Disciples II: Dark Prophecy

"Looks Good, plays bad"

Disciples 2 looked good in the store. It is a turn-based strategy game that promised versatility and variety. Players can upgrade their army units and heroes, research spells, and even create your own scenarios.

It sounds pretty good, huh? I thought so. And then I played it.

First, I shall discuss what was good about the game.

The graphics were well done, for the most part. There are shadows, units move, wings flap, waterfalls fall; every now and then, a flock of seagulls flies across the wartorn landscape. All in all, the world map looks very nice.

The combat map is essentially a square with your troops on one side (up to six...what an army!) and the enemy on the other. The field is very plain, but the character look nice and they attack with a variety of animations that are not too bad, but grow wearisome later on. In short, the combat map is dull, but what is ther looks good.

Graphics: 8/10

The sound in this game is very good. It is repetitive, but I really did not notice it bothering me. The combat music is a score with thundering bass drums accompanied by an ominous wind instrumental. The world map music is an excellent mood setter with percussion and wind instruments creating a mostly mellow melody.

There is also, in teh sagas, a narator who introduces each quest (mission). The narrator is not fantastic, but his somewaht deep voice and slight English accent adds flavor to the quests' introductions. In the end, the sound was very good, and was by far the best part of the game.

Sound: 9/10

Gameplay is the ultimate test of a game. When I first began playing, I was awed by the good graphics, the sound, the whole presentation of the game. The heroes and army units were excellent, the detail in the artwork superbly fine. Upgrading units was an exciting event, finding magic items and completing the various subquests was a thrill. And then it suddenly got boring. Very boring. So boring, that even comtemplating playing the game depressed me (I am not kidding!).

What happened? Well, the sagas are jsut bad, for one thing. In order to win, you have to use only one hero per each quest in order to level him up so that he'll be strong enough to fight the very tough monsters in later quests. After each quest in a saga (there are four sagas, by the way) you can bring only one (!) hero with you into the next saga. This means that every quest is the same tedious exercise. Take main hero, acquire new army units at first level (you cannot bring your stronger units from previous quests with you, ony one hero) then go around killing everything with said hero, resurrecting dead units when necessary, researching the same spells again; casting them in the same way, again; upgrading the same units, again. Sounds fun? But wait! There's more!

You can choose to skip playing the quests and their boring storylines, all of which have bad (as in, not happy, endings), and just play single quests. Which means you will do the same thing you did in each of the saga missions, but once you finish one quest, that's it. You get to choose from the same heroes (and the heroes are the same for all four races) buy your 1st leverl army units, and upgrade them into the same boring units you've come to know and hate by fighting the same monsters over and over again in very similar settings.

Really, this game would be complete if it came qith oine bud mission that allowed you to play any of the four races of your choice. That way, you could play the one mission four times, wach time picking a different race just to get the experience of playing all the races. ''But just one mission, you say, ''wouldn't that be boring?'' Yep! Now you get it! Every mission is basically the same exercise in battle. Different quests may have different victory and loss conditions, but the gameplay and activity required to win is exactly the same, mission after mission. In no time at all, the heroes, races, army units and the very one-dimensional battle system becomes supremely dull. After about ten hours of playing this game, the boredom grew painful, adn I stopped playing, only to turn to the scenario editor. Aha! This is where I can have some fun, I thought, and I did...for about three hours or so.

The Scenario Editor is very well done. It is very easy to use, allows you to create all sorts of units, any victory and loss conditions you want (within game limitations, of course) and even create a large variety of subquests. You can also create a sage of your very own! In short order, I had built a huge quest far more interesting than anything the game makers put together, but it was still boring to play. Why? The gane is boring, that's why. Combat is ssimple exchange of exchangin attacks. There is no movement to do, no tactical planning, no terrain, nothing! The untis only upgrade a few levels, (5 levels max, but most only go up three levels). There is very little to do in this game, and the little there is gets very old, very quick.

Gameplay: 1/10
Scenario Editor: 9/10; 1/10 (the editor is good, but the game still blows)

Do not buy! Download the preview, play it, and realize that you have played the whole game! That's all there is to it! Save your money on this one.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 09/14/02, Updated 09/14/02