Disciples III: Renaissance

good
key review info
  • Game: Disciples III: Renaissance
  • Platform: PC
  • Show system requirements
  • Gamepad support: N/a
  • Reviewed on:

The fantasy turn based strategy scene has been poor with releases in the last years. Other than an expansion to the controversial Heroes of Might and Magic V and the excellent King's Bounty remakes, there haven't been a lot of titles to choose from as of late.

The Disciples series is Strategy First's take-on the genre and it has resulted in less cheery approach, a more mature story and quite a different philosophy about the turn based battles that take place during the game. The Disciples series is back this year with Disciples III: Renaissance released exclusively for the PC. This time around Strategy first has changed the developer from Game Factory Interactive to Akella and its .dat studio. Many fans were worried that this would not bode well for Disciples III, as Akella's previous releases were mostly mediocre, especially the Sea Dogs series.

The good news is that the Russian have come through in terms of gameplay, graphics, story and atmosphere. The bad news is that the title has serious technical issues that will hinder an otherwise great experience, even for the most patient Disciples fans out there. Save game bugs, digital rights management failures and many other glitches hinder what is an otherwise enjoyable, if a bit repetitive turn bases strategy.

Story

The story takes place in the land of Nevendaar, still plagued by the conflicts presented in the previous two installments in the series. This title narrates the adventures of Inoele a holy messenger that has been sent by the Heavenly Father to the land. Three races battle to control her and her powers, the humans represented by the Empire, the demons represented by the Legions of the Damned, and the elves represented by the Elven Alliance.

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Searching for a falling star
Lambert

I will not go into many details about the story, but I must say that, while it is generic fantasy, it pretty well done and keeps the player engaged all through the three campaigns that make up for the story of the game. Inoele is quite an interesting character, as well as the three heroes you get to control for each of the game's three factions.

This is one of the main departments that showcases the difference in approach between the Disciples and the Heroes of Might and Magic. The atmosphere of the narrative is rather gloomy and the characters do not have the optimism of the ones in 3DO's games. This is something Akella can really be proud of and I really think Disciples III has a lot to gain out of this darker fantasy setting and more serious protagonists. There is real drama to what is happening in Nevendaar and you are thrust right in the middle of it.

Gameplay

Disciples III plays a lot like other titles in the genre. The gameplay is comprised out of three main components: base building, world exploration and combat. Before examining each of these separately, it must be said that Akella has changed the Disciples formula quite a bit, especially in terms of combat, and not for the worse.

In each scenario, the player will own one capital castle that is protected by an almost invincible guardian. The idea here is to try and expand the city using the resources gained by your heroes to allow the recruitment of better units and the purchase of better spells. There are choices to be made between upgrades, for example, one can upgrade the basic soldier to either become a knight or a witch hunter, each with its own set of stats and abilities. There are quite a lot of options and you have to be really smart to find the optimum configuration for the tasks at hand.

You can also recruit heroes in towns that you can send alongside a number of creatures to explore the surroundings and get more resources to upgrade those units and so on and so forth until you defeat every enemy on the map or complete that objectives given to you in the mission.

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The skill system
A dungeon

The exploration component is one of the more mediocre gameplay elements of Disciples III. The scenarios and maps are short of the insane diversity that is to be found in the environments of King's Bounty or even in those of the Heroes franchise. In Disciples III's case they just about make it so that the player is not bored, but more interesting locations would have been nice. It is understandable that the developers want to keep a more serious tone for this title, but that does not justify the lack of variety in the game's maps.

However, the combat department is where I think Akella edges above its competition with a really focused system that allows for different and very interesting solutions. For the newcomers to the Disciples series it is good to know that this is another place where the franchise diverges from the Heroes of Might and Magic rules. You will not command hundreds of units in Disciples III, but small parties formed from few individual units that level up over time and upgrade depending on the building constructed in the capital city.

The old battle board of Disciples I and II is gone, as it was replaced by 117-cell hex grid that really spices things up. Some of the combat maps you will encounter will include some special hexes that boost the power of the units that are placed there. This makes up for quite intense experience, where you have to decide whether to protect the ranged units for a possible attack from the enemy or to venture forth on the map and claim one of the power-up spots deal more damage to the other player's creatures.

This is more fun in the hot-seat multiplayer though, as the Artificial Intelligence is quite lacking. It will usually attack the unit that is in its proximity and not the most dangerous one. This means that many battles for the Empire side, for example, will be fought by moving the incredibly overpowered Titan unit forward and waiting for the enemy's ill-advised attacks.

The story campaign is comprised of 18 missions, six for every faction. The only criticism I can think of is that some of the missions can get repetitive after awhile and that the multiplayer options are very limited. The skirmish mode is not fun because of the cheating AI and the hot-seat multiplayer is haunted by the bugs I will talk about below.

Graphics and Technical Issues

The .dat engine manages to look quite nice, even more so if you own a strong PC. The environments are beautiful, the cities are truly spectacular, the shadows are more accurate than I expected them to be and the art direction is well achieved across the board. On the Quad-Core machine I tested the game on I had no problem running the game at 120 frames-per-second. The characters' battle animations are also quite great.

On the other hand, the main criticism I have for this game is related to the general lack of technical quality of the release. I cannot imagine how some of the bugs I have experienced have passed through Akella's quality assurance department. These will overshadow all the great things this game has to offer and may prove for some a deal breaker. I cannot give you the advice to press on, as I myself considered to quit and give it a lower mark than I already have.

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A castle
Moving around

One of the main problems is that for some installations the game will not save your progress. The solution is quite easy and makes me wonder how none of the developers manage to fix this before release. The game installs in a write protected folder that does not allow the creation of saves inside of it. Moreover, at least in my case, I had to create the Save folder on my own for the system to work. Sometimes, powers and potions will not have the intended effect, the game will crash for no apparent reason some buttons on the interface will suddenly stop working. These are just a few of the issues I have encountered and that do a lot to cheapen the experience.

What is even more infuriating is that the official forums are filled with customers complaining about various issues and since its launch no patches have been launched even to fix the most glaring problems. For example, even at the time of the writing of this review some of the fans who bought the boxed version of Disciples III cannot play it because of a bug in the digital rights management software. It is really curious why nothing has been done about this from the part of the developers. A hot fix only for this issue could have easily been released.

Conclusion

Players will either love or hate this game depending on their luck. If they do not encounter many of the bugs that I have described above, then they will find a pretty refreshing and well done turn based strategy game that will give them many hours of fun, despite the lacking exploration maps and repetitively.

However, those who will get to experience the plethora of technical issues that Disciples III, will miss out on one of the better releases of this summer. Unfortunately, it will not be their fault, but only the developers are to blame because they have not taken enough steps to make sure that the bugs are eliminated before release. This is even more astounding considering that Disciples III has been out in Russia since the December of 2009.

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story 8
gameplay 9
concept 9
graphics 8
audio 7
multiplayer 5
final rating 7
Editor's review
good