When I was at GenCon in 1999, I was wandering aimlessly through the display booths in the exhibitors hall, waiting for the next interview I had scheduled. There wasn’t enough time to go join a game of anything, so I was willing to kill a little time when this friendly fellow stepped out of the Strategy First booth and asked if I wanted to see their new game. ‘Strategy First? ‘ I thought, ‘Who the heck are they?’
The guy’s name was Pro Sotos, and his enthusiasm was infectious. So I sat down and took a look. What was supposed to be five minutes stretched into ten, and then fifteen as he showed me this ornate strategy/rpg hybrid called Disciples.
At first glance, it was a clone of HoMM – you had heroes that traveled the land with accompanying creatures, discovering treasure and fighting monsters. But as my little chat stretched to thirty minutes (and made me late for that original interview, I might add) it became clearer that they were doing something different than HoMM. If you imagine a spectrum where the gameplay of the Warlords series is at one end and HoMM is in the middle, Disciples sat at the other end, with an almost intimate focus on the individual heroes, their adventures, and the progress of a definite plotline.
Moreover, no discussion of Disciples proceeded without an acknowledgment that its lush graphics were some of the most beautiful ever to grace the computer screen. This was no mere eye-candy, meant to distract the player from a weak or shallow game; instead this was a concentrated effort to use the artwork to immerse the player ever further into the world and events of Nevendaar.
Fast forward to 2001. Disciples turned out to be a worthy new competitor in a field of seasoned titles. A clamor rose from fans for an immediate follow-on game. I was fortunate enough to be in Montreal in January 2001 to see this sequel, and it was already in late alpha stage at that point, set for release in September 2001. Pro Sotos, as well as talented programmer Danny Belanger, clearly were in the final stages before beta testing. I didn’t get to play it much but I was looking forward to it certainly.
September passed, then October. Nothing came out. Then, word came from Strategy First: Disciples 2 was being pushed back to 1/2002. When pressed, they said that while they could have released it, it just wasn’t as big a step forward as they wanted to take with a whole new title, and they’d returned it for further development and polish.
The wait was worth it.
This month Disciples 2 finally shipped, and new players as well as long time fans are going to be deeply impressed with it. With D2, Strategy First has given the CRPG public not only a tremendous advance to the Disciples franchise, but also set the bar that much higher for its many competitors coming out later this year (HoMM IV & AoW2, among others). Disciples 2 will be the benchmark against which these games are measured, and overtopping it won’t be easy.
Disciples 2 is essentially the same game system as D1, set ten years later in the world of Nevendaar. The premise is basically the same as well: each of the four main races has a campaign (called a saga) of at least seven scenarios that narrates its actions throughout this great conflict, as well as a number of setpiece scenarios.
[Reviewers note: Personally, I despise the single missions for all their quality: it takes a lot of planning, patience, and luck (and, I admit, not a few save/reloads) to win them…but then the darn things are over. Aaagh! Does M&M give you only one M? Does Pringles give you only one chip? Never – give me a campaign any time.]
The main point of the game is land control, represented graphically by the color of the terrain. Any resource that sits on your color adds money or magic points to your pool. This territory (fertile green grass for Empire, white snow for Mountain Clans,
desiccated barrens for the Undead Horde, and seething lava for the Legions) emphasizes the very visual nature of D2. This controlled-land expands every turn from any city you control, or from purpose-planted rods set by specially-capable leader units fielded by each side (which allow you to seize a critical resource that is either across water or far away from friendly cities).
You play one of these four races, hiring heroes in your capital or controlled towns and complementing them with a cast of assorted other supporting units. Certainly your ‘personality’ type – selected at the game’s beginning – plays a role in your tactics. Make yourself a fighter lord, and your units will heal naturally every turn to some degree. This prevents combat from being the constant money drain it otherwise can be, spending precious gold to heal units after the inevitable battles. Picking Magelord gives you the ability to learn spells quickly and cast them more cheaply, a utility that doesn’t typically come into play until later in most scenarios when it becomes a major advantage. The Guildmaster personality grants you cheap thief units whose also-expanded capabilities and efficacy make them a particular nuisance to your enemies.
