Disciples III: Renaissance Review

Learn him some disciplin'.

I never played the old Disciples games. They were before my time in the world of turn-based strategy, and whilst I’ve meant to give them a try several times, I’ve never quite gotten around to it, always lured away by some other title like Kings Bounty or Heroes of Might & Magic.

Perhaps aware of the rise of the Kings Bounty series since the last Disciples game eight years ago, publisher Strategy First switched to a new developer for this chapter, handing the reins to Akella’s Studio .dat. A change of developer isn’t always a bad thing for a series (look at the success Crystal Dynamics has had with Tomb Raider), but it’s a move likely to alienate fans. Not as much as the complete redesign of the battle system, though. Disciples III ditches the static six-by-six grid of the older games in favour of a distinctly Kings Bounty-esque hexagon grid, now allowing for units to manoeuvre around the battlefield and take advantage of terrain features. Well, a bit, anyway, but more on that later. The change might not be welcomed by fans of the series, but it’s one that works, lending the battle system a more dynamic feel.

As with previous games, there are three main aspects to Disciples III. First up is adventuring in the overworld, which features the leader(s) of your various groups of soldiers exploring the world on a turn-by-turn basis. Said world is liberally scattered with clickables- be they loot, locales, dungeons, enemies or allies, and indeed it’s nearly impossible to go more than a few hexes without bumping into something to click on. Next comes the city building; your heroes can control cities on the map, and within these you can train new troops and construct new buildings with your resources to provide access to different troop types and upgrades. What makes Disciples III a little different is that you can have multiple parties of troops adventuring in the world; each must be led by a Hero and can contain up to five units. Splitting your focus between various units can actually be a little confusing, and ultimately isn’t particularly beneficial, since maps generally contain fixed enemies which makes getting experience for your extra units a harder task than it needs to be.

But the core of the game is, of course, the combat. That new hex grid will seem strange to fans of the old static grid, but it works, with your army of six squaring off against at most an even number of enemies. Units can move and perform a single action in a turn, with the action always performed after any movement. The most basic actions are, of course, attacking the enemy, but you can also heal friendly troops, cast spells, and summon other creatures to join you for the battle. You can also guard to reduce incoming damage, and if you have movement points spare after you’ve positioned your soldier can cover adjacent hexes, attacking enemies that come enter them. It’s advisable therefore to put your troops in positions where they can cover each other, or to get in an attack on an enemy that isn’t able to cover. Obstacles on the battlefields theoretically allow for more tactical plays, but all they really do is constrict movement- archers, wizards and priests can still hurl spells through them regardless. You will occasionally find power-up hexes in the maps, which grant bonuses to ranged, magic, or melee attacks, but the AI opponents don’t seem interested in taking advantage of them, leaving you to get them if you want to. Actually, the AI opponents don’t seem to show much interest in anything other than charging forwards and hitting you; the main difficulty in the fights comes not from being out-manoeuvred, but mostly from Disciples III’s obsession with pitting you against higher-levelled foes.

This reliance on over-powered foes actually leads to a lot of frustration, since it becomes very difficult to effectively level-up your troops when a group of enemies can tear through them pretty quickly. Should they then die, that’s it- you have to recruit some fresh new soldiers from the barracks and start levelling them up all over again. Once you do get some more experienced troops, the battles become far more interesting challenges, but in the early stages of a level be prepared to get wiped out be superior foes a lot. On the plus side, there is an auto-battle system that will simulate the results of a combat for you, but as this is a purely statistical exercise you’ll find that units end up taking a lot more damage than they might have done if you’d fought it for real.

What of the story? You get three factions to play as, each with their own campaign comprising of multiple maps, each taking place in sequence, though you’re started off gently with all three, so should you decide you want to play the Elf storyline first rather than the humans you won’t be thrown in at the deep end. The story itself is told mostly through static portraits and dialogues; it’s not especially dramatic but then, neither is the storyline, which follows the story of a fallen star landing near the borders of the Empire that contains the heavenly messenger, a young woman named Inoele. Each of the three races wants to possess her powers, and claim her strength for their own. If it sounds like there are shades of Neil Gaiman’s Stardust about it, well, there are, though Disciples III takes on little of that stories’ charm. It also takes it all rather seriously; whilst I never expected Disciples III to include any of the light-hearted whimsy of Kings Bounty, the occasional change of tone would be welcome.

In terms of its presentation, though, Disciples III is very impressive. Akella’s Studio .dat has kept the dark fantasy feel of the previous games, with fittingly moody locales and a stunningly well-presented interface. The visuals are lovely, full of nice little touches and good animations, though the smaller, less detailed characters are a bit of a let-down after the detailed units in earlier games. The soundtrack is stirring and sweeping, though the voice acting isn’t especially great; the actors get the job done, but hardly put in compelling performances.

Written by :

James Hall