Translation from russian unoficial review
Hi guys,
I've tried to find any up to date review on English and didn't find it. So I've thought of translating Russian review from
www.lurkmore.ru for you. This is (unofficial) review of Russian /b/tards. Sometimes they too critical (that's Russian trait I think) but not biased.
I'm not good at English so I'm sorry for awful translation, but I think it's better than nothing.
And yeah I didn't play the game since I'm in the US now. Hope it's not so bad.
Dimed present time
Disciples III: Renaissance. It nevertheless has been failed, because at first development was performed by Russian company, at second release date has been postponed over 9000 times, at third they’ve lost original combat system, resources system and genius design of previous art director P. Lambert that was substituted with helpless eclectics, and at fourth two uberneat races were thrown away: gnomes and undead.
The development was rather mementoes, perhaps due to two phenomenon: official forum with tons of spam, and theirs community manager with mature troll skills (now dismissed) who’s on his own contest hates original D1 and D2.
Apparently, just as we thought, all this resulted in game being silly $&*#. Monochrome, but extremely detailed maps were changed to silly aquarelle pictures with like sticked-on game objects. The map structure itself became labyrinth-like, the action is taking place in extreme narrowness. Combats fell to copying of Heroes of Might & Magic: monumental figures of warriors for the sake of spectacular level-upping of those players have been farming are gone now. Certainly, you can feast your eyes upon level-upped warior on the army screen (like in Heroes), but in combat everything changed into heap of small grey models messing in similar arenas. Yes-yes, warriors are now running around the map covered with hexagonal net. Like you all know where… At the same time warriors are now have been given a bunch of attributes like endurance/agility that somehow influence on something, but it’s definitely not appealing to study on what and how. To make it short, the primitive but clear like in chess combat system of DII is no more. On a top of that some abilities doesn’t work (even after lots of patches).
Also there is no multiplayer AT ALL, single player, editor and hotseat (probably not gonna happen). Even only for this fans will hate developers. And the last mentioned promise to release all this with next expansion (before selling they told “at spring” the “at fall” now they’re silent), besides they gonna add undead race.
Technical aspect of the game hits imagination causing tears of used to neat graphics players. Developers imply that their engine supports all modern features and they are not used only to allow Russian players with low-end specs enjoy the game [lol]. At the moment the game is stable at throwing to desktop every <40 minutes. Patches are adding new bugs like game loading for 40-60 seconds on 1.05HF rather than 1-2 on 1.04HF, broken skill tables and so on. Also AI is extremely dumb and for all claims developers answer with advices to play on highest difficulty level (which just increases attributes of enemies and have not been balanced at all). Besides guys are excel at rarest lack of responsibility towards players (well, you’ll not surprise anyone now). Bug reports section appeared not so long ago (and there is no essential tech support). Talk with that support comes down to questions of genuinity (of the game and Windows) and advices to reinstall those. To any links on reviews besides ones that have been bought guys are making stone faces and getting pissed off. It seems they really believe that they’ve made a masterpiece. —omitted—
But the most important is that instead of dark gothic atmosphere there is tons of pathos in style of Final Fantasy and Lineage. Awful soundtracks (something appealing is only on the main menu of the game) and voiceover immersed with that pathos, silly humor in units descriptions. As a conclusion: don’t give a famous brand to %#$&*#^@.
Anyway, some anonymous think that the game is playable. And after dozen of patches one can even enjoy playing. Because many ideas came from the second part (if not take into account atrophied strategy elements) and the new ones don’t make the game too ugly. Even cloned HoMM battle system will do. But the fact that once again after numerous postpones homeland[Russian] developers have thrown out unfinished game turns off from waiting until D3 will be developed to presentable state.