Disciples:
Liberation by developer Frima Studio and publisher Kalypso
Media—PC preview written by Pierre-Yves
with a copy provided by the publisher.
Estimated reading time: 9 minutes
The Disciples series, originally designed
by Strategy First, is back again with its fourth entry currently within Early
Access by developer Frima Studios and returning publisher Kalypso Media. Taking
a turn towards something new in this turned based building strategy compared to
its predecessors, I've easily sunk over a dozen hours and can honestly say that
I'm sure I've barely begun to scrape the top.
Now unlike the much more known Heroes of
Might & Magic series started by 3DO and then picked up by Ubisoft for HoMM
V and on, Disciples fell into a more niche category that unless you knew
someone who played it or took a chance at picking up the box on a shelf? You
could have easily missed it. What made this series different is that instead of
gathering resources for giant armies, you raised the strength of individual
units to fight for you. This brought more of a "personal" touch to
the experience as you really didn't want to lose anyone unless it really was a
tough battle and then perhaps cried a bit even in victory.
Not having played the series in quite
some time, I re-loaded Disciples II: Gallean's Return (Dark Prophecy /
Guardians of the Light / Servants of the Dark), Disciples II: Rise of the Elves
and Disciples III: Renaissance. Having gone back through where the series has
come from allowed for quite a comparison of how far the series has come. No
longer the series that I used to spend entire weekends playing the campaign or
going head to head with a few friends, gone are most of the turn-based elements
of the world of exploration in favor of a real-time faster paced experience.
This move was perhaps one of the biggest
changes to get used to. A lot of this series and those like it have relied for
so long on the fact that units could only move so far per turn allowing you to
deviously calculate your next move or frantically scramble to defend your main
base. These elements are both actually now gone as our protagonist Avyanna
moves around the world in real time conquering ore mines, wood mills and other
resource sources as needed. Or at least, as what’s possible within her current
army strength and your own strategic mind.
Along with this turn to a more real-time
experience, Disciples: Liberation has also moved into a more RPG like direction
with choices and consequences. Now instead of having a campaign based on
scenarios, the campaign is based in chapters with your choices forming your
path forward as well as your relationships with your allies. Are you friendly?
Cruel? Power hungry? That’s up to you but just be sure to prepare for the
consequences as some people will really not have the tolerance for your wit
even if you yourself found what you said quite funny.
This was perhaps my favorite part of the
shift in direction for the series. Falling more in line with the likes of
BlackIsles, Interplay, Bioware, Obsidian Entertainment, Bethesda and more, the
adventure that you find yourself within is a lot more hands on than simply
moving an army or a force to be reckoned with across the map and then winning
battles against crazy odds. Where do you want to start? What do you want to do
while you’re there? How much do you actually want to do while you’re there?
These choices are all yours as this adventure is all about how Avyanna is
building up a force of her own with elements from returning factions such as
Legion of the Damned, the Undead Hordes, the Elven Alliance and the Empire
(basically humans).
Continuing on the twists of the series,
Avyanna does have a home base in order to build new buildings and research new
spells, but it doesn’t exist in any of the areas that you are exploring.
Instead, your base of operations exists somewhere that can at all times be
teleported to as long as you're in the outside world and not diving underground
or inside into a dungeon-like area. This base of operations lets you build
structures in order to hire new units that can be leveled up and upgraded over
time to be more useful to you.
Now there are three elements that I
really enjoyed with this feature. The first, is that because Avyanna leads her
own faction, you get to pick which buildings are put into place. Want a hybrid
set of undead, demons and elves? Go for it! There’s nothing stopping you from
doing this. The second element is that as there is limited space, you aren’t
bound by early game decisions. Once you run out of place and want to switch
things up, all you need to do is phase out what you don’t want and either phase
something in or build it from scratch. It keeps with the level of customization
and it doesn’t punish you for trying new things out down the line.
