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Disciples: Liberation - "a new beginning" for the series
- Thread starter LESS T_T
- Start date
fantadomat
Arcane
You should prove your manliness by finishing the game on all paths yo,unless you are an evil bigot that is afraid of playing a woman yo.
Reinhardt
Arcane
- Joined
- Sep 4, 2015
- Messages
- 32,025
i'm afraid she's too manly for me.
fantadomat
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 99,654
lycanwarrior
Scholar
- Joined
- Jan 1, 2021
- Messages
- 1,490
Been playing this game recently, pretty fun. Companions are interesting and enjoyable. Only major criticism (shared by many reviewers) is the large amount of combat encounters that take a long time. Same criticism I had of Expeditions Rome.
I have played quite a bit of this game over the past few days. Reading the thread most of the issues people had with it have been fixed by now. Most notably the pacing issue is gone completely, due to the addition of two different features. An animation speed slider means that even large material battles of 10 units vs 10 units can be won in a few minutes, and when you attack an army that is considered weaker than yours you have the option of defeating them immediatly, without a fight or losses. The second option is a bit broken even, as sometimes a fight could only be won with great losses, yet still you may use the autoresolve to crush the enemy effortlessly, but as it is an option instead of mandatory I have no problems with this at all. With these two additions combined the game flows very fast, faster than all of the King's Bountys by 1C for example, which is the best comparison for the game in general.
There is also a quite difficult brutal difficulty mode implemented, on which enemies for example deal double damage. It feels quite nice, there are enough synergies and generally broken bullshit you can do in this game that brutal gives just about the right level of challenge, frequent losses of cannon fodder as a drain on your economy and occasional game overs against hard enemies guarding mines or bossfights.
The structure of the game is all over the place. You start with a short tutorial which makes zero sense from a story perspective, then you become Queen (yes you need to play a woman) of a floating magical castle in which you can hire humans, elves, demons and undead to form your magical army. You are also a Nephilim for some reason, noone really explained to me why.
Then you gain access to a worldmap on which you can choose for which of the four previously mentioned races you want to quest first. Each of them has a pretty large quest area full of NPCs, treasure, mines, dungeon and fights. These are pretty high quality, and in each area you can choose wether to antagonise or befriend the local ruling race. This, combined with the ability to choose the order in which to play the four areas, allows you customise your army pretty well. I chose humans and elves for example, although some of the undead and demon units look really nice aswell. You can also go full power fantasy and juggle relations to be high with all of the four races, and run a huge hodgepodge of the cherry picked best units in the game, although that would be pretty expensive as building so many buildings consumes a lot of ressources.
Now why play this structural mess of a game? Combat and customisation. For the combat there is not so much to be said, turn based fights where each unit gets 1 turn per round, with a slightly spicier version of NuXcom 2Ap movement. The customisation however is titanic, each race has ~13 units for you to recruit. As you can mix and match from all four, you quickly get a massive pool of possible troops to take into your roster. You can field up to 10 soldiers in the main battle, and 3 in the backline. Also you can deploy up to two special companion units, out of a pool of ~7 or so. It doesn't take much math to see that the possibilities for army building are mathematically endless. I have also found almost every unit to be at least somewhat usable once you know what you do with it. There is a point buy system aswell, so even cheap soldiers from the beginning can stay relevant to pad out your army if you spend all your points on huge dragons and demons in your roster of 10.
From this great army building flows the fun combat. The units are quite distinct, although each follows the formula of having one default attack it can do every turn, and one special ability on cooldown. Restriction breeds creativity, and you see every possible type of area attack, buff or healing spell attached to these units. Against a weak opponent you either skip the fight or blast the fireworks of all your special abilities, the hard fights can get really interesting. I had 3 fights so far which I won with a single unit surviving by the skin of my teeth, and those fights were the highlight of the experience so far.
Now to some boons and blemishes the game has. The UI is really bad. I wanted to keep some saves around on the different maps as I am not sure if you can revisit them, but the saving system makes juggling saves really hard, so I overwrote them by accident. Also it looks like it was made for console. It definitly takes some getting used to, and some things are genuinly handled in the most unintuitive way, like the castle building and the mines.
The powerfantasy is however pretty well done. You get a lot of stuff which drives the Nephilim point home, all your classes follow a certain light and shadow symbiosis, and there is a pretty huge skill tree with some potent stuff in it, that makes your chara the strongest unit in the game by far. The frequent level ups and gear upgrades provide a nice reason to seek out even weaker enemies and crush them by autoresolve, and you can spend quite some time in the skilltree if you want. Blowing up half the enemy army with a huge surge of light or shadow magic as a well specced Nephilim is very fun.
