Disciples III: Renaissance for PC Reviews by Gamers

Disciples has been a respected series in the turn-based strategy genre. It's been years since a proper sequel, though there have been several expansions released for Disciples II: Dark Prophecy that came out in 2002. Over that time period it seems the developer Akella focused more on creating a game with visual flair than one with an interesting story and satisfying gameplay. Although the third game, subtitled Renaissance, has good elements to it, overall it's a testament to how monotonous turn-based games can be.





Disciples III: Renaissance starts off with a star falling from the sky, only it's not a star, but an angel named Inoel. Sounds a bit like the movie Stardust, but then it plays out like a Twilight novel -- the plot drags on for an uncomfortable amount of time with no real purpose. Obviously the world is in danger, but instead of unraveling some fantastical yarn, most of the time is spent traveling from place to place. There's no sense of urgency, it isn't exciting, and just thinking about it makes me want to take a nap. It's really unfortunate that the story is so blase, because it's an element that could really help keep you going.



Of all the Disciples games, Renaissance offers the least amount of playable factions. There are only three race campaigns – the Empire (humans), the Legion of the Damned (demons) and the Elven Alliance (uh, elves) that must be played in that order to preserve the storyline. But since it's not all that exciting of a tale, you might just want jump to the section that interests you the most.



All three races technically have "unique skills" according to the box, but the game doesn't actually explain what those advantages and disadvantages are. Granted, it isn't terribly difficult to figure it out (for example, the Damned don't have any healers), but when you're given a new race to play as, it'd be nice if the game gave you some pointers instead of leaving you in the dark. In fact, the tutorial system really only covers the basics, so learning how to play the game might take some time. The menu interface isn't intuitive either, so I had to go back and forth through the tutorial later when I had specific inquiries.



Now, I'm not a stranger to strategy games, so I knew the general gist of what I needed to accomplish: conquer resource points and use the materials gathered to construct new buildings which then upgrades your squad of troops. Akella stuck to a pretty standard strategy game system, and implemented decent battle mechanics.



The new combat system works well at first, but it can lose its appeal after the first few acts. Every battleground is laid out differently and power boost sections to increase the power of your attacks (or healer) appear at random for you to utilize. Your troops have movement points to travel around the map, and can hold a defensive position should they be unable to make it to their destination. It seems like you enter a battle every few minutes though, which really slows down the pacing. That said, it is always fun to execute new strategies to demolish enemies, especially when you add Runes to the equation. Runes are spells that can heal, deal damage, boost/hinder specific stats or summon a creature to fight on your side for the battle. The handy thing about Runes is that actually they carry over from act to act, unlike potions.





Despite this kind of variety, battles play out in very similar ways, so eventually it gets tiresome. When that happens, or if you're going to step away from the computer for a moment, don't bother hitting "auto battle" – the AI is terrible. It sends your healers into the middle of the battlefield to act as sacrificial lambs when they should be fleeing to the corners of the map. Quick battle, the other "let's hurry this up" option, is slightly better, but still shouldn't be abused – after all you're smarter than the AI (hopefully).



Maybe battling wouldn't feel like such a hassle if there was an easier way to resurrect your fallen team members. Should you fail to use a resurrection potion during battle, the only way to revive your buddies is to make it to a city (of which there are usually three or four on the map and you have to build a temple before you even have the option of healing them), or use a spell outside of battle that you can learn by building a magic tower. Inconveniently, the resurrection spell is one of the most difficult to unlock and uses up a lot of resources to cast. Obviously earlier battles are more difficult than later ones, but it's hard to get your squad to a decent level when they're crushed in the first few battles and you can't do anything to help them.



The whole point of fighting is to gain experience and level up your squad so you can take on the bigger baddies waiting for you later in the game. In every act you can have up to three squadrons of troops, one of which is always lead by the main story character and two that you can choose (a Warrior Nun, Thief or Magician). Leveling up your main heroes is satisfying: you can spend points upgrading the physical prowess and strength of your tanks or improve the power of ranged troops and magicians. There's also a skill-tree for the hero that can include some really helpful abilities, like transforming any enemy on the battlefield into a pauper, but you have to thoroughly examine how you're spending your points in order to get those. The skill tree is also where you'll upgrade your leadership, which allows you to hire more mercenaries.





Once you've taken care of your party leaders, you'll need to figure out how to level up your minions. Every upgrade building has a branching tree, and selecting one course blocks off another, so you have a choice to make. For example, if you'd like your healer to cast on multiple people, she'll have a lower healing factor, whereas if you choose to have your healer cast on only one person, her spell will make more of an impact. The problem with this is that most of the buildings are sectioned off anyway, so in the first act you're only allowed to upgrade your troops once. Then as the story unfolds more upgrades are made available, which means you'll just pick the best attack power for that round, as opposed to thinking up any sort of strategy until all of the branching upgrade trees are unlocked near the end of every campaign.



To make it worse, the main hero is the only one who retains his level over the course of the campaign, so the rest of the leveling feels superficial and pointless. Yes, wiping your squad's stats gives you the opportunity to re-build your personal army, but once you get the hang of it, you sort of know what you want so you'll be assembling the same crew over and over, which adds to the monotony.



Now, I haven't said a lot of nice things about Disciples, but the game does have a fantastic art style. All of the creatures and characters are extremely detailed and the battle animations are striking. I especially love the design done for the Elven Alliance and the Damned – unicorns are adorned with a horn sculpted from leaves and demons are appropriately ferocious and ugly.



Even with only a few campaign modes you can expect to sink a lot of time into this game. The maps are vast and detailed, so it can take several hours just to adventure through the area. Though the campaign is the bread and butter here, there are a couple other modes like Hot Seat (you can play with another friend on your PC) and Single Map to play. Currently the two extra modes are lacking, especially since there are only two single maps to play around with and a handful in Hot Seat, but that could easily be fixed with additional patches and content.

©2010-08-31, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved