The first Disciples game did not have a happy ending. The noblest of the factions in that game may have won the war between them and their (im)mortal nemeses, but at great costs. Disciples II explores the consequences of the pyrrhic victory, though the player should not expect rosy outcomes either from the sequel.
That is the briefest way to describe the overarching story for this game, and it may apply to the four different storylines in the single-player mode as well.
Like its predecessor and its peers in the subgenre of turn-based, high-fantasy strategy games, Disciples II has the player and his/her opponents battling for control of territory across a map that contains strategic assets and other things that they will have to interact with in order to boost the power of their faction.
Each playable faction in the game has a campaign of its own, each intending to show how they have coped with the changes in their world and the balance of power among them. Some are also oriented around the selfish desires of the important figures of these factions, though the fulfillment of these would not have results that they would find favorable. Themes of treachery, betrayal and despair are also rife in the campaign stories.
Disciples II is not a game for the easily depressed, if its artwork, which often features gloomy skies with sunlight almost never being one of the artistic elements, does not suggest so already.
On the other hand, if the player can look past the very sobering story, there is deceptively simple yet engaging gameplay to be had from Disciples II.
Much like its predecessor, Disciples II is a strategy game that makes use of small parties of units led by special units known as Leaders. This would seem to have shades of Heroes of Might and Magic, especially to those who had not played the first game, but this game design is actually closer to Triumph Studios' Age of Wonders than New World Computing's brainchild. These parties move across the map, attacking and claiming Cities, Gold Mines and Mana Nodes (more on these later) to further the cause of the player's faction.
The strategy of strength in numbers won't help much in this game, due to its RPG elements. Every unit, be it non-hero or hero, will start out as level 1 grunts, which are weaklings compared to their further forms, which a prudent player can obtain from carefully nurturing a weak team from scratch (and after purchasing the buildings that are needed to unlock their advanced forms).
At first glance, the RPG elements appear to be inspired by the unit-upgrading feature seen earliest in Heroes of Might and Magic 2. However, unlike the latter which merely required the player to gather the necessary material resources to recruit and upgrade (not necessarily in that order) units to their higher forms, the Disciples series requires units to engage in battles, win and gain experience.
There is nothing but woe to the losers. On the other hand, the winners must obtain kills in order to score the experience that is needed. When a threshold in experience has been reached, the unit will evolve into its next form, if and only if the buildings associated with it in the player's Capital (more on this later) have been upgraded to unlock this. Otherwise, the experience gain is wasted. If the creature does not have a higher form - and there are some in this game such as the Undead faction's Werewolf - it just gains a level and increases in its stats.
Leaders are like the latter sort of units, though they gain more than just increases in their statistics. There will be more on them later in this review, because they happen to be powerful enough units to be a game mechanic unto themselves.
There are some minor but nonetheless annoying flaws with this system, which is otherwise a novel way of combining RPG elements with strategy ones. Any experience gained over an experience threshold is wasted. A glance at the portrait of unit will not inform the player of how many experience levels that it has if it does not have higher forms; the player will have to right-click on said portrait and open a page of details to see this info.
A powerful party of high-level units may seem overpowered; this is evident in how easily it can eliminate weaker parties. However, having a party of overwhelmingly powerful units is not an ad-hoc victory either; chances are, the player will have expended a lot of effort and time nurturing this party, essentially having all his/her eggs in one basket. If rival players can eliminate them - and there are ways to do so without sending weaker parties to accost and dwindle them down through attrition - said player would be in serious trouble, especially if he/she had not nurtured other parties as part of his/her contingency plans (if any).
This is the gist of the main attraction of this game, and its series. Such a unit-advancing mechanic offers gameplay of the risk-versus-reward sort, the kind which only reveals the consequences of a player's decisions, namely how the player chose to develop his/her main party and auxiliary ones, after one or so hours into a match.
Of course, this is not much different in essence from the gameplay in the Age of Wonders and Heroes of Might and Magic franchises, but Disciples II benefits from surprisingly simple game mechanics that support the main one of developing a party - or parties - of units that would become powerful enough to roll over the opposition.
(On the other hand, that the game appears to have game mechanics that are so simple meant that there isn't any in-game tutorial, which can be a problem to inexperienced players.)
The first of these is the Capital, which is the main settlement that a player can have on the map in play, and is his/her first source of units. This settlement is also absolutely crucial in maintaining the presence of the player in the scenario in play, regardless of the objectives; if the Capital is taken out, so is the player.