While these personality decisions at the front end may influence your play, it also seems to affect the AI. As a magelord, obviously you will be interested in grabbing all the mana sources you can. But I noticed when playing the same scenario as mage lord and later as fighter lord that in the former the computer opponent spent much of its resources sending out rod-planters to deny me mana gains. As a fighterlord, the opposing units were more combat oriented and I rarely saw enemy flag planters.
This personality choice is important, but your heroes are the key; they lead the units, set the movement rate of the stacks, and their command rating determines ultimately how many units will be in the group. D2 avoids the uber-stack problem to some degree by keeping these parties small – no more than 6 units including the leader. These groups of leaders and followers travel the map, fighting bad guys, finding treasure, and basically try to advance your cause.
In a direct departure from D1, units (including heroes) may upgrade to 99th level. Non-hero units advance like in D1, to more powerful creatures with different capabilities based on the upgrade buildings you’ve put in your capital, but never top-out. That’s right, I said never. Got a Succubus or Titan that can’t evolve to anything more powerful? Not to worry: they will gain levels and increase their attacks, damage, and hit points nearly forever. Heroes just keep getting better with more abilities and power, making the ‘export hero’ utility that much more useful when Strategy First comes out with later adventures geared specifically for these super-studs. Of course this isn’t all unmitigated beer & skittles for the player, as you’ll see when you throw that last summoned creature against the Titan that’s been blocking your way for 6 turns. By a fluke, the titan kills it, gains a few critical xp and voom, he goes up a level and is fully healed. At occasions like this, Disciples 2 can be a four-letter word.
Each of these races is theme-based and each ends up playing like a completely different game. The campaigns may be simulating different aspects of the same general conflict, but they each feel unique. Aside from the generic easy-medium-hard controls, you really can tweak the difficulty level by whom you play. The Empire is, in my opinion, the easiest as their healers can frequently mean that a party leaves a wimpy combat in better shape than it entered. The Undead Hordes are probably next with the werewolf, immune to normal weapon damage. Certainly he can be killed by assorted magical blasts (there’s no shortage of them) but this immunity means you can use a werewolf unit in the front row and a bunch of low-level units in the back row to leisurely farm experience points from the magic-poor neutrals. The Infernal Legions (devils & demons) and the Mountain Clans (dwarves) are more straightforward do-damage organizations, but are severely weakened by the constant need to pay to heal their units.
Disciples 2 once again is graced with the beautiful hand-drawn art of Patrick Lambert, whose haunting images are evocative and graceful. Settling somewhere between Baroque and Gothic, each unit has a portrait, presenting visually the heroically good Empire, the doughty Mountain Clans, the turbulent evil of the Legions of the Damned and the downright creepy Undead Horde. The 2d sprite units move across a now 800x600 world that is far more alive than the relatively passive backdrop of D1. Flocks of birds float across mountain crags and steam rises from raging waterfalls. Rivulets trickle over rocks while very mood-enhancing music/environmental sound effects add to the atmosphere. The battles themselves are fought on a combat screen, much larger than in D1, and with a backdrop appropriate to where the battle is taking place (a ship deck if the combat is on the water, for instance). Some players may enjoy the technically impressive 3d graphics being implemented in other latter-generation strategy games, but for my money Strategy First has proven that for now real artistry remains in 2d.
Of course, D2 is about more than just pretty things to look at and nice sound effects; the beautiful façade hides engine and gameplay changes of real substance. One of the early criticisms of D1 was that it was too static – the neutral creatures stood perfectly still so the player could move almost adjacent, marshal their troops & spells, and then attack. No longer. A powerful and impressively capable trigger and scripting engine is available (and is used extensively in the campaigns) to make the inhabitants of Nevendaar act more realistically than ever. Units defect, move during your turn to intercept, cast spells, summon help – the list of things they can do is nearly endless. On the one hand, this makes the game immeasurably harder: move one space too far, and that slightly-weakened stack suddenly is pounced upon by an ambushing neutral. On the other, I think it could have been used even more – too many neutrals still stood, waiting to get creamed while my stack waited for me to accumulate enough mana for the killer attack in the following turn.
