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    Disciples II: Dark Prophecy

    Game » consists of 1 releases. Released Jan 24, 2002

    Disciples II is a turn-based strategy game in the vein of Heroes of Might and Magic. It is notable for its strong art design, and well-realized fiction. It was fairly well recieved, lauded for its distilled strategic gameplay and hand-drawn unit portraits.

    pwr905's Disciples II: Dark Prophecy (PC) review

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    A good, if somewhat longwinded, romp.

    I've always had a special place in my heart for turn-based strategy games. Disciples 2 finds that place, sets up a bachelor pad, and invites some friends over. In fact, it's like a clown car in that respect - which, personally, I find can be a little irritating at times.

    Now, don't get me wrong - I love a long game. I mean, I'm the kind of guy who plays GalCiv with research on "Very Slow". The problem with Disciples 2 is not so much the length of each scenario, as it is the eventual repetitiveness of it all. Before we delve into how and why this happens though, let's examine the features that aggregate into a pretty good game.

    There are four factions (or races, if you prefer) in Disciples 2: The Empire (humans), the Mountain Clans (dwarves), the Undead Hordes (undead), and The Legions of the Damned (demons). The general structure of each of the factions is pretty similar, but there are also some unique touches beyond just appearance (the damage type each inflicts, minor variation in the actual damage inflicted, etc). That being said, they are all pretty much the same cookie with different sprinkles on top.

    You begin each scenario with a capital city that, short of the Second Coming, is impervious to attack - this is due to each race having what I will describe as a "divinely-inspired death machine" guarding it. The catch being that this guardian cannot leave the capital city, which leaves the task of conquering the entire map up to someone else - enter the player. The obvious question here (outside of the in-game lore) is why a dozen of these guardians can't be created to devastate anything they want, but I digress.

    As the player, you control all the armies of a particular faction, the size of which is limited by the resource input - namely, gold. Each army has a leader, who can be one of several classes - which basically breaks down to the fighter, spellcaster, etc archetypes. While this sounds pretty basic (and it is), it actually plays out very well, especially in the context of the actual battle system.

    When you decide to engage in battle (which will be *a lot*), you will be transitioned to a turn based, grid based combat screen. You get to assign actions to the individual constituents of your party, while the AI will do the same to it's party. As simplistic as this sounds, it actually lends itself to a good amount of strategy. On top of that, the sprites look quite good - enough so, that when you upgrade/buy new and better troops, your first thought is: "I wonder how bad-ass this thing looks?" And then you run off and attack something just to see.

    So the combat is fun. At least, it is originally. The problem I had is that the game caps, per scenario, how far you can advance the upgrade tree, which basically translates to you being able to see the latest, greatest mamma-jamma you can create in the first quarter of a scenario. That leaves three-quarters of a scenario with nothing left but battle. And battle. And more battle. This left me in the odd position of advancing the plot not because I was on the edge of my seat wondering if the bad guys finally win, but because I wanted to see my new funky battler.

    This bothered me, because once I'd seen/tinkered with my grooviest follower(s) for twenty minutes, I was ready to see the next one - but I had to kill two or three dozen more people, capture half a dozen more cities, and listen to the Barry Manilow-esque narrator before I could reach that goal. Now, I enjoy mowing down peons as much as the next person, mainly because I can live out those fantasies of genocide and world domination, but at some point even *that* fantasy gets redundant.

    Despite the fact that I find it a bit long-winded, the strategy involved in conquering a map and defeating your opponents (not just in the battle system, but the overland strategy as well) is executed very well. The different types of classes you can be as the player (Mage, Fighter, etc) play well to the overall strategy of the game - Mage Lords can be particularly dangerous when you're parading your armies around on the map.

    The interface is pretty smooth, as well. Be it resources, statistics, or spells, pretty much any of that information is a click or two away. Rare was the time when I was sitting there, staring at my monitor, thinking: "Where the hell is that menu that has the thing which leads me to the place where I was five minutes ago?"

    Throw in that (in my experience with the game) it is almost entirely bug-free (yeah, you heard me), pretty easy on the hardware, on the lower end of the price spectrum, and is *fun*, it is hard to see how any fan of turn-based strategy games wouldn't want to at least try it out and, after you realize you like it, buy it.

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