Disciples III is Worthy of a Turn-Based Strategy Gamer's Time

 

I'm a huge fan of turn based games, both on the table-top and in video game form.  I've been playing them most of my life. There aren't very many of them, so when I find a new one, I've just got to try it. There are even fewer really, really good ones.  One of those is Disciples: Sacred Lands.   I loved the hand-painted look of everything. It was like an animated painting of an amazing medieval fantasy world. The game mechanic of gradually building up your empire as you planted rods and defeated enemies to expand your lands intrigued me. Especially the way that you were visually transforming the land around you into your faction's type of style, not merely planting flags.  This was especially visually arresting if you played the Legions of the Damned and gradually engulfed and burned the world to turn it into your own personal hell.  I enjoyed playing as the Mountain Clans though as I really like Vikings and they reminded me of them.   

 

The factions were very different looking, yet fairly balanced, each with a few unique abilities, but none being set up where they would always win.  The best part was the level editor that let you create your own game complete with timed events, victory conditions and dialog boxes. It was super easy to use with drag and drop interface that made game development seem as easy as painting on your own canvas. 

The sequel Disciples II Dark Prophecy was very similar only it improved the resolution and detail of the painted graphics and had somewhat different artwork.  It also advanced the fairly basic fantasy plot of powerful enemies trying to overthrow each other with even more entertaining plot points popping up between turns.   Both games manage to look fantastic without 3D rendered graphics and can be played on any Windows running computer, even older laptops without fancy graphics cards.

Now, we have Disciples III Renaissance.  So far, in my play of it, Kalypso Media seems to be staying faithful to Strategy First's (a game dev I've played many a strategy game from) tried and true game mechanics and plays enough like the previous two to that veterans of the Disciples franchise will be off and running immediately.  You can still play as the Empire (who has adopted a few new fashions over the years and have a new look) or the Legions of the Damned (still in their heavy metal band album cover glory but with some new artwork). Now you can play as the Elven Alliance rather than the Mountain Clans. The elves get some neat abilities that the dwarves didn’t have.  

The games have always had a very user friendly interface to begin with, so the manuals, while nicely done, are not really necessary unless you aren’t sure what the icons stand for.  This version does have a nice tutorial with little videos to show you how to play.  The almost stop motion animations of the previous versions have been replaced by more fluid ones and there is nice variation in the different attack animations . 

The only complaint I have about it so far, is that the hand-painted look that I love is gone in favor of a 3D rendered look that is not as unique as what the series is famous for.  They try to make the graphics look painted, but the illusion falls down if you move perspective.  Some of the 3D map elements get in the way of seeing the action requiring you to use the mouse to rotate the camera view. 

This game still has the great development tree that directs how both your capital and individual heroes level up and improve in the game.  You get several choices at each development tree branch that vary depending on which faction you are playing and on which focus your empire has.  You can focus on being more martial, more of a merchant or more of a magical realm with repercussions (both positive and negative) for each. 

If this game is your introduction to the Disciples series, you'll love it!  I highly recommend it to Steam players looking for something different from platformers and shooters.  If you are looking for more of the beautiful, hand painted art style the series is famous for, you'll be disappointed.  

I also highly recommend the first two games which can be found on websites such as Good Old Games.com.  You may find them on CD-ROM, but don't be surprised if those versions don't play nice with Windows 8 or 10. They may work, then again, they may not.  That is one beauty of these digital versions of older games: most of them have been modified to work with the newest OS's.