In addition to being a visual representation of the player's faction's source of power (and ironically, his/her greatest weakness), the Capital also contains the buildings that are needed to unlock the higher forms of units and the spells that the player can cast out of battle (more on spells later).
The buildings that can be erected within the Capital are separated into a few distinct series. Generally, every faction will have one series for melee units, one for ranged units, one for units with area-effect attacks, one for units with healing/buffing/de-buffing capabilities and one for the "brute" units, i.e. units that are visibly larger than the others. Depending on the player's preferences, he/she can expend resources to upgrade one series over the others.
However, the player cannot specialize on just one unit at the expense of the others; a party that is composed of only one kind of unit is more than likely to suffer severe issues, due to the design of the combat system in this game, which will be elaborated on later. It should suffice to say for now that this game is not forgiving of players who try to play with "themed" parties instead of balanced ones.
In other words, the player will likely have to resort to balanced upgrade choices, which can be a disappointment to those who had wanted the game to accommodate for wildly varying play-styles and build-strategies.
Anyway, certain series of upgrades will have more than one path, or colloquially known as branches. A branching may occur as early as level 2 for the associated unit, or before the pinnacle(s) of its forms. In any case of branching, taking one path will shut out the other permanently. A branch will offer a form that is often different in statistics, capabilities and, of course, aesthetics than that offered by the other.
For example, there is a branching as early as Level 2 for the Empire faction's healer unit, the Acolyte, whose robes and cowls hide his/her gender. Taking the party-healing branch reveals the Acolyte to be female. She is capable of healing the entire party, but heals far less hitpoints per unit than her counterpart in the other branch would. Taking the other branch, which reveals the Acolyte to be male, has him retaining his ability to heal only one unit per turn, but he heals said unit for a lot more hitpoints than the ladies would.
Units can have capabilities beyond just having statistics and their roles. For example, upgrading the Level 4 Demon Lord unit of the Legion faction into the Level 5 Overlord or Abyssal Devil still lets it retain its single-target attack either way, but whereas the Overlord is an outright close-combat bruiser, the slightly weaker Abyssal Devil has the chance of petrifying enemies, effectively paralyzing them and causing them to lose their move (if they had not taken it already) and any attacks against them becoming automatic hits.
The many different branches give the player plenty of party make-up strategies, ranging from typical damage-dealing-only powerhouses to those that have abilities to stall enemies' turns or cause them to do much less damage, among other de-buffs.
As for the statistics of units, they have several which are easy to understand; these are not as complex and computing-heavy as those in Age of Wonders or Heroes of Might and Magic.
There are the usual tropes that define a unit that will engage in turn-based combat: hitpoints (which govern how much harm that a unit can take), damage output (self-explanatory), initiative (which determines the sequence that govern the moves of all combat participants) and armor (which reduces damage done).
Every offensive unit in the game has an element that is associated with its attacks (labeled as "Source" in this game). For example, the Son of Ymir's frost- and ice-using attacks are associated with the Water element. Conversely, some units also have Immunities to certain elements, which allow them to ignore attacks or de-buffs based on these. Taking the example of the Son of Ymir again, he is impossible to damage using Water-based attacks, such is his affinity with ice and its fluid form. This simple system of elements and immunities encourage the player to plan and make use of units wisely, just so that his/her forces do not get out-matched.
If a unit is otherwise not associated with any of the primal elements, its attacks are of the "Weapon" sort and it doesn't have any immunities by default. However, these units generally compensate by having better statistics than their more exotic counterparts.
Some units have Wards, which are one-time "immunities" of sorts, so as to encourage the player to plan out the turns during combat to maximize the advantage that this temporary protection gives.
The systems that govern the capabilities of units also allow the game designers to differentiate the factions from each other. The Empire has the themes of perseverance and endurance, so their units generally have access to high armor and full-time healers. The Legion's reputation is synonymous with treachery and brutality, so their units tend to have high damage and nasty de-buffs; the Legion also happens to have two "brute" units instead of just one. The Undead faction would not think twice about spreading doom, decay and (especially) despair, so their units tend to have immunities to "Weapon" attacks (effectively making them impervious to many other units) and the ability to poison or paralyze enemies; on the other hand, their units are balanced by generally lousier statistics. The Mountain Clans are stubborn and stoic dwarven folks, so their units are some of the toughest and heavily armored in the game, though they are also some of the slowest in the game.