The gear system is equal parts annoying and great, in the most unintuitive ways one could imagine. There are a bunch of weapons and armors, and also shards of virtue. The weapons and army are just ugly statsticks, and the UI doesn't even make it easy to see which of them are best. The shards are really interesting however, you can combine weaker shards into stronger shards, and they have some interesting effects like holy shards giving you regenaration or rage shards giving you racism (extra damage against all races that are not your own). Now only your main character and your few companions can equip the boring weapons and armor, but you can stick a virtue shard on EVERY SINGLE UNIT in the game. The shards are not terrible impactfull in the beginning, but fully kitting out your army with them and combining them into bigger shards quickly pays off. Also thankfully they do not get destroyed when the unit wearing them dies.
I think this is enough to paint a coherent picture of the game. It is kinda shit. It is ugly, horny and clunky and badly written. It also has its heart in the right part. I didn't even touch on the fun quest design and the surprisingly good C&C, just fighting, leveling, building your army and fighting harder fights is fun enough. I would go so far as to call it the best King's Bounty clone you can currently buy on Steam, even with all it's errors. I recommend it on a sale.
Also it has literally nothing to do with Disciples, what a strange decision.
There is also a quite difficult brutal difficulty mode implemented, on which enemies for example deal double damage. It feels quite nice, there are enough synergies and generally broken bullshit you can do in this game that brutal gives just about the right level of challenge, frequent losses of cannon fodder as a drain on your economy and occasional game overs against hard enemies guarding mines or bossfights.
The structure of the game is all over the place. You start with a short tutorial which makes zero sense from a story perspective, then you become Queen (yes you need to play a woman) of a floating magical castle in which you can hire humans, elves, demons and undead to form your magical army. You are also a Nephilim for some reason, noone really explained to me why.
Then you gain access to a worldmap on which you can choose for which of the four previously mentioned races you want to quest first. Each of them has a pretty large quest area full of NPCs, treasure, mines, dungeon and fights. These are pretty high quality, and in each area you can choose wether to antagonise or befriend the local ruling race. This, combined with the ability to choose the order in which to play the four areas, allows you customise your army pretty well. I chose humans and elves for example, although some of the undead and demon units look really nice aswell. You can also go full power fantasy and juggle relations to be high with all of the four races, and run a huge hodgepodge of the cherry picked best units in the game, although that would be pretty expensive as building so many buildings consumes a lot of ressources.
Now why play this structural mess of a game? Combat and customisation. For the combat there is not so much to be said, turn based fights where each unit gets 1 turn per round, with a slightly spicier version of NuXcom 2Ap movement. The customisation however is titanic, each race has ~13 units for you to recruit. As you can mix and match from all four, you quickly get a massive pool of possible troops to take into your roster. You can field up to 10 soldiers in the main battle, and 3 in the backline. Also you can deploy up to two special companion units, out of a pool of ~7 or so. It doesn't take much math to see that the possibilities for army building are mathematically endless. I have also found almost every unit to be at least somewhat usable once you know what you do with it. There is a point buy system aswell, so even cheap soldiers from the beginning can stay relevant to pad out your army if you spend all your points on huge dragons and demons in your roster of 10.
From this great army building flows the fun combat. The units are quite distinct, although each follows the formula of having one default attack it can do every turn, and one special ability on cooldown. Restriction breeds creativity, and you see every possible type of area attack, buff or healing spell attached to these units. Against a weak opponent you either skip the fight or blast the fireworks of all your special abilities, the hard fights can get really interesting. I had 3 fights so far which I won with a single unit surviving by the skin of my teeth, and those fights were the highlight of the experience so far.
Now to some boons and blemishes the game has. The UI is really bad. I wanted to keep some saves around on the different maps as I am not sure if you can revisit them, but the saving system makes juggling saves really hard, so I overwrote them by accident. Also it looks like it was made for console. It definitly takes some getting used to, and some things are genuinly handled in the most unintuitive way, like the castle building and the mines.
The powerfantasy is however pretty well done. You get a lot of stuff which drives the Nephilim point home, all your classes follow a certain light and shadow symbiosis, and there is a pretty huge skill tree with some potent stuff in it, that makes your chara the strongest unit in the game by far. The frequent level ups and gear upgrades provide a nice reason to seek out even weaker enemies and crush them by autoresolve, and you can spend quite some time in the skilltree if you want. Blowing up half the enemy army with a huge surge of light or shadow magic as a well specced Nephilim is very fun.
