Disciples 3 – Renaissance is the third installment of the Disciples series. For those who have not had the pleasure of playing the earlier titles, the Disciples series is a turn-based fantasy strategy. Like its predecessors, the game play in Disciples III focuses on hero units and their small band of support troops. Before even the review starts I must warn that the US version of the game is pretty buggy and you’ll find many mistakes as in game play, but also in the games engines, but let us focus on the positive things. Quality animations add real character to the combat, making this as close to real-time strategy as you can get while still being a resolutely turn-based RPG. Each of the large levels that make up the three main campaigns begins with a host city and a team of four heroes. As the games upgrades for the heroes of the game are mostly based on the city you are building and the priority should be the city itself to upgrade it to the highest level possible to be able to level up the characters of the game. But to do that resources and gold must be present all the time and that requires quite a few missions and quests to be fulfilled. These small squads march about the map in a turn-based fashion, grabbing up goodies, fighting neutral troops scattered about the board, and (often) competing with enemy factions attempting to do the same. Players have at their disposal one of four leader types: a melee fighter, a ranged attacker, a mage, or a thief. Combat features imaginative locations that offer more than the usual bland hexes to stand on. Some offer bonuses to magic users, ranged or melee combat, making battles a satisfyingly tactical affair where both defensive and offensive formations have their merit. Most of the skill selections are simply increases in various attributes or the all-important added leadership slots, but a few interesting combat skills are sprinkled throughout. Choosing one branch on the advancement tree will lock all other branches for the entirety of a given map, so players need to carefully consider which type of units will be most helpful in a given scenario. This simple branching choice of advancement has a certain charm, and is a welcome holdover from the previous titles. At very early stages of a campaign, before there's much chance to work up a strong army, the more-powerful enemy factions can be a bit of a challenge. Despite its other shortcomings, Disciples III would be a much more enjoyable game if it wasn’t so damn buggy. The 3D graphics are in-line with the series’ moody, gothic style, and on the whole they’re nicely polished when things aren’t going awry. Summarizing all of this together we have a good idea for a game that could be very nicely done, but the releaser either had a lot of technical problems, or the team that did this was quite new based on the great idea but poor results. This game has enormous potential but the technical issues are just too often.