(As a side note, the "brute" units are officially known in-game as "Support" units, but their size always puts them on the frontline during combat. They can also be perfectly used as the lynchpin unit. This is a minor complaint, but their categorization is perhaps a misnomer.)
Considering the importance of the Capital, it is, by default, defended by an extremely powerful Guardian that is impossible to defeat without a heavily buffed party of high-level veterans. Yet, while defeating the Guardian may seem impossible, doing so offers lucrative rewards in the form of whatever spells or resources that the defeated faction has. (The game rolls randomly between either, but the more lucrative one would be the former.)
In addition to the Capital, there are other settlements on the map, which are aptly called "Cities" and also look as appropriate. However, in-game, they don't exactly perform like Cities would in Disciple II's peers; the only function that Cities in Disciple II have in common with their counterparts in these other games is being a source of units to make up new parties or replace losses with (though experienced units that had been lost can never be truly replaced).
Other than that, Cities also act as rest-stops for injured units to heal up over a turn. They also act as terrain-generating nodes (more on this later) and also store items (as do the Capital too). Cities can be upgraded to perform these functions better (except storing items), e.g. healing more hitpoints in injured units and generating more terrain per turn, as well as look grander with every upgrade.
Purchasing upgrades for buildings in the capital, expanding cities and recruiting new units require gold, which is obtained by controlling Gold Mines, each of which will provide some gold every turn (as to be expected of typical Gold Mines in turn-based strategy games). The capital also generates some gold, in case the player cannot obtain any Gold Mine quickly.
(How gold mines can be taken control of will be elaborated on later.)
Gold can also be obtained from shops by selling to them the items that the player has gained, though this is not a reliable source of gold because actual parties of units have to be used to ferry these items over to shops, which can take a while if they are too far away from the main party that is collecting these from the map.
The player can also spend gold to instantly heal injured units to full health, but this is a very costly option - too costly to have practical gameplay value, perhaps.
Helping the player's efforts to dominate opponents is the repertoire of surprisingly utilitarian spells. The selection of spells in Disciple II is far from being as wide as those in the Age of Wonders and Heroes of Might and Magic franchises, but the player will be hard pressed to find a spell that will be a red herring or otherwise useless in certain situations. For example, there are no Turn Undead spells in Disciples II that would be useless if there is no Undead to be fought.
By the same example of the absence of spells like Turn Undead, there are no spells that are hard-counters against the units and strategies of certain factions.
Spells can be obtained from paying the costs to unlock them (otherwise known as "researching" the spell). These costs are paid in the form of a mix of mana, with the mana associated with the faction being the greatest portion of these costs. Only the spells associated with a faction can be unlocked, though libraries and magic shops in the map in play may have spells from other factions or even spells from the player's own faction (thus removing the need to unlock spells). This encourages the player to conduct some exploration and scouting, which is always to the benefit of the player.
However, unlike its peers in the turn-based high-fantasy strategy subgenre, Disciples II does not restrict the learning of spells. If a player can obtain a new spell, he/she gains it for the duration of the match. This allows the player to collect spells that are associated with other factions, which can offer serious strategic benefits because the effects of similar spells happen to stack. For example, a player can learn Vithar's Might and Strength, both of which increases the damage of affected units in the party, and then cast both on the same party for the damage bonuses to stack.
Having a mix of spells that is wider than those provided by the Capital may affect gameplay balance, but it is a gleeful reward for a player that has been going around diligently collecting them.
Spells can be cast by expending the necessary amounts of mana, of which there are four types: Life, Runic, Infernal and Death. These are associated with the Empire, Mountain Clans, Legion and Undead factions respectively, though all factions can use all kinds of mana without any problem.
Mana can be obtained from the Capital itself, which will generate some of the mana associated with the faction every turn. For more mana, the player will have to secure Mana Nodes, each of which is associated with any one of the four types of mana mentioned and will produce that kind of mana per turn as long as it is still under the player's control. Mana can also be obtained from loose caches of corporeal mana in the form of crystals, though these are best considered as bonuses instead of reliable mana sources.
The most basic - and the most utilitarian - spells, which are the Level 1 ones, will require the mana associated with any one faction.
