Disciples II: Guardians of the Light

"Disciples of Might and Magic"

I was always a fan of Heroes of Might and Magic; I played them at my friends houses whenever I could. I never got around to buying them though. So imagine my delight when I bought this game, expecting it to be more akin to Warcraft 3 and it turns out to be a near mirror image of Heroes.

Graphics: 8/10
Though entirely 2d, the graphics are very well drawn and add that gothic atmosphere to the game that really makes it feel like old school Dungeons and Dragons. Characters are well drawn. The world map looks nice, especially your main keep. Attacks are shown usually by weapons lighting up as they attack, which is cool. Really that's all there is too it. And of course your characters faces, which although a bit forlorn looking, are nicely drawn as well. Sadly there are only 3 faces for heroes, so all heroes of one type will have the same face. Same goes for units, but the majority of strategy games are like that now.

Sound:
Music: 8/10
Effects: 6/10
The music is nice. On the world map it's usually ambient so that you hardly notice it, but if you were to listen you'd here orchestrated music that's fairly quite, and the tune fits into the atmosphere. Battles often have louder more pronounced music, and that too is really nice. I didn't give this score more than an 8 primarily because there are only a few musical themes, and though good they aren't fantastic.

The effects are a bit below par, hence they merit a 6. Most attacks are announced by a typical 'whoosh' or 'twang' as an archer fires. Knights' horses will cry out during an attack. And the wizards mutter some gibberish that gets to sound corny all too quickly.

Gameplay: 7/10
Gameplay is usually the most important part of a game, and this is no exception. You start with your castle, and a small income. You take your main hero and go out to earn some experience and clean the immediate vicinity of your enemies. Unlike other strategy games, the control limit on this game is very low. The primary heroes start out with a 3 control, which means them and 3 other units can be in your party. Thankfully you can export heroes from quest to quest, so you get up to a max of 6 control fairly quickly. However, you start each map with the same weakling units. You can build one structure in your castle a day, to upgrade your units when they gain enough experience. The real issue with such a small control is that when you lose a unit, it really cuts down on that hero's effectiveness. You have to use a revive potion, which are really expensive early on, or go back to your castle and pay to have him revived, which is annoying. Once your heroes main party, assuming none of them died, reaches second or third level the odds of any of them dying are very slim, so the revive potions really only come in handy in the beginning. In almost an RPG like style, your 6 units fit in a 2x3 formation, so you put 3 strong units in the front (fighters/fighter heroes) and the mages and archers in the back. Combat is almost overly simplified. Each unit has only one attack, so all you really do on that units turn is decide who it's going to attack. Healers heal every turn, no MP or anything so no need to worry. Heroes can learn abilities to equip items, which usually boost the parties abilites. So combat (basically the entire game) is going to get dull not super fast, but pretty fast. Waiting for your units to level up later on takes forever, as you run around fighting emissaries from your enemies base. Instead of being able to pick up most things singlehandedly with your hero, your income consists of gold, and then a bunch of different types of mana (to learn spells). In order to acquire this mana, you must train a special hero who will run around the map putting down 'rods' which make the land under that mine/mana source yours, which adds it to your income. This becomes complicated when other teams come and destroy your rod and take it for themselves, and you have little wars over sources. The last thing your hero will do is assault and keep towns. You will eventually grow a strong enough party to attack a town, and then if you beat the defenders you will have to station your own garrison there to defend it. The real issue is that since the units never leave that town, they never level up so generally you have towns falling whenever they're attacked. The only real way to defend a town is to have your heroes party stay there while it's being attacked.
Save the worst for last; my least favorite aspect of this game is the turn system. Sure, the other teams need turns too, but couldn't it just be run in realtime, so that I don't have to wait for them? Your hero gets a certain movement amount per day (which gets to be a real hassle) and once he's done moving, you can build buildings in your castle (one per day) and research spells (again, one per day). So then you have to wait a day while the other teams move around causing havoc. This is usually short, 5 seconds or so, but sometimes they attack a town etc and it takes longer. It doesn't seem like a hassle at first, but after you've been playing for a few hours waiting for 5 seconds every time you just want to move your unit gets really troublesome.

Replay Value: 9/10
It's a strategy game, or a dumbed down strategy game at least. These things are all about replay value. Who said anything about a plot? Just load up a new quest and go fight some random enemy. There lots of different maps and difficulties, and custom ones if you grow tired of the norm, to keep you busy. Not that you'll need it, because on average a medium difficulty map takes around 4-5 hours to effectively clean out.

Overall: 7/10
This game is basically a really shallow strategy game. Instead of hordes of units to control, and tons of buildings to manage and upgrade, you have one building and a couple heroes running around. It isn't real time, so that adds an aspect of calm to it. You can carefully plan out what you're going to do, though usually it won't amount to much. The visuals are great, the game is fun, but it will get old fairly quickly. I'd give it a week or so.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/18/03, Updated 07/18/03