The gear system is equal parts annoying and great, in the most unintuitive ways one could imagine. There are a bunch of weapons and armors, and also shards of virtue. The weapons and army are just ugly statsticks, and the UI doesn't even make it easy to see which of them are best. The shards are really interesting however, you can combine weaker shards into stronger shards, and they have some interesting effects like holy shards giving you regenaration or rage shards giving you racism (extra damage against all races that are not your own). Now only your main character and your few companions can equip the boring weapons and armor, but you can stick a virtue shard on EVERY SINGLE UNIT in the game. The shards are not terrible impactfull in the beginning, but fully kitting out your army with them and combining them into bigger shards quickly pays off. Also thankfully they do not get destroyed when the unit wearing them dies.
I think this is enough to paint a coherent picture of the game. It is kinda shit. It is ugly, horny and clunky and badly written. It also has its heart in the right part. I didn't even touch on the fun quest design and the surprisingly good C&C, just fighting, leveling, building your army and fighting harder fights is fun enough. I would go so far as to call it the best King's Bounty clone you can currently buy on Steam, even with all it's errors. I recommend it on a sale.
Also it has literally nothing to do with Disciples, what a strange decision.
jackofshadows
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2019
- Messages
- 5,096
This was certainly unexpected after reading up until that point. Bad UI really that matters to you? Imo Dragon's Dogma for example has THE WORST UI ever (ok, among modern games) and ultimately it didn't bother me. Ugly? Judging by the trailer it looks painfully generic but not really ugly. Horny? Wtf? You mean there're some out of place juvenile jokes or something? And now the writing - I mean, you said yourself it's a KB clone... It's just otherwise I was pretty interested with the subj.
Yes. I don't like Dragon's Dogma.
I never really knew why I dislike it so much, but it is probably the UI.
It is way more usable than that game tho, bad UI can ruin a good game for me alone, and the UI here doesn't come close to that.
It is a bit mismatched. The game looks a bit like Heroes of Might and Magic VII in that the assets look like they are cobbled together from 3 different games.
This is actually true and not really an exagaration:
All sex is text only, but still it is weird that you can fuck everything that has a pulse, and some things that have not.
The writing is so bad that it actually gains some entertainment factor. The tutorial is a botched assassination attempt on some random priest, a portal pulls you away from your death, and warps into a mythical ancient lost city which has runes to immediatly react to your body and make you one of the most dangerous entities in the world. This is in the first 15 minutes of the game. Yeah lol.
Miner 2049er
Scholar
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2016
- Messages
- 191
Question regarding Disciples 2: There was an option to flip battle sides, so you could see your party in combat from behind. Where is that option ? Can't find it in the config.exe nor in the in-game options.
Gargaune
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2020
- Messages
- 3,634
That's normally determined by who's initiated combat, left side facing the screen is the attacking party, right and back to the screen the defending one. I don't recall an option for the player to swap, are you sure there was one?
Miner 2049er
Scholar
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2016
- Messages
- 191
Yeah. Definitely. I remember trying it for a while and then I switched it back. I can't completly rule out imagine things, because of severe brain damage, but I could have sworn there was an option.
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Sunssarathi
Literate
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2022
- Messages
- 7
game seems to have beem largely fixed by now, ui is thill weird mobile/console hybrid, but as dwarf fortress player its nothning that bad.
Sunssarathi
Literate
- Joined
- Jul 15, 2022
- Messages
- 7
worst think about it is that most undead does not look like undead but like engy heavy metal album art.
rusty_shackleford
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2018
- Messages
- 50,754
played for a few hours and didn't hook me at all, only praise I have is the game has a very high and surprising amount of reactivity/quest choices.
combat is much too simple
and yes, the game is insanely horny
story is a mess, had trouble following it and eventually gave up
combat is much too simple
and yes, the game is insanely horny
story is a mess, had trouble following it and eventually gave up
Arthandas
Prophet
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2015
- Messages
- 1,551
This game is shieeeeeeeeeeeeet. It's unlike any other Disciples. There's zero pressure, you have all the time in the world and you can cherry pick most of the fights then auto win all the others.
There's no real opponent, you can't lose your hero or your castle, it's like playing HoMM but there's no cpu, only you.
There's no real opponent, you can't lose your hero or your castle, it's like playing HoMM but there's no cpu, only you.
wishbonetail
Learned
- Joined
- Oct 18, 2021
- Messages
- 671
Really? Now I'm interested. Always play heroes on easiest difficulty just for the atmosphere and exploration.
Arthandas
Prophet
- Joined
- Apr 21, 2015
- Messages
- 1,551
Then you're better off just doing the same in Disciples II.
So after pre-ordering I finally gave the game a try. Seems a good thing I waited too, apparently the devs suffered a frequent case of retardation where they initially didn't include an animation speed slider. In a Homam-like. How many times in my miserable life have I seen this shit happen and how many times to go? Jesus.