The higher-leveled spells require permutations of different types of mana. However, spells associated with any faction will also happen to need more mana of the type associated with it than the other sorts.
Such cost designs for spells require players of a certain faction to seek out certain sources of mana, which somewhat makes their decisions in a match more predictable. This is not exactly a good game design, but the lack of any restriction in learning spells helps to alleviate some of its consequences. Moreover, the closest source of mana to a Capital of a certain faction tends to provide mana that is associated with it – at least for maps that are designed with gameplay balance in mind.
In addition to restrictions on mana, each spell from the player's library can only be cast at most twice, or just once, per turn. This is an obvious game-balancing design to prevent players that have a lot of mana from out-casting their opponents. However, this restriction is not too severe so as to prevent players with lots of mana from making use of the advantage that they should have.
As a side note, spells that directly damage enemy targets are reduced by the armor rating of the affected units. This is not a game design that is documented well, so it may be a bug that was overlooked.
The system of elements that units have is also applied to spells, specifically those that deal damage and de-buff them.
With the extent of the system of elements having fully described, it has to be said here that while it appears to look solid gameplay-wise, its implementation and utilization are not as well-done.
There are disproportionately more units with immunity to the Water element than those with other kinds of immunities. Therefore, units and spells that are of the Water element, namely those of the Clans, are rendered more difficult to use. This is especially so in their own campaign, which takes place in their homelands that inconveniently have lots of monsters that are immune to the Water element that so many mainstay Clan units use.
Mind immunity is next to useless as there are so few units with Mind-based attacks. This makes units with Mind immunities less useful than their alternatives in the same faction. For example, the zealous branch for the Empire's frontline melee combatant turns them into such units, starting from the Witch-Hunter up to the Grand Inquisitor. They are practically hard-counters to the Legion's de-buff units, but they are pretty much useless against the other factions' units (especially the Mountain Clan's). They are no slouches in melee, but their alternatives, the cavalrymen of the Empire, are so much better at frontline work.
Throughout this review thus far, there had been mentions of "frontlines". This is literally present during combat, which occurs when two opposing parties of units clash in the map.
The units in opposing parties are lined up according to the formations that their respective owners have assigned them to. Formations in Disciples II are not really as complex as those that had been seen in other strategy games; instead of sophisticated arrangements, there are ever only two lines that units will be situated in: the front row, and the rear one. Each row will have three cells, and a unit generally occupies only one cell.
The only exceptions to this rule are the "brute" units, which automatically occupy two consecutive slots in both the rear and front rows, and special one-unit parties such as those that are summoned by spells or are scenario-centric characters (that usually happen to be quite gigantic).
The player will quickly learn several nuances about combat: units on the front row are vulnerable to melee-only enemies on the front row of their own formation, melee-only enemies can only hit one target at a time and this target has to be in adjacent cells, ranged targets can hit any target in the opposing formation, and spell-casting units are often able to hit every unit on the other side. Therefore, a player will have to carefully place units in the right row and right cells, in order to screen vulnerable units from melee attacks and having the toughest unit take most of the hits. Getting the right formation is dependent on the game mechanic of scouting, which will be mentioned later.
Once combat is enacted, units will take turns making their moves according to a sequence that is planned using their respective initiative ratings. Barring the influence of any status effect that will change the sequence, the unit with the highest initiative rating will be moving first, while the unit with the lowest one will be moving last. This appears simple, but veterans of turn-based combat games will know that being the one to move earlier can be very advantageous, and this is no different in Disciples II.
Much like its peers in the same subgenre, the combat in Disciples II has luck as an important factor. While the game does not resort to rolling their damage output or damage resistance, it does require units to be subjected to dice rolls when they attempt to attack or de-buff enemy targets. This can lead to some frustration at times, when a battle plan required that the player's units keep landing hits or de-buffs (which have lower probabilities of success than those for actual attacks).
Leading the parties of units are special units known as "Leaders". Leaders are actual units in the party, and can directly participate in combat (and can also be slain). They also have the same statistics and are also subjected to the system of elements. However, they have one attribute that regular units do not have: Leadership.
Leadership will determine how many cells in the party's formation can be opened up for occupation by units. While it is generally preferable to have a fully filled party, experience gained from combat are divided among units, which can slow down the development of units.
Unlike many other turn-based strategy games, the movement allowance of the party is not determined by the types of units in the party, but rather the type of the Leader (and any movement perk that he/she has gained, such as the Pathfinding perks). This is a very convenient simplification, because it allows swifter Leaders to act like unit couriers to bring reinforcements to the front-line.
