Disciples III: Renaissance

The Good
The first thing of note about this game is that it remakes and changes most aspects of the Disciples series. The general intent behind such change was very good - if Disciples II: Dark Prophecy made the original Disciples: Sacred Lands look and feel more professional, rich and polished, then this game would make it more complex and beautiful.

A key step in that direction was changing the battle system. Earlier installations had simple and unimaginative battles, where both sides consisted of two immobile rows duking it out until one side was dead. In these battles tactics played little rule (though Disciples II: Dark Prophecy allowed more tactics than the first game) with the gameplay revolving around how you got to the battle, instead of the actual battle. Disciples III changed that formula by adopting the open battle grid of the Heroes of Might and Magic series, as well as assigning different speeds to units just like in HoMM games. To spice things up power-up may show up on some battlefields, doubling the attack power of different types of units (ranged nodes increase ranged attacks, etc.). This adds additional tactical aspects to every battle, and the random location of the nodes keeps things intresting.

The other improvement to tactical play was implementing special attacks for most units. Special attacks aren't new to the series - there were here since Disciples II, but then the special attack was connected to the primary attack and only some powerful units had it. This new game decouples the primary and secondary attacks and allows for some units to have multiple secondary attacks which may be used instead of the primary attack, thus giving multiple roles to a single unit as it can choose whether it attacks this round, buffs an ally or hinders an enemy. If before you didn't want to evolve your units into some specialists because that made you vulnerable when you encountered enemies immune to their attacks, now you can have the best of both worlds, relying on special attacks in some battles and direct damage in others.

On the strategic gameplay, the developers decided to speed things up and make the game more engaging. Previously, preparing for battle was the most important and difficult part of the game (since the battles where rather straightforward) - you would slowly heal your units, cast defensive spells, use invisibility spells to creep towards your enemy undetected and strike when the enemy was least prepared. Naturally, this would take time as neither side wants to step into the open unprepared, and the game would drag on as both side maneuvered around key locations. In this game the designers peppered the map with healing fountains (speeding up the healing process) and special locations that bestow combat boosts or protections for several turns. This means that the players can fight, heal and fight again in the same turn, no matter how badly they were damaged in the previous fight.

Of course one cannot describe this game without talking about the wonderful graphics. Zooming into the battlefield to see each feature of your demonic enemy, watching the very detailed magic animations or seeing how the equipment you put on your hero changes his appearance - all is masterfully done. As a matter of fact, this is the only perfect (or near perfect) part of the game. The animations are so detailed and of such high quality that I used to cast spells just to see their animations: Humans summon their guardian angel in a glorious display of light and magic to receive healing or protection, and demons sacrificing an elven maiden (by slowly burning her alive) to heal themselves.

Sadly all of that is not enough to compensate for this game's huge downfalls...

The Bad
Where to begin? The most glaring flaw is the horrible AI. Calling it brain dead would be an understatement. A transition to an open battle grid needed a proper AI to turn the computer into anything close to a challenge. At the very least the programmers should have adopted the AI from HoMM which, while not spectacular, knew how to get the job done. But no! In Disciples III your opponents will almost always attack the nearest unit, even if that unit is very resistant to damage and even if a much more vulnerable unit is located one hex away. This is so bad that you can win "hard" fights with just one very melee unit and a few ranged units by herding the slow enemy units with your melee unit and shooting them with your ranged one. If that wasn't enough, the enemy will never try to take power nodes unless they are in his immediate vicinity and it can attack your units from them. This means that except for a rare occasion where a magical/ranged node appears near the enemy casters/archers, the enemy will always let you take the power nodes - sometimes it will even position its troops near a melee node so that you could attack its units with greater ease! And just to finish this trifecta of bad design, computer controlled units will sometimes use inappropriate abilities frequently, even when they offer no advantage (like the inquisitors` tendency to lower your magic resistance even though there aren't any mages in their group to use that), and needlessly (by targeting the same unit over and over again despite it already being under the same effect) effectively losing their turn. This is one reason why you wouldn't want to use the "quick battle" option, as giving the computer control over your units can sometimes turn even the most overwhelming victory into a defeat.

Sadly, playing the game on a higher difficulty has no effect on the AI despite what the game tells us. Instead the computer gets almost unlimited amounts of resources which he uses to send army after army (more on that later) at you, but nothing more than that. You would think that it could use the resources to research powerful magic that can obliterate you early on, but apparently the computer only gets four spells: two basic healing spells and two basic damage spells out of 30. This, once you stop the initial wave of attackers, make your gameplay boring and uneventful.

Now, remember how I asked where to start? I really meant it. You see, the only thing that can rival the AI in annoyance was the bagginess of the game, and hadn't I installed the 1.06.2 patch that would have been the number one issue for me. Luckily, the patch deals with the most game breaking bugs (like the ability to control your enemy's castle or the ability to move the unmovable castle guardian into your party), but neglects a horde of other bugs, including those that it claims to resolve! Here are some bugs just to get a taste of what's like playing the game: Occasionally units stack in a single grid, you can still move boundary guardians into your party (thus getting a strong free unit early on), destroying node guardians can also destroy their node (preventing you from taking control over that terrain), occasionally armies lose their health or movement points when loading games, sometimes your hero can't use his special skill in combat, sometimes units disappear in combat but still exist on the battlefield and many many other bugs. Neither of these bugs are game breaking, but if this is how bad 1.06 is, I hate to see how much worse the first release was.

Another issue is the balance in this, or rather, its complete absence. For instance, the computer gets some advanced heroes and units early in each map. When you combine that with a bug that lets the computer avoid enemy parties without battle, and with the endless resources of the difficult setting, you get very strong enemy parties that arrive at your door well before anyone can be prepared for them. As a matter of fact, the only way to defeat them was for me to stack up on large amount of powerful scrolls in previous maps. That was just an example of how unbalanced the game can be when you add in all the bugs and bad design. In other times the imbalance works for the player - you can win a lot of battles just with your mages or archers exploiting bad AI and the fact that the battle lasts until one side loses (unlike previous games that had a maximum number of turns in each battle). HoMM solved any possible similar issues by limiting the number of ammunition for ranged units, but Disciples III didn't implement this simple decision.

Even when there was an attempt to balance the game the designers fall short: Now all races have similar magic, with each races having healing, protection, damage, summoning and resurrection spells, with minor differences between the spell books. Normally that would be excellent for the demon race, as unlike the humans and the elves they have no healing units and didn't have healing or protecting spells in previous games. But with the introduction of healing fountains and protecting locations the need for nearly identical spell books disappears and instead you get an uninspired magic system.

One last thing - you may have noticed that I only talk about fighting the computer. "What about multiplayer?" you ask. Well, there isn't one. At least not in any useful way. For some reason the creators of Disciples III thought we still live in the mid-nineties and shipped a game with only hotseat multiplayer.

The Bottom Line
It's sad to see a promising game series devolve into this abomination. Boring AI and no real multiplayer mean that there is no way to enjoy playing this game. More than anything it feels like a chore.

Don't touch this game unless you're an avid Disciples fan, and even then you should wait for future expansions where, hopefully, some of the problematic issues would be addressed.