So a sitrep after beating the first zone.
I guess the pros first. There's a lot of content. Beat the first chapter after like 30 hours and apparently there are 3? A lot of shit to keep you occupied.
The maps are also nicely handcrafted (altho due to the structure of the game there are fewer of them than in D2/D3), with little metroidvania elements. I liekd.
The combat is p. good. There's a tons of different ways you can build your army, 4 different races, a lot of handcrafted units with tons of different skills and synergies. Fights can be tedious tho even with the speed slider, game needs an "AI battle" feature so you don't have to spend 5 minutes chasing that stray priestess or an archer all over the board. Luckily they added an autoresolve button but it's a mystery how it actually decides who's too weak to bother with.
There's also good amount of customizations for your hero - 4 different basic classes and a couple of advanced specializations further down the line.
Surprising amount of quest choices and c&c.
Now for the ugly and the bad.
The art is all over the place. The actual maps look really nice but the UI is a consolitised atrocity and the characters were made by a drunken trainee in some Chinese freeware. It's not the kind of laughable, amateurish fiasco that was King's Bounty 2 but considering it was the stellar, unforgettable art of D2 that put the series on the map it's overall a failure.
The writing is awful. A diarrhea of text disgorged by a bunch of thirsty teenagers, incoherent ramblings about some angels and demons that makes your eyes glaze over within the first 10 minutes. There's some attempt at social interaction between your companions, you can ask them tons of stuff, even act as their matchmaker (gay relationships included) but it's all so cringy and drab and boring. I struggled to NOT skip even those tiny amount of text related to important MQ choices but I failed. Which often bit me in the ass later due to solid c&c.
I'm actively hating the itemization. There's tons of stuff to find and loot but most of it is just different pieces of armor which blows since only your main hero can wear armor. The devs felt they have to reward you for exploration but couldn't figure out what to give you except an endless flood of Diablo-like green/blue garbage, with an actual upgrade once in 5 hours.
Also I can't stand the city management - due to limited space you can only have 4 different unit buildings built, even tho there are 8 in total. So you have to constantly dismantle and replace buildings in order to do simple things like compare units and ponder army compositions. What brilliant mind came up with that shit? Also if you wanna relocate to other map you can't just press a button, have to consult with your companion. What? So much retardation in the world...
Overall I don't hate the game but I'm not sure I'll finish it. The combat, army/hero customization and handcrafted maps keep my interest but the retarded, brain-witheringly boring writing and stupid itemization is really getting on my nerves. I already knocked down the difficulty from hard to normal to avoid the chore and that's never a good sign. I guess I'll dip my toe in the 2nd chapter and see what's what.
So a sitrep after beating the first zone.
I guess the pros first. There's a lot of content. Beat the first chapter after like 30 hours and apparently there are 3? A lot of shit to keep you occupied.
The maps are also nicely handcrafted (altho due to the structure of the game there are fewer of them than in D2/D3), with little metroidvania elements. I liekd.
The combat is p. good. There's a tons of different ways you can build your army, 4 different races, a lot of handcrafted units with tons of different skills and synergies. Fights can be tedious tho even with the speed slider, game needs an "AI battle" feature so you don't have to spend 5 minutes chasing that stray priestess or an archer all over the board. Luckily they added an autoresolve button but it's a mystery how it actually decides who's too weak to bother with.
There's also good amount of customizations for your hero - 4 different basic classes and a couple of advanced specializations further down the line.
Surprising amount of quest choices and c&c.
Now for the ugly and the bad.
The art is all over the place. The actual maps look really nice but the UI is a consolitised atrocity and the characters were made by a drunken trainee in some Chinese freeware. It's not the kind of laughable, amateurish fiasco that was King's Bounty 2 but considering it was the stellar, unforgettable art of D2 that put the series on the map it's overall a failure.
The writing is awful. A diarrhea of text disgorged by a bunch of thirsty teenagers, incoherent ramblings about some angels and demons that makes your eyes glaze over within the first 10 minutes. There's some attempt at social interaction between your companions, you can ask them tons of stuff, even act as their matchmaker (gay relationships included) but it's all so cringy and drab and boring. I struggled to NOT skip even those tiny amount of text related to important MQ choices but I failed. Which often bit me in the ass later due to solid c&c.
I'm actively hating the itemization. There's tons of stuff to find and loot but most of it is just different pieces of armor which blows since only your main hero can wear armor. The devs felt they have to reward you for exploration but couldn't figure out what to give you except an endless flood of Diablo-like green/blue garbage, with an actual upgrade once in 5 hours.
