Disciples: Liberation Review (PC)

One of the most beloved turn-based strategy franchises of all-time, Disciples, received a new game after more than a decade. This would be the fourth installment in the series and Frima Studio would be the third developer involved in the creation of the Disciples franchise.

Disciples: Liberation is a slight departure from the previous three games in the story, which completely focus on turn-based combat and base building. Liberation adds some RPG elements into the mix and allows you to play with all four races at the same time instead of having to go through each of them by playing their campaigns individually.

Unlike in the previous games, you’re stuck with a single protagonist, Avyanna, a mercenary who for some reason has been chosen to liberate the people of Nevandaar by bringing them to Yllian, an ancient magical city hidden in the clouds.

Although it’s not an open-world game, you are free to roam each big region and pick your fights, quests and side-quests. Decisions have consequences in the form of points that raise your affinity with the other four factions. Once you reach certain thresholds (Friendly, Honored), you can upgrade the buildings of that faction allowing you to train more advanced units.

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It’s a strange system meant to allow you to build your army based on units rather than factions. You can have units from all four main factions in your army, but you can never have the most advanced units of all four. Because they antagonize each other, it’s impossible to gain maximum favor with all four factions: the Empire, the Legions of the Damned, the Undead Hordes and the Elven Alliance.

However, you can reach enough affinity with at least two factions to be able to use their most advanced units, so that’s something. That said, your army can include some of the companions Avyanna gets to meet throughout her journey. Some are neutral, while others belong to certain factions.

Avyanna starts as a simple mercenary, but she can later on switch to a better class like Warlord or Seeress, if you prefer magic. These classes open up as you advance the story, so they’re not tied to any upgrades in your main city. Speaking of Yllian, this is where you’ll be recruiting your units for your army, gather resources and upgrade your gear. Unfortunately, you have limited space to build, so you’ll have to decide what faction’s buildings you want use.

Battles in Disciples: Liberation are pretty straightforward and quite satisfying (when you win!). The grid-mapped battlefield is more often than not populated with a few tiles that contain bonuses or weaknesses for units that go through them. They are randomly spawned on the battlefield and are consumed when a unit stands on the tile or walks through it. These are very important at the beginning of the game but become useless later on when your heroes are very powerful.

Thanks to the number of units available in the game (more than 50), the composition of your army is almost limitless. It’s impossible not to find something the suits your playstyle. Not to mention that there are literally dozens upon dozens of viable army compositions that will make almost every fight trivial.

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The same goes for Avyanna, which can be turned into a melee beast or a devastating spellcaster. Combat and the high variation of units is most certainly Liberation’s strong point, but when it comes to the building and resource gathering aspects, things are bit more underwhelming.

For starters, there are resources that you’ll probably not use all game, while gold, iron and wood are the most useful ones. As I’ve already mentioned, you’re very limited when it comes to the number of buildings you can have in your castle. Unlike in the previous Disciples games, you only have to build the Barracks for a faction to be able to recruit its units.

Regular units in Disciples: Liberation don’t level up and turn into advanced units. Instead, their stats increase and can be automatically leveled-up for gold. Their level depends on Avyanna’s level and they usually level up together. If you lose a regular unit, you can easily recruit a new one and pay gold for the level up.

More advanced units unlock only after upgrading the Barracks to the next tier, which can only be done if you reach a certain affinity with that faction. Since they can be leveled-up with gold, regular units are expandable, so you won't have to worry that you lose a powerful unit. Another important thing worth mentioning is that the size of your army depends on Avyanna's "leadership," which increases when she levels up. You'll end up have a lot more units in your army than you typically have in the previous Disciples games, which makes battles even more interesting.

Story-wise, I tried to pay attention to the main plot, but it simply didn’t grab me. I loved the isometric environments and some of the side-quests, but I think the writing is a bit underwhelming. Granted, none of the Disciples games were known for their appealing stories, I would have expected some sort of improvement considering developers have opted for some big changes.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion