GameKiq

Review: Disciples III: Renaissance

I don't like turn-based games. I really don't. And I always forget this fact if it's been a while since I play one. "Well," I think, "maybe I'll give it another shot."

I'm always wrong.

Disciples III: Renaissance is the newest entry in the Disciples series, which has been dormant since 2003. I never played the first two games, but they are generally regarded as classics in this genre, even if they didn't live up to the Heroes of Might and Magic series. The series is developed in Russia, so generally seems to have a larger following there.

You start every level (well, almost every level) with a home-base city and a core group of heroes. The object is to explore the map, gather resources, and complete your objectives, in a traditional turn-based manner. As you explore, you encounter enemies, discover new buildings, and grab some sweet items. You can capture "guardian nodes", which are key strategic points on the map that net you extra resources and can transform the surrounding landscape to visually represent the race of whichever of the game's three campaigns you're currently taking part in.

I couldn't tell you what the game's overarching story is because, first of all, it's generic, muddled, and confusing, and second, the narration at the beginning of each act is offensively bad. And since these loading screens are really the only place where the story may make sense to piece together, it certainly doesn't helped that I skipped them all as fast as I could. Honestly, this is the worst video game voice acting I have heard in the past 6 or 7 years. I understand that this is because it's a game originally developed in Russia and then dubbed over, but there's really no excuse for having such lifeless, stilted acting.

Besides that, I can tell you that it takes place in the land of Nevendar, which is a fantasy world filled with elves, dwarves, dragony things, and tons of other mythical creatures. It's not that original, but, hey, it's not a bad place to set a game like this. The three playable races are the Empire (regular guys 'n' gals), the Legion of the Damned (undead folks), and the Elven Alliance (...they're elves). Each race has a main hero who they have sent out to recover a fallen star, which supposedly symbolizes the end of the world.

That's it. That's all I really know. And you'd have to threaten me with an extremely sharp object to get me to sit through those loading screens again to get a deeper understanding.

Obviously, it was really hard to care about what's going on in the world of Nevendar since the story is indecipherable. But the objectives are generally clear enough that you’ll know what one action you need to do at any given time. What you might not be able to figure out is actually how to play the game.

The game’s tutorials are dreadful; they’re just very general videos in which you can watch someone else perform a certain action in the game. There’s no guidance actually in the game, and there are a lot of things that aren’t really explained. In addition to the tutorials just being plain unhelpful, the videos are mislabeled and the wrong video will display after you’ve elected to watch a particular one. It’s just another painfully obvious place where three more levels of polish would have greatly helped.

It wasn’t just little, specific things like the tutorials that felt like they were part of an incomplete game. The entire play mechanics of the game felt half-baked and unfinished. With previous Disciples games, the focus was on moving your units around the world map. Disciples 3 brings you down into each battle for some turn-based combat. Like I mentioned, I never played the previous Disciples games, but I’m fairly positive that if I had, I wouldn’t have been yearning for these tactical battles as an added feature. They are long, unnecessary, and the A.I. is deplorable. Entering one of these battles after you’ve played through the first couple feels like a chore.

Part of this feeling is due to the nature of the game. A lot of people will probably disagree, but to me, turn-based games feel incredibly out-dated and archaic. Seeing units stand idly by while their ally gets pummeled is a little bit ridiculous. (Oh, but sometimes you won’t see them – one of the game’s many bugs is that half the units sometimes don’t show up during the cinematic view of each attack in a battle.) But if this was done right, it wouldn’t come across as so outlandish.

The main problem with Disciples is really caring about what’s going on and it will be hard to get through the first couple of hours. One of the saving graces is the game’s outstanding art direction. I don’t mean the graphics themselves, because those are moderately pretty but nothing special. I mean the visual concepts in the game. The style is kind of a fantastical gothic, with really interesting creatures and awesome building structures.  There are also plenty of the usual particle effects that accompany anything magic-related. Sadly, though the game could be beautiful, it’s merely adequate. The ideas are there but the execution of the visuals leaves something to be desired.

Basically, unless you’re a huge turn-based strategy fan, are obsessed with the Disciples series, or want to be extraordinarily bored by a PC game, you should probably look elsewhere. Disciples 3 has some disparate pieces of a competent game, but they certainly don’t fit together.

three
out of ten

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