RPGWatch Feature - Disciples 3 Review

Seriously bummed about the general consensus of Disciples 3, especially after having waited so long for it. Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference, but I wonder if they wouldn't have been better off not switching to 3d. I actually prefer 2d for games like this, and I wonder if the extra time that had to go into the 3d wouldn't have been better spent play testing and polishing.
 
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Seriously bummed about the general consensus of Disciples 3, especially after having waited so long for it. Maybe it wouldn't have made a difference, but I wonder if they wouldn't have been better off not switching to 3d. I actually prefer 2d for games like this, and I wonder if the extra time that had to go into the 3d wouldn't have been better spent play testing and polishing.

I wouldn't have minded at all if they stayed with the 2D look. However, the 4 campaigns in D2 followed by 3 expansions packs with a total of 5 additional campaigns (with the Elves being the only new race) left the Disciples engine pretty much sucked dry. A sequel would either have to create new races if it was to stay with the same engine or attempt to recapture the "feel" of the originals with a new engine.

I think it could have worked if only they had properly polished and play-tested the game. Many of the mistakes and shortcomings can be overlooked but the lack of an active AI seriously breaks the longevity of the game and pretty much rules out any attempt at a replay.
 
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I would have been happy if they just changed the combat system (never really liked the old one, too simple), hell, Hollywood is doing remakes of everything, they could have done a remake of Disciples 1 & 2's campaigns and maps, and just concentrate on the new combat engine.
 
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Alrik said: I've been researching a little bit more.

Sheesh, Alrik! With that level of detail in your research you should be writing reviews, not reading them!

I had found some of what you cited, but thank you for the new information. Sadly, and I could be totally wrong, some of those revies sound as though the review based it on doing part of the demo and never played the full game.

I think you might have hit on the problem with those reviews in your last excellent observation: "Most reports are that bugs appear in the German version from act 4 on … "
 
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Alrik said: I've been researching a little bit more.

Sheesh, Alrik! With that level of detail in your research you should be writing reviews, not reading them!

Oh, thanks. :blush:

Talk about wasted potential … :rolleyes: I still haven't found a way to "make this into money", mostly because I play down my own skills too much. :rolleyes:

I think you might have hit on the problem with those reviews in your last excellent observation: "Most reports are that bugs appear in the German version from act 4 on … "

Hmmm … Could this imply that the tests/reviews not mentioning any bigger bugs at all were only performed until act 4 … ?
 
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Im now very much deeper in the game, around 20+ hours I think, I would say the review is spot on, whit a few exceptions.

1. Crit/hit problem - Its all about Dexterity and Agility, Dexterity lower the chance to miss an opponents, if your Dexterity extend your opponents Agility so much that there are 0% miss chance, it convert to chance to Crit.

So put some point in Dexterity to remove Miss chance and raise Agility to prevent those nasty crits on yourself. I did that mistake to only raise health and attack power, but that dos that help if high level units constant score crits on you and you can’t hit them yourself.

Your example whit you can’t hit the priest, do actual make sense. Unit that ware little or no armor tend to be more fixable that those that wear big armor, and hence have high agility scores.

Hint: High level Empire priest can raise one unites dexterity whit 50 for 5 rounds, a great ability if you have problems whit your Hero have problem hitting. As example in one battle whit a Black Dragon, my Hero had 40% miss chance, after the buff he got +5 crit chance.


2. More Heros - Actual I find it nice to have two or more Heros, at later levels the maps become so big that it take fore ever to explore it all, whit only one Hero, and it’s a pain in the ass then opponents take a resource nod, and your Hero stand in the other end of the map.

Further its nice that you can rehire Heros that you used on previous levels, all still got level and equipment that they had then you last used them. They is sometime as fun to level up as your main Hero.



Other than that, I do agree that the game leave you whit the feeling that the game should have been so much more, it’s still a ok game, some more work can have made this game great. I give it 3 out of 5 stars.
 
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Phonix said: "High level Empire priest can raise one units dexterity by50 for 5 rounds…."

Excellent find, Phonix. I missed that might be the cause of the misbalance. More typical "fortify dexterity" spells in those few games that have one raise dexterity 5-20 points (if normalized to Disciples 3 100 stat max.) Raising to 50 is a terrible misbalancing, but would very much explain what I was seeing. An enemy with a couple such priests (especially if they seem to start with high dexterity when still unbuffed) basically has two invulnerable healers casting large group heals.

After reading your post I went back and looked at dexterity (or agility) spells in a dozen RPGs and found most did not have such spells.

Best Dex/agility type spell (normalized to 100 max)

  • Oblivion: 10 pts for 90 secs
  • Drakensang: 1-8 pts for 300 secs
  • NWN series: 1-5 for 60 minutes
  • None that I could find: DA/DA-O, M&M series, HoMM series, Ultima series, Wizardry series, Divinity series, etc

One piece of bad news for you, though. Even at the end of the game when you have maxed out the skill trees, (and thus have maxed your dexterity) and when you have the top stat-boosting armors, you still miss a great deal.

Phonix said: "Actually I find it nice to have two or more Heros…"

With 20-20 hindsight I agree completely with you. If I ever try to replay it, I will use that approach. The one problem you will find is that inexplicably the game seems to require the hero to gain all map experience in order to max out his levels. However, while using extra heroes would hamper you in the endgame, it would be well worth it to have more fun leading up to the last 4-5 missions.

Thank you for the additional information and insight!
 
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Thanks for the review

Thanks for the review! I was set to buy this in the near future but perhaps I'll wait a while and see if I can pick it up cheap some time.
 
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