The third element that I really enjoyed
is that unlike the previous entries into the series, if you lose your minions
you don’t need to cry (as much) as long as you’re not deep deep within a
dungeon. The reason is that because of the more open ended approach to the
adventure, there are elements in place that allow you to hire new units and
then train them up to Avyanna’s level as needed. This not only avoids having to
try to keep new units alive while at low levels, but it also lets you catch up
units that you may be keeping in reserve in case something does happen.
Combining the hirable units with Avyanna
herself, and there’s one more element to take into account before heading into
battle. Alongside the hirable units, any companion of Avyanna’s can join her in
battle. Each of these units are much more powerful, contain incredible
abilities and unlike hirable units, if they are downed in combat, they’ll come
right back once the curtain has fallen on the corpses of your enemies.
With the real-time shift of the rest of
the adventure, this latest in the series takes the hex based combat put into
place by Disciples: Renaissance and refines it. This switch from the your
forces on one side and the enemy on the other offered up a much higher stakes
tactical game as you now had to worry about where all your forces were at all
times such as with others in this vein like Black Guards (2) and Gloomhaven. Now instead of worrying about
Avyanna’s level, her companions levels and her hired units levels, you also
have to worry about where everyone is standing on the field so to both maximize
your force’s capabilities and minimize your casualties.
Set up in an initiative order, battle
takes place in rounds that give every unit the ability to act at least once per
round short of counter-attacks and attacks of opportunity. Unlike your
traditional experience though, characters, companions and hirable units all
have two mana modules of differing or matching colours. What these mana modules
do is allow any and all characters to move and to act. What the change in
colours do however is allow for certain units to attack twice if they have the
same colour of mana as long as they don’t move. It’s an extra layer in the
strategy as it applies as much to your forces as it does to your enemies.
The rest of combat is “pretty easy”. Set
up on a hexagonal board, each unit can move a certain amount of spaces per
their turn and then either attack an enemy or perform a supportive action such
as healing or increasing their attack or defense. From there, as it’s a hex
based grid, you’ll have to be careful on how you line your units up as some
spaces will not allow you to attack at a range as you will no longer be line of
sight, while other positions can land you into the perfect flanking positions
or the worst ones.
What I loved / hated about flanking is
that you can technically flank a unit three times because of how the hex grid
is designed. This allows for some rather neat “ambushes'' if you hold your
initiative for just a little while or if you play your cards just right and get
lucky that the enemy moved right where you wanted them to. There’s a learning
curve to get it right depending on your unit setup and which faction you
decided to go and see first as it’s an open choice and I have no regrets having
seen the Elven Alliance first. The hate would be sometimes you think something
is going to be great only to find yourself double flanked and potentially
rather dead.
If there’s one thing that I would have a
complaint about it would be the speed of combat. Just about the rest works
rather well from moving around the main map, teleporting to and from the main
base, checking out your unit formations and equipment loadouts, but combat
takes a long time especially against archer units that keep running away all of
the time. I would like the ability to speed it up either to 2x or to 4x the
normal speed as the increase in speed would not detract from the thrill of
winning or losing. It would simply make things a bit smoother especially when
there are almost twenty people on the field and each and every one gets at
least one action.
Finally, a quick note for multiplayer, as
it currently stands the option was disabled to try so we’ll try to take a closer
look at that on full release as I’m quite curious how this new style will
affect the player versus player approach that is listed.
●
Will Disciples: Liberation include
multiplayer? Yes. You can battle with a friend in two-player online skirmishes
Summary
So overall, even with the shift of the
Disciples series with Disciples: Liberation to a more real-time and turn-based
tactics RPG than the older entries of “player versus player” styles, it’s in
good shape. The shift isn’t a bad one but as mentioned above, a few small
tweaks could definitely help to polish this off even further regardless of if
you decide to drop into this dark and intriguing world on the PC or on the
consoles at the beginning of next month.
Score: N/A
