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I felt a bit strange taking on the review for Disciples III when we received our review code.  I had never played the prior two games in the series, and from the looks of the trailers, it did not look like an interesting title.  Well, many hours into the main campaigns, I can say that there is a great game to be found somewhere in Disciples III.  Just let me know if you find it, because I am still looking for that great game.

Reading that opening, it sounds a bit harsh, but the truth is that Disciples III has a lot of interesting mechanics, and a decent enough story that has sucked me into its clutches, but for every good step that the game makes, it decides to hamper you with a flaw attached to that step.  A good example is that the newly designed battlefield sits on a nice, well sized hexagon grid, allowing for full party movement and strategy.  Cover items also litter the battleground, which you would think would add to some of the strategy, but no, they don’t.  I positioned a battle mage behind a rock, and somehow, an enemy archer nailed my mage through the rocky formation.  And don’t get me started with the time that the random map generator put a row of rocks between me and the enemy, effectively eliminating any physical confrontation.

It is unfortunate to have to say all of that right off the bat, because Disciples III offers so much to anyone that looks to purchase it.  You have a solid training campaign that shows you the ropes and then three full featured campaigns for The Empire (Humans), The Legion of the Damned and the Elven Alliance.  If you manage to get through all of that and have yet to fill your appetite for Disciples III, there is also a hot seat multiplayer mode and a scenario for you to sit down and try.  The campaigns are well put together and weave an excellent story that you do feel compelled to hear to its conclusion.

Getting around the world of Disciples III is easy enough, with each mission starting you off with several troops, and a home city that you can build up to upgrade your army and your spell book.  The world moves in a turn based fashion, so you select points on the map and move around until you run out of movement points.  It harkens back to a bygone era in PC gaming, as I had figured all the turn-based strategy games had gone away.  Each map is littered with upgrades, treasure and of course, enemies that you will do battle with.

Battles transport you to an isometric hexagon grid battlefield where your troops and the enemies’ troops are scattered across each side of the map.  Each map contains random battle enhancement hexes with things like doubling hit damage, or doubling up spell damage.  Of course, maneuvering to these spots will sometimes expose you to attacks from the enemy.  The combat is surprisingly fun and tactical, when you do not run into the aforementioned map glitches.  And it still bothers me that cover means nothing to either side.

While you will enjoy the story, you will also find yourself hunting down a pair of earplugs as the dialog in Disciples III can be atrocious at best and downright aurally offensive at worst.  The narrator sounds like a terrible Leonard Nimoy impersonator, and the dialog from our heroes in each campaign not only sounds terrible, but feels completely out of place.  Even the written dialog is bad, with such phrases as “What’s Up” and “Not Much”, which I highly doubt had hit the medieval lexicon in time for Disciples III.

While I have beat this game up a bit, Disciples III has so many good components that continue to get buried by bugs, bad audio work and a general lack of polish.  There is a great game that is trying so hard to get out from these entrapments, but unfortunately, it might take until Disciples IV for that game to be found.  For the hardcore turn-based strategy nuts, you will probably be able to sit through the rough stuff to enjoy all the trappings of a good game, but for the rest, you might wait until Disciples III moves down the ladder in price.  Disciples III: Renaissance gets 2.5 out of 5 Aeropausonauts.
Check out Disciples III: Renaissance and other PC reviews at Test Freaks