Parties can travel across maps in one of three ways. Parties that have Leaders that are apparently flight-capable can in turn fly too (as inexplicable as that sounds), thus circumventing lousy terrain that would impede movement on land. On the other hand, such parties do not benefit from advantageous terrain that can speed up travel. Land-based parties are affected by terrain types, such as swamps that will slow down their progress. Moreover, they have to embark onto water on ships. This will cost them a lot of movement allowance, so unless the Leader has skills that have the party sail across water more easily (which are usually a waste of level-up opportunities as not all maps have large bodies of water that are worth exploring), he/she will be wasting a lot of turns trying to have flight-incapable parties scout out water-logged maps.
On the other hand, land-based parties also benefit from bonuses provided by advantageous terrain. Every faction has a type of terrain associated with it, such as the Mountain Clan's preference for winter-frosted terrain; land-based parties that move across this terrain use less movement allowance, and if they are using roads, they use even less. If the terrain layout is right, a land-based party can cover a lot more ground than even flight-based parties in the same turn.
(However, such advantageous combination of terrain is very rare in officially made maps, so flight-based parties are a lot more utilitarian, which is a slight detriment to the sense of variety that this game has.)
Like regular units, Leaders can also gain levels and increases in their statistics from these, but they also happen to have the chance to choose a special skill or perk every level, which will increase their power and versatility. However, for purposes of gameplay gameplay, they cannot gain experience beyond Level 15 (and for a good reason too: a Level 15 Leader is a very powerful character).
(Units also cannot gain levels beyond Level 15, for that matter.)
Perks generally grants bonuses to statistics, such as additional armor and damage. Some perks can be taken again to achieve the next level of that perk and thus unlock better bonuses.
Skills include the equipping of certain items such as artifacts, banners and jewellery. These items confer their bonuses onto the hero, or in the case of banners, on the entire party. Otherwise, these items serve no actual purpose in combat.
Another skill is the equipping and usage of orbs and talismans, which are items that can generally only be used in combat exclusively. Orbs and Talismans seem to be contained/bound spells that can be released during combat, often with properties that are very different from those cast in the map outside of combat. However, using these is practically spending the Leader's turn.
Orbs and Talismans would have made decent contributions to the complexity of combat, but unfortunately, there are very rare in officially-made maps, and even when they are obtainable, they tend to be very weak. For example, there may be a Leader who can attack every unit in the enemy party for several dozen points of damage, yet he may come across an Orb or Talisman that can damage every unit in the enemy party too, but only for a measly handful of points; obviously, this item is quite useless in his hands.
Only spell-casting Leaders have the skill to use scrolls and staffs, which can be used to cast spells that are direct copies of the spells in the libraries that the factions have in their Capitals. However, these do not count against the limits on spell-casting that the player has for spells cast directly from his/her library, so having access to these "extra" spells can be very advantageous. To balance this though, scrolls are one-off spells, while staffs, which are inexhaustible, require mana to be used.
Potions are the only items that can be used in combat regardless of the skills that the Leader has. Potions can also be used outside of combat too, within the map. Their effects only last for one fight, or one turn, if the player completely wasted them by not getting into battle. Nevertheless, the player will realize that Potions are the most useful items that a Leader can have.
In addition, there are Tomes that grant the Leader who equips them skills and abilities, if he/she does not already have them. However, the player needs to have a skill to use Tomes and most Tomes only offer just one skill each, while Tomes take the same slot as Artifacts. Consequently, Tomes would have been more useful and practical if not for these designs.
These skills and abilities also somewhat define the classes of Leaders in this game, in addition to differences that are influenced by their faction affiliations. There are five types of Leaders, though only four of these can gain experience and even so, only up to three would be most useful.
The "Captain" Leader is a close-combatant who also happens to have the highest innate Leadership, as well as the ability to use Artifacts from the get-go. More importantly, he is capable of having his entire party fly, allowing them to circumvent certain terrain types. The only exception to this is the Captain for the Mountain Clans, who travels across the lands, as befitting the Clans' superstitious fear of flying.
Every Leader type allows the party's units to heal a certain percentage of hitpoints per turn, and the Captain happens to have the highest percentage by default.