Combat is enhanced, juiced up with eye candy and animations of course, but in other more subtle ways. The screen is not only bigger, but has much better controls. Units can defend instead of attack, reducing the damage they take in the next turn by half. The AI uses this intelligently, occasionally sacrificing cheap replaceable units in the front row while the back-row nasties kick your butt.
Leaders can now use items during battle, making them far more multi-dimensional. Have an injured party led by a fighter-leader in a surprised combat with goblins? Let him take a round’s damage but use his healing talisman to bring everybody up to full hit points. This is very handy in certain specific situations, but you don’t really use it much in the first few scenarios. Early on, the leader’s inherent damage/spell/arrow shot/whatever is of more long-term value than that of a turn’s use of a magic item; later, the magic times get more powerful and this isn’t so true. In any case it’s a useful addition.
There is a broader variety of attack forms now, such as the ability to transform an enemy unit into something more benign, or summon a friendly ally to assist your forces. Granted, some are a little oversold. The witch’s “polymorph” ability should be more correctly titled ‘turn enemy unit into an imp for that combat’ because that’s all it does, and it isn’t permanent. Useful? Sure, but not quite as cool as suggested, although inline with the power levels of other ‘first level’ units.. (Until she advances to succubus, that is. In that case she still only turns units into imps, but she can turn them ALL to imps simultaneously, and has 2x the hp’s to boot. Yikes.) Fifty new units and tons of new spells will also keep the veterans surprised now & again.
The AI is better than D1, and makes a good effort toward fighting the player on all fronts, not just some scripted slugfest in the middle of the map. While it teases your strong parties deeper into the map bay careful movement management, rod-planters will show up along your flanks to secure resources you felt were totally safe. Make no bones about it: this game is much harder than Disciples 1. The scenarios (in campaign and single) are very carefully crafted, although some allow you – when there’s supposedly a time pressure – to dink around far too long reaping x.p. off the neutrals and bulking up your units excessively. But unless you’re a masochist, you’re not going to make it through these playing ironman (i.e. no save/reloads). Personally, I found even my greatest hero was rather vulnerable to the vicissitudes of fate: an automatic “save before you entered this suicidal combat” toggle would have saved ME a lot of time.
And, of course, if the AI simply doesn’t ‘do it’ for you, call up your buddy. Disciples 2 plays smoothly, even over a 56k connection. Importantly, Strategy First listened to the roar of the crowd and implemented a full-hotseat play mode, so you and up to 3 friends can play on a single computer. This is the best way to multiplayer, as it’s an inevitability of turn-based games (unless it’s simultaneous turns like Combat Mission) that you sit tapping your fingers waiting for all the other players to go.
Once you’ve played through this massive collection of sagas, races, and scenarios it’s your turn to be the sadist: Strategy First shipped Disciples with a powerful and simple-to-use editor, putting all the power of the game’s rich trigger system (not to mention the artwork) at your fingertips. The scripts can be of Byzantine complexity, and can set off multilevel cascades that allow you really to change the entire game situation with a single event. I expect that in a few weeks (once people have played themselves out…for a while anyway) we will see some high-quality user-created scenarios popping up on the net. Want Elves? (Players have been crying for an elf race choice since D1.) Build a scenario where you start as one race but ally with (and can get) elven units to your heart’s content.
Disciples 2 is a game that can be likened to chess: the combat and turn structure are formulaic but no less fun thereby. The gameplay is deeper than that. Rather, there is a rhythm to this game that makes it very appealing. It’s true that to some, the rigidity of the system is constraining – if you like your fantasy-strategy with casts of thousands and armies around every hillock, Disciples 2 probably isn’t your cup of tea. But for those who are seeking something in between an RPG and a strategy game (or both), I think that most gamers will find it entertaining. Disciples 2 is a stylistic, compelling, and memorable experience.
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Reviewed by Steve Lieb
