Posted August 23, 2010
Compared to Heroes of Might and Magic Disciples may look alien, because it's completely different so if you're looking for a gameplay similar to HoMM you'll better pass this one.
In disciples the gameplay orbits about assembling an efficient group, levelling your units/heroes and begin well stuffed like any good RPG party, then you cross a lot of other parties that you'll need to beat the best way you can without taking much damages because there's a strategic map and the AI isn't stupid enough to let you pass unharmed if it sees an easy prey an destroy your well experienced party. What's good with this system is that you've the feeling that every unit you command has the potential of begin important as he/she/it can level up but you usually focus on one or two parties in order to level-up faster and not waste potential experience points.
Regarding city building, again all evolve around how the units you command will evolve when they level-up and that's for your capital, other cities can be considered as fortified healing points for your parties that you should use wisely.
About magic; it's always cast on the strategic map and can affect battles with summons, or blessings/curses or making sure one's party is seriously damaged before you attack this also means you can also completely destroy a party by bombarding them with powerful spells.
All of this means that disciples is a pretty easy to handle game without much micromanagement but this doesn't make it a simple game since the party-management has many ways but not all that effective and all the four factions have different units and means to create different parties, you'll have to experiment thinking about what you're facing but also the size of the map.
Story-wise while it isn't as good as it's successor, disciples depicts the event before the second one starts. Nor the story nor the warhammer-like setting of the game have something to be remembered (I personally liked it), they do their job, period.
In terms of graphics, I'll let you judge by the screen-shots, that's not brilliant but not unbearable too. Hopefully the units pictures are well made. If you really can't bear the graphics you can go for disciples 2... but...
Seeing that both disciples 2 and 1 are sold at GOG, the question that some may ask is : "Why should I buy this old-looking version that has overall less things than it's successor ?" I'll say : it is not, between the two games gameplay hasn't changed much and surprisingly the game is more challenging than in D2, because the AI actually act properly and can make you lose your nerves and patience when your best hero get nuked by strategic map spells, this said you've to find tricks/strategies in order to win the harder scenarios that can be found in the campaigns, the game is actually beatable but require you to think a bit despite the gameplay is very straightforward.
To conclude this is a worthy game, that hides it's complexity behind a quite simple gameplay and it's worthy challenge for every fantasy-TBS gamer and is a tougher nut to crack than disciples 2,
In disciples the gameplay orbits about assembling an efficient group, levelling your units/heroes and begin well stuffed like any good RPG party, then you cross a lot of other parties that you'll need to beat the best way you can without taking much damages because there's a strategic map and the AI isn't stupid enough to let you pass unharmed if it sees an easy prey an destroy your well experienced party. What's good with this system is that you've the feeling that every unit you command has the potential of begin important as he/she/it can level up but you usually focus on one or two parties in order to level-up faster and not waste potential experience points.
Regarding city building, again all evolve around how the units you command will evolve when they level-up and that's for your capital, other cities can be considered as fortified healing points for your parties that you should use wisely.
About magic; it's always cast on the strategic map and can affect battles with summons, or blessings/curses or making sure one's party is seriously damaged before you attack this also means you can also completely destroy a party by bombarding them with powerful spells.
All of this means that disciples is a pretty easy to handle game without much micromanagement but this doesn't make it a simple game since the party-management has many ways but not all that effective and all the four factions have different units and means to create different parties, you'll have to experiment thinking about what you're facing but also the size of the map.
Story-wise while it isn't as good as it's successor, disciples depicts the event before the second one starts. Nor the story nor the warhammer-like setting of the game have something to be remembered (I personally liked it), they do their job, period.
In terms of graphics, I'll let you judge by the screen-shots, that's not brilliant but not unbearable too. Hopefully the units pictures are well made. If you really can't bear the graphics you can go for disciples 2... but...
Seeing that both disciples 2 and 1 are sold at GOG, the question that some may ask is : "Why should I buy this old-looking version that has overall less things than it's successor ?" I'll say : it is not, between the two games gameplay hasn't changed much and surprisingly the game is more challenging than in D2, because the AI actually act properly and can make you lose your nerves and patience when your best hero get nuked by strategic map spells, this said you've to find tricks/strategies in order to win the harder scenarios that can be found in the campaigns, the game is actually beatable but require you to think a bit despite the gameplay is very straightforward.
To conclude this is a worthy game, that hides it's complexity behind a quite simple gameplay and it's worthy challenge for every fantasy-TBS gamer and is a tougher nut to crack than disciples 2,