(Smart players may attempt to develop secondary Captains to have specialization in healing parties, and use these to rotate out injured units from the frontlines.)
The Scout Leader fittingly has the highest amount of movement allowance, and also happens to have the furthest line-of-sight across the map, allowing him to keep an eye on enemy movements (which the camera will pan over and lock-on to during other players' turns if they are within the line-of-sight of the player's parties or settlements). This hero also has a predilection for ranged attacks, giving a party that is just starting out some ranged support. He also happens to be handy in ferrying items to-and-fro shops, Cities and frontline parties, especially if he is flight-capable.
The Mage Leader is the spell-caster of the lot. As mentioned earlier, he is the only hero that can use spells and staffs, so a wise player would have at least one of these Leaders around to make use of any staffs and scrolls that can be found in the map. Furthermore, he is the only Leader that can damage an entire party of enemies. However, he is balanced by a limit on the damage that he can do per enemy unit, and this is lower than that for the other Leaders.
To secure Gold Mines and Mana Nodes, the player has to alter the terrain that they are on to the terrain type that is associated with the player's faction. For example, to get a Gold Mine under the control of an Empire player, he/she has to convert the terrain underneath it into vibrant grassland. However, this patch of terrain has to be connected to a "source" of terrain, such as the Capital and Cities under the player's control, or Rods.
This idea, which was novel when it was introduced in the first game, has been carried over seamlessly into the sequel.
Having resource nodes connected to the Capital and Cities can be difficult, because they tend to be far away and the reach of the terrain that they generate will ebb the further away it is from its source. Therefore, Rods are the most reliable method of securing resource nodes.
The fourth Leader is the one that the player will use to secure them, because he/she is the only one that is capable of planting rods. The Leader simply has to approach a node, and then plant a rod beside it. The Rod cannot be removed by any means except by another Rod-planting hero, so it is in the player's interest to have at least one such Leader to claim any resource node that he/she comes by, lest the enemy claims it instead. This Leader, however, makes for a poor combatant, even though he/she may have abilities which would be helpful to the party, or which would hinder that of the enemy.
On the other hand, Rod-planting Leaders have different experience thresholds than their more combat-capable peers, to balance their relative weakness. Still, developing a Rod-planting Leader to lead the player's main party is usually a bad idea.
It has to be noted here that the Mountain Clan's Rod-planting Leader, the Loremaster, is the only Leader of such kind that is male. He also has an actual damage-inflicting attack, the most hitpoints and is the only one that moves on land. Being land-bound makes the Mountain Clans' resourcing operations more difficult, but being more durable in combat does make for a deterrent against enemy raids on the Loremaster's party.
The final "Leader" is perhaps the most disappointing of the lot.
The Thief, who always travels alone, is the player's solution to problems that can be solved without resorting to combat or the expenditure of wealth. The main use of the Thief is to infiltrate spies into the enemy's faction; this will reveal the composition and formation of any group of enemies in that faction, which are otherwise hidden information. This is a very convenient solution for reconnoitering enemy forces, as the player only ever needs the Thief to "interact" with an enemy party or City just once - at least until the spies are eventually caught and slain. (In-game, this means that the opportunity to see the formation and composition of enemy parties is only temporary.)
The Thief also has the ability to poison cities and enemy groups, which effectively takes away a percentage of their health, regardless of their armor and immunities. This makes the Thief very useful for softening entrenched enemies before the actual assault.
The Thief can also duel enemy Leaders, in an attempt to weaken them specifically. The Thief is a terrible combatant, but he is exceptionally nasty against Rod-planting Leaders, who are generally too weak for even Thieves. Killing the Leader of a party effectively disables the function of that Leader, such as his/her ability to plant Rods, use Staffs and Scrolls or fly the entire party.
The Thief can also be used to steal items and spells from shops, which can be quite a gleeful thing to do as long as he is successful.
The Thief can also have other actions that he can perform, if the player chooses to be the "Guildmaster" type of faction Lord. (There will be more on faction Lords later.)
These actions include rearranging formations of an enemy party (through supposedly planting fake orders in said party), stealing items from enemy parties, Cities and Capitals instead of only from shops, copying spells from the enemy faction's library by stealing them from the same sources, steal gold from enemy factions, kill a random unit in an enemy party, convert initially neutral cities over to the player's side, and incite riots in enemy Cities, which will lock-up these Cities and prevent the enemy from using it. Any enemy unit within it when the riot is incited will also be stranded in the city and suffer attrition damage every turn that the riot lasts.
