Great ideas, Great Graphics, disappointing implementation.
The skills for the individual units has also been reduced and simplified for the worse. Units have been tweaked from Disciples II with no real reasoning to the battle system, including but not limited to reduced skills, initiative, and class upgrades. These should clearly have been enhanced not reduced to near obscurity and irrelevance. The only thing that has been expanded is the is the amount of armor, accessories, and weapons usable by the leader of a party. The animations have also been simplified, which is incoherent with the significant improvement in graphics. Due to the simplified animations, battles become stagnant, boring, and repetitive and the AI does not help in this respect.
Unlike Disciples II, which has decent AI that retreats, sacrifices units, and attacks the weakest or most vital player units; Disciples III does none of this. At some points I don't understand what the AI is doing other than making mistakes, which adds little to an already lumbering battle system. The only thing that makes the game challenging is the enemies are always 2 to 3 levels higher than your starting party, however once you get a dominating party, the game turns into a hunt adventure. As mentions sparingly before, the graphics are gorgeous, and the art style is one thing Akella clearly got right.
Disciples III has all the elements to necessary to be a great and unique game, but oversimplification and stupid AI make the game a task instead of a treasure.