviews on Steam. Developers Tactical Adventures are currently working on Solasta's first major update, which will add an Iron Man difficulty mode and the sorcerer class (which was a stretch goal from its Kickstarter), and is planned to go live on July 13.
Sorcerers are different to wizards in that they use Charisma rather than Intelligence to power their spells, relying on force of personality rather than that boring old book-learning. They get their powers from an Origin, and Solasta will provide a choice of three: Draconic Bloodline (which is the regular D&D option, based on one of your ancestors hooking up with a dragon), Mana Painter (which means you drain magic from your surroundings), and Children of the Rift (which means you got your powers from a spooky cataclysm in Solasta's past called the Closing of the Rift).
The update will also add more environments for use in Solasta's Dungeon Maker, mod.io support for the GOG version, Brazilian Portuguese and Russian localizations, and various bug fixes.
Rick Lane gave Solasta a thumbs-up in his review, calling it "the truest virtual representation of a D&D ruleset since Neverwinter Nights." If you're putting off Baldur's Gate 3 until it leaves Early Access, it's a solid alternative.
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Jody's first computer was a Commodore 64, so he remembers having to use a code wheel to play Pool of Radiance. A former music journalist who interviewed everyone from Giorgio Moroder to Trent Reznor, Jody also co-hosted Australia's first radio show about videogames, Zed Games. He's written for Rock Paper Shotgun, The Big Issue, GamesRadar, Zam, Glixel, Five Out of Ten Magazine, and Playboy.com, whose cheques with the bunny logo made for fun conversations at the bank. Jody's first article for PC Gamer was about the audio of Alien Isolation, published in 2015, and since then he's written about why Silent Hill belongs on PC, why Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale is the best fantasy shopkeeper tycoon game, and how weird Lost Ark can get. Jody edited PC Gamer Indie from 2017 to 2018, and he eventually lived up to his promise to play every Warhammer videogame.
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