All these abilities that the Thief has would seem very handy to have and utilize. Unfortunately, this mechanic of subterfuge is subject to the fickle system of probabilities, meaning that there is a chance for a Thief to fail in his actions, and death is always the price of failure. The Thief may seem to have a very high chance at pulling off an action, but the vagaries of luck can have the digital dice rolls landing in the other side of the probability equation.
Of course, in the single-layer modes, players can always resort to reloading the game, which is a quick affair. Yet, this would damage the immersion of the game. In multiplayer, players with particularly lousy fortunes at dice rolls would be smitten with a dead Thief after another; considering that Thieves are not cheap to recruit (even for the Guildmaster player), the losses can rack up if the player is simply jinxed.
That the Thief cannot gain any experience and thus cannot become better at what he does makes the game mechanic of espionage even harder to make use of to gain an advantage over opponents.
Speaking of the Guildmaster, a player can choose to be one of three different "Lord" types before choosing which faction to lead.
The Guildmaster is one, which unlocks more actions for the Thief, among other lesser bonuses. As mentioned earlier, some of the actions that the Thief can take can be devastating on enemies, but only if the player can get past the dice rolls that determine the fate of Thieves.
The Warrior Lord is the least useful of the three, as his main bonus is a higher percentage in the regeneration of hitpoints in injured units over a turn. Considering that a player, especially the Empire player, can be shrewd enough to plan fights such that the party under his/her control takes very little damage, this bonus is only useful to the more careless of players.
The Mage Lord, with his access to Level 5 spells (unlike the others, which can only have spells up to Level 4) and the ability to cast any spell twice in a single turn, is simply the most utilitarian of the three. Such bonuses make the other two seem under-designed.
The maps in Disciples II contain the Capitals of players and the Cities that they can take control of, in addition to interactive objects like ruins, shops, shipwrecks, treasure chests and different kinds of terrain, among other things. There are also loose pieces of gold and mana that are lying around the map, and often guarded by "neutral" mobs of units that cannot be recruited at faction Capitals or Cities.
Neutral units can be hired at special dwellings or from mercenary camps on the map. They do not have any higher forms, even if they may appear to have them, such as Orcs having a stronger variant in the form of Orc Chieftains. Nonetheless, having them in the player's army may be of benefit to the player, as these are generally stronger than the rookie Level 1 units that players can recruit from Cities or the Capital and are excellent escorts for Rod-planting and courier Leaders.
Neutral units are also the only units in the game that can be included in any parties of any faction; there is no way to mix units from different factions into a party, which can be a bit disappointing to players who wish for more army-building options.
In the single-player campaigns, the player has to progress by completing special objectives that will move the narrative forward, such as locating an important artifact or defeating a particular enemy party (often led by a character that is important to the story). Sometimes, they have to be achieved within a certain number of turns. The reward for completing them is usually a conversation between two or more characters, all represented using text.
The writing for these text scripts is decent, but their tone tends not to match the seriously somber one that is used in the voiced-over narration in the cutscenes that play in between levels. In fact, they can be unexpectedly amusing at times, such as undead and demonic characters insulting each other's non-mortal nature while pursuing opposing goals. Nonetheless, these text-based conversations still have the participants acting in character, though players who had wanted more exciting ways of story advancement would be disappointed.
The cutscenes that play in between levels mostly consist of sequences of sparsely animated pictures that loop. Furthermore, most of these pictures happen to be the portraits of units and characters, with hardly any animation. The artwork may be impressive, but the way that these cutscenes are cobbled together is disappointing. Fortunately, there is the narration to be listened to, which presents the sobering (and sometimes depressing) themes of the Disciples franchise quite well.
Perhaps the most interesting feature in the single-player campaign is the opportunity for the player to bring forward a favored Leader (usually the one with the highest level) and two items at the completion of a mission into the next one. The official maps in the single-player campaign and multiplayer in the launch version of this game do not have opportunities for the player to develop a Leader from Level 1 to Level 15, so this feature gives the player a way to see just how overwhelmingly powerful a Level 15 Leader can be.
Moreover, each single-player campaign grants the reward of allowing the player to convert this Leader for importation into custom single-player sessions or multiplayer matches - assuming that the host for these allows the use of such imbalanced Leaders.
