Either I'm doing something wrong, or Disciples 2 kinda sucks
Posted: Thu Feb 13, 2014 12:13 am
I have a weird relationship with the Disciples series. On one hand, I think the units and atmosphere is really cool. At the same time, the gameplay - at least the campaigns - make me rage. Maybe someone can correct my impressions.
Instead of deploying an army, you will deploy the same six guys over and over again
So in Disciples 1 and 2, the sagas let you bring along one hero and enough bling to outfit him with between missions. Seems simple enough. The problem is that Disciples likes to pretend it's a wargame where you actually want to deploy multiple parties, but...you don't. It's more effective to stack all the permanent effect potions and items on one hero, have him take a party, and level them up. This of course means that you can't hold or take territory that's not in immediate proximity to the hero of choice (I like the archdevil). The computer, on the other hand, has some mysterious way of producing high-level units. Any new parties you produce will get horribly, horribly slaughtered by these things so it's up to your archdevil to lead his troops to actually do anything. This leads to...
You don't actually give a fuck about the resource system
The resource system consists of 2 resources: various flavors of mana used to cast overworld spells (we'll get to these later) and gold used to buy upgrades for units and buy parties. You will never be producing more units then the units needed to join your hero on his quest, so you can dump all the gold into upgrades.
"But CapnT, if they take all your gold mines, you won't be able to upgrade, right?"
Well...here's the thing. Each faction has a capital which gives a basic gold and mana income. In their infinite wisdom, the Disciples developers gave each capital a nigh-unkillable beast which can strike your whole party for 250 damage - enough to explode anything not a large unit or warrior - goes first, and can't be warded against. If you spend a lot of resources buffing your guys, you can take it down - but the AI will never attack a capital. What this means is that whenever your guys upgrade, you sit on your ass spamming "end turn" for 25 turns so you can build the building needed to upgrade your liches. Of which you have 1, because you sure as hell aren't building a new party and they all start at initiate level anyway. This leads to...
You will spend 1 out of 3 turns doing nothing
Are you playing the empire? No? Elves? High-level specific dwarf unit? Well then no healers for you. This means that instead of doing stuff, you will be spending most of your turns sitting in a temporarily-captured town waiting for the health bars of your team to rise. This means you pretty much need to play a warrior lord, as they grant your team regeneration. This doesn't actually STOP you from playing the game, it just turns the game into a slogfest where the computer has control of all resources, while you are clicking end turn so you can move your 1 squad of guys to their next destination once they've healed enough.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm kinda aggravated. As an aside, I've been playing the Legions mostly, so if the other factions play better do let me know.
Instead of deploying an army, you will deploy the same six guys over and over again
So in Disciples 1 and 2, the sagas let you bring along one hero and enough bling to outfit him with between missions. Seems simple enough. The problem is that Disciples likes to pretend it's a wargame where you actually want to deploy multiple parties, but...you don't. It's more effective to stack all the permanent effect potions and items on one hero, have him take a party, and level them up. This of course means that you can't hold or take territory that's not in immediate proximity to the hero of choice (I like the archdevil). The computer, on the other hand, has some mysterious way of producing high-level units. Any new parties you produce will get horribly, horribly slaughtered by these things so it's up to your archdevil to lead his troops to actually do anything. This leads to...
You don't actually give a fuck about the resource system
The resource system consists of 2 resources: various flavors of mana used to cast overworld spells (we'll get to these later) and gold used to buy upgrades for units and buy parties. You will never be producing more units then the units needed to join your hero on his quest, so you can dump all the gold into upgrades.
"But CapnT, if they take all your gold mines, you won't be able to upgrade, right?"
Well...here's the thing. Each faction has a capital which gives a basic gold and mana income. In their infinite wisdom, the Disciples developers gave each capital a nigh-unkillable beast which can strike your whole party for 250 damage - enough to explode anything not a large unit or warrior - goes first, and can't be warded against. If you spend a lot of resources buffing your guys, you can take it down - but the AI will never attack a capital. What this means is that whenever your guys upgrade, you sit on your ass spamming "end turn" for 25 turns so you can build the building needed to upgrade your liches. Of which you have 1, because you sure as hell aren't building a new party and they all start at initiate level anyway. This leads to...
You will spend 1 out of 3 turns doing nothing
Are you playing the empire? No? Elves? High-level specific dwarf unit? Well then no healers for you. This means that instead of doing stuff, you will be spending most of your turns sitting in a temporarily-captured town waiting for the health bars of your team to rise. This means you pretty much need to play a warrior lord, as they grant your team regeneration. This doesn't actually STOP you from playing the game, it just turns the game into a slogfest where the computer has control of all resources, while you are clicking end turn so you can move your 1 squad of guys to their next destination once they've healed enough.
Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm kinda aggravated. As an aside, I've been playing the Legions mostly, so if the other factions play better do let me know.