Crushing disappointment for fans of the Strategy First titles.
Anyhoo, here's my take:
1. I hate Akella. I always have. They are one of the most amateur gaming producers on the planet, and most of their products are half finished garbage. For those of you who dug pirate games, these are the same asshats that basically stole a mod game and rereleased it for cash without doing anything to make it a real game. I gave them a break on this one--like a moron--thinking "hey, all they have to do is basically repeat what Strategy First did. They had the blueprints, the tech, and everything they needed. It was the ultimate turn key game.
Nope, Akella insisted on f*cking it up. Again. I guess that's just what they do, like a dog barking.
Specifics:
1. Bugs-- They are legion. A few gamestoppers, but mostly just irritants. Of all the problems I have with the game--like treasure sacks out of bounds, resurrect not working, etc.--this is actually the least of them.
2. Production Values-- Cheap companies do cheap localizations, and Akella is the master of this practice. The introduction voice over is one of the all time worst I've encountered in gaming (and I've been doing this since, oh, voice capacity started showing up on cd's). The person doing the English reading isn't even a voice actor at all. It's obviously a reader. They are not the same thing, and it shows. When he tries to act, it's painful. I learned early to quickly lower the sound when I loaded or changed missions.
Music--Actually one good track out of maybe 3 total. No variety, and the one cool track gets used over and over again to the point where, well, it's not cool anymore. However, the unintelligible words are nice, because you can start making up your own lyrics as you get madder and madder.
Sprite voice acting in combat is actually not too bad. Probably the best part of the game. Needed more variety, but hey, I was just happy that it was actual English.
3. Game Design. Catastrophic. 80% of the problems with this game basically result from absolutely retarded design choices that no programmer or artist could get out of and improve. Maps are a mess, especially with the new night cycle, I had more than a few moments when paths are so unclear, I resorted to running into tree clusters to see if there were ways out. Opposing sprite stations are often extremely difficult to detect. Early on, while I was learning the placement patterns, about half my battles were just running into enemies I couldn't see. If you do that later in the game with a weak army, you can easily get pounded. And then you have to load. And then you have to listen to that drunk bast$rd's voice, since they play his readover EVERY chance they get.
The experience point system is a mess as well. It routinely punishes difficult battles against single "boss type" creatures. A dragon can net you maybe 300-600 points, but that battle can be hard. I can face 8 goblins and get twice as much and not even break a sweat.
Never did completely figure out how points were assigned, but stopped caring early. There is simply no motive to go looking for serious trouble in this game, because you will certainly not be rewarded for it. There are also not enough XPs on the ground for you to level two good heroes, and that's a problem in the mission where I quit (I was winning anyway, but just stopped caring). You can do that in the first campaign okay, but in the 2d, forget it.
My last design problem is the constant rule changing in the game and the inexplicable warping in and out of opponents and even abrupt and unexplained story changes which make no sense. Anyone who's played Haarhus knows what I'm talking about. Absolutely bizarre campaign. One of the strangest and most nonsensical activities I've ever seen in a turn-based "strat" game.
So, for taking the strategy out of the game--and along with it, any sense of fun--and crapping on a successful model that all these morons had to do was duplicate and polish a little, Disciples 3 fails on almost every count. There are good things in the game--especially in the first campaign which appears to be the only one that was really given any serious attention. But after a couple of days, you've forgotten what they were, and all you take with you is the bad.
Even for Akella, this was a depressing mess.
P.S. Went back and ran through the Elven campaign, which *was* better than the Legions campaign and more stable and consistent. I upgraded the score a full point, although no more than that simply because my original gripes remained and these jokers decided to add a mission which threw off all my levelling planning since I thought all the campaigns ended at 6. Minor rescue, but nothing to make Mom proud.