At launch, multiplayer has several official maps that have players competing for the achievement of special objectives. Multiplayer may appear to have many modes, but this is deceptive; it actually depends on the scenario which has been designed into the map currently in play. In other words, the fun that is to be had from multiplayer is dependent on the scenario at hand and how familiar the players are with it.
To this end, the game also includes a handy scenario editor which allows crafty players to design their own maps for play in either single-player or multiplayer.
Otherwise, the multiplayer mode of this game does not have fundamentals that are different from the single-player mode: there can only be up to four players at a time, each taking on one of the four factions, and the players can always attempt to defeat their opponents by taking out their Capitals, regardless of the scenario. The restrictions on the number of players and the factions that they can take can be disappointing to those who are used to having multiplayer options that allow them to commit fictional fratricide.
The graphics in Disciples II are mainly dependent on hand-drawn materials; technically, the graphics are little different from those in other 2-D games that resort to mapping pre-rendered images onto frames to give an illusion of three-dimensions, or more precisely, an isometric view.
However, the hand-drawn artwork is one of the best to be seen in the strategy genre. There is plenty of detail in everything, even the textures for the menus. The objects that make up the maps have plenty of stylization, giving said maps plenty of character (of the grim and moody sort). The sprites that represent the parties of player-controlled and neutral units are easily the best-looking of these, especially the units that are magically summoned, such as the Thanatos that the Undead can summon with their Level 5 spell.
The player's actions will also change the appearance of these objects. For example, an abandoned building that had been cleared out of monsters, bandits and other scum will be utterly ruined thereafter, while defeated enemy parties will leave behind tombstones with labels so as to mark the player's conquest. These changes, along with the disappearance of sprites that depict the presence of enemies in maps, will help the player gauge how far he/she has gone.
The maps can be changed in appearance too, through the terrain-generating mechanic that has been mentioned earlier. Each terrain object, such as a tree, has five variants of sprites: one of these is a "neutral" one that makes the object look like it belongs to dull, barely fertile steppes, while the others will have appearances that match the terrain types that are associated with the factions. For example, the same tree would become a moldering mockery of itself when the Undead spreads their pestilential influence unto it.
Otherwise, the maps are mostly static, surrounded by a void of blackness. This can be seen when starting with a "blank" map in the scenario editor.
The great artwork can be seen in the maps, but the best of it is found during combat. The sprites that represent the units participating in combat are the most detailed ones that had ever been seen in video games thus far at the time. They have great animations and 2-D particle effects as well; a good example is the Empire's White Wizard, which is a visibly wizened old man floating in the air, surrounded by a crackling sphere of arcane lightning while his cowl and robes flutter in unnatural winds.
The audio designs of Disciples II reflect its somberness. Most of the soundtracks that play while the player is in map view carry the themes of forlornness, despair and grim tidings. Even the soundtracks in combat, while exciting to listen to, would not strike the player as awesome as they are suspenseful and dread-inducing.
Fortunately, Philippe Charron, who provides most of the soundtracks for this game, is not mainly known for composing music of the depressing and moody sort, what with having worked on less-grim titles like Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns. Whenever a player has a turn of good fortune, such as obtaining a piece of treasure, there is at least a cheery, if brief, tune to be heard.
Within the map view, most of the sound effects can be heard when the player watches parties of units move around and perform things; a good example would be the flapping of wings when (most) flight-capable Leaders move their parties around. There are also ambient noises to be heard when the player focuses the camera on locations such as haunted graveyards (which typically have ghostly moaning as to be expected from high-fantasy graveyards) and the factions' Capitals.
The more exhilarating sound effects are to be heard during combat, however: heavy whooshes accentuate swings of oversized blades, rumbling thumps accompany the fall of maces, clubs or other huge, blunt instruments, conflagrations occur to the roar of magical flames, etc.
Other than the grimly serious narration for the cutscenes in between levels, the voice-acting in this game is quite meager. Characters that can actually talk do have voice-overs, but these are very short, and where these consist of legible language, they are influenced by archaic dialects and harsh intonations that are difficult to figure out. On the other hand, the lines that accompany the demise of parties belonging to any of the factions can be quite satisfying to listen to (as macabre as that is).
In conclusion, Disciples II continues the somber and often sad story that the franchise is known, but it also continues its tradition of great artwork and signature game mechanic of party-based units that change forms upon gaining levels.