Disciples II: Dark Prophecy

"Gaming Goodness!"

Today I am going to babble on about Disciples II:Dark Prophecy. The game is about four kingdoms on a fantasy world and the events of this era. It takes place 10 years after the original. Basic back story 10 years ago a really really big war broke out consisting of the Undead armies attacking the Dwarven armies for killing their leaders consort. The demons breaking out of the earth and trying to kill everyone. The dwarves trying to seal the demons back in the earth and fight off the Undead and the humans trying to kill the undead and the demons because they are evil. Anyway, in this sequel the demons are attempting to free their leader, the dwarves are trying to re-unite all the clans, the undead now trying to revive their leaders consort, and the humans attempting to get rid of all the evil that now plagues their land. If it sounds kind of boring that is because I can't tell a story worth anything. Anyway to the rankings!

Graphics: 10/10
Frankly I loved the graphics. They were very very well done. Everything looked good and nothing appeared to be badly drawn. Many people are probably complain that they aren't 3d like many many many many many games are being made as now a days but the graphics suit the game very well and make sure that you don't need a super ultra powerful system to make the title show up. *cough emperor battle for dune* What? I didn't say anything.....:)

Sound: 10/10
The sound in this was the best I have ever heard. They put ALOT of effort into sound and form it you get everything you could want. From the foot steps of your solider to the swipe of the sword and the incomprehensible words to a mage spell. They even put in the buzz of insects and the caws of birds.

Music: 10/10
The music is top notch. It creates an incredible level of ambiance. It has multiple tracks for eveything. From battles to the world map.

Gameplay: 10/10
This is where the game really shines. The turn based action makes a player think ahead and there aren't any worries that an enemy is going to get reinforcements before you get there. The AI in this is top notch. They will exploit weaknesses and even on easy give you a challenge. Also the ability to carry your best warrior from the last battle really gives a sense of not having to totally start from scratch. Also did I mention you can equip and name leaders. Yep you can now start forming unusual attachments to computer charecters. Resource gathering also is easy to do so you don't need to create a million miners and then find mines when they run out because in this you just plant a rod or capture a city near a mine and then it auto mines forever so you can focus on kicking major enemy rear. This game offers so much more then I can talk about so I will continue to the next subject.

Replayability: 10/10
Replay in this game is very easy. Thanks to the great AI and the multitude of options you can go through a campaign at least twice and get a different adventure. Also with 20 extra premade quests and a new quest/saga generator you can play for a very long time. Another great thing is that you edit pre-made quests and the trigger are so easy that you can make a very awesome map on your first day. Just to give you an idea of how much I suck at triggers, everyone said that Starcrafts triggers were easy but I could never make them tell the computer to even harvest resources. My maps consisted of assault the enemy strong hold who will do nothing. On my first day I created a heavily triggered map in this and all the triggers did exactly what I wanted them to.

In conclusion this is the greatest Turn based real time strategy ever. Oh and about the whole Emperor: Battle for Dune reference, I own that game and I have a NIVIDIA graphics card, 365 megabytes of RAM and 9 Gigabytes of hard drive space and I couldn't get the thing to go on moderate settings in the graphics without expierencing major slowdowns and I had the thing on the highest game speed.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 12/18/02, Updated 12/18/02