Also I can't stand the city management - due to limited space you can only have 4 different unit buildings built, even tho there are 8 in total. So you have to constantly dismantle and replace buildings in order to do simple things like compare units and ponder army compositions. What brilliant mind came up with that shit? Also if you wanna relocate to other map you can't just press a button, have to consult with your companion. What? So much retardation in the world...
Overall I don't hate the game but I'm not sure I'll finish it. The combat, army/hero customization and handcrafted maps keep my interest but the retarded, brain-witheringly boring writing and stupid itemization is really getting on my nerves. I already knocked down the difficulty from hard to normal to avoid the chore and that's never a good sign. I guess I'll dip my toe in the 2nd chapter and see what's what.
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No updates in a while and no new DLC announced.. just saw this thread.. yup, they've moved on already..
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1287840/discussions/0/3825284962826269065/
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1287840/discussions/0/3825284962826269065/
Ebonsword
Arcane
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2008
- Messages
- 2,424
I started playing this over the long weekend and...it's actually pretty good (DISCLAIMER: I have no prior experience with the Disciples series).
I agree with the complaints that there is too much trash combat and also way too many trash items.
The story/dialogue is a bit try-hard, but it's also kind of endearingly retarded. At least I never felt like the game was preaching at me (a rare thing in 2023).
Similarly, I was shocked to see actually attractive female NPCs! And in skimpy outfits! I almost felt like I was in the 90s again.
The big draw for this game, and what will keep you playing, is the army customizaton. There are tons of different units to use and they often do play quite differently. I thought that they did a pretty good job of balancing units by doing things like giving a unit kind of mediocre front-line abilities but then also giving them an amazing back-line support ability.
I'm also impressed by the number of spells in the game. Sure, some of them are just basically pallete swaps (i.e. single target fire damage instead of single target divine damage), but even those at least have different secondary effects. But then you have spells that let you do things like portal a unit across the battlefield or throw up a wall that blocks enemy movement--those can be real game changers.
I do wish upgrades and spells weren't so gated behind story progression, though. I was stuck using Tier 1 & 2 units for hours and hours while the enemy was happily throwing Tier III and Tier V units against me. Same with the spells--I was mostly plinking away with single-target damage spells when the enemy was tossing huge AoEs my way. I think I would have preferred it if you could just buy almost all upgrades right away, but they were very expensive so you had to prioritize what you wanted.
So far, I'm about level 40 and am maybe 2/3 of the way through the game? We'll see if it totally falls apart near the end, but I've enjoyed my time with it so far.
I agree with the complaints that there is too much trash combat and also way too many trash items.
The story/dialogue is a bit try-hard, but it's also kind of endearingly retarded. At least I never felt like the game was preaching at me (a rare thing in 2023).
Similarly, I was shocked to see actually attractive female NPCs! And in skimpy outfits! I almost felt like I was in the 90s again.
The big draw for this game, and what will keep you playing, is the army customizaton. There are tons of different units to use and they often do play quite differently. I thought that they did a pretty good job of balancing units by doing things like giving a unit kind of mediocre front-line abilities but then also giving them an amazing back-line support ability.
I'm also impressed by the number of spells in the game. Sure, some of them are just basically pallete swaps (i.e. single target fire damage instead of single target divine damage), but even those at least have different secondary effects. But then you have spells that let you do things like portal a unit across the battlefield or throw up a wall that blocks enemy movement--those can be real game changers.
I do wish upgrades and spells weren't so gated behind story progression, though. I was stuck using Tier 1 & 2 units for hours and hours while the enemy was happily throwing Tier III and Tier V units against me. Same with the spells--I was mostly plinking away with single-target damage spells when the enemy was tossing huge AoEs my way. I think I would have preferred it if you could just buy almost all upgrades right away, but they were very expensive so you had to prioritize what you wanted.
So far, I'm about level 40 and am maybe 2/3 of the way through the game? We'll see if it totally falls apart near the end, but I've enjoyed my time with it so far.
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Cadmus
Arcane
- Joined
- Dec 28, 2013
- Messages
- 4,280
Good for you, Ebonsword.
The game is really shit but in an endearing kind of way I suppose.
Like somebody described Divinity - the best shit game. This is an ok shit game.
You might wanna try Disciples 2 though.
I don't remember much anymore but I think I used the hero for everything by the end but it was still kinda fun.
The game is really shit but in an endearing kind of way I suppose.
Like somebody described Divinity - the best shit game. This is an ok shit game.
You might wanna try Disciples 2 though.
I don't remember much anymore but I think I used the hero for everything by the end but it was still kinda fun.
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