Disciples III is a hackne, dumbed down, lackluster version of its predecessors. Galleans return was the triumph of the disciples series, and this game comes nowhere close in terms of immersion, tact, or story. The graphics are better (obviously) but that really REALLY doesn't make up for the multiple shortcomings found within this title. DO NOT BUY

I was a HUGE fan of the original franchise. Turn based, somewhat interesting combat, and all kinds of fun mechanics to learn and optimize. Disciples III seems to have precisely one thing in common with the previous games: the name. I guess the turn based combat is also shared, but is vastly different. Indeed, this entire game feels more like someone saw the gorgeous art of the first two, and thought, "Hey, we own this franchise. Let's make more gorgeous art, and redo everything else! They'll come crawling for it!" The only real positive I can say beyond how pretty it is is that I didn't pay full price. The engine is .... stupid. The world economies are 'smoothed out' to the point of being stupid. Now, suddenly, you can only control parts of the world with strategically placed control points: there are no 'holy person's to drop a control rod to annoy the opposition. The inventory system is atrocious (Really?? I have to scroll to the right one column at a time, after I select the right interface screen, just to consume the potion I just got??) as is the advancement system. I'm all for advancement trees, but this is just ludicrous. And the story is .... shallow, to say the least. Oh, and thank you soooooooooooooooooo much Game Designers and Developers for not allowing me to turn off the spell animations. Sure they're pretty once or twice, and I admire them for that. But EVERY TIME???? Come on!

EDIT: Oh, and I entirely forgot! I've watched the CPU's heroes literally walk through encounters to take over resources. Walking through encounters applied to my own avatar, so they could just go about their thievery and bypass me completely. And let's also not forget that not only can the computer target you with offensive spells when there is Absolutely No Way It Could Know Where to Target the Spell, but their low level attack spell does damage AND removes my ability to cast a spell that turn as well. You know, because it's "fun" and "challenging".

Trust me. Save your money and get Disciples 1 or 2. They're much better games.

I was among those people who waited release of this game with excitement! However, as many other fans of Disciples II, I was disappointed.

I completed the story with the Empire (Humans) and started to play with the Legions (Demons), hoping that I will find something that will get me going, however I didn't. Although the story is quite interesting and I wanted to find out what will happen next, the battles are so repetitive, that I just caught myself thinking: why do I even play this game?

I guess it's faster to just watch the intro in Disciples 3: Resurrection - it gives a pretty good summary of what happened in Disciples 3: Renaissance.
I feel too much influence from Heroes of Might and Magic V in this game, which, in my opinion, is not a good example of turn-based strategy. I think the developers should have sticked to their own principles as seen in Disciples II.

This game is not all bad, there are also some good things and improvements, so to be fair I'll list both pros and cons.

Pros:

- Great graphics, although sometimes there are so many details, that it is hard to distinguish objects.
- Zoom in/zoom out - missed that one in Disciples II.
- The player has very specific choices about how one can develop his character. I particularly liked that you can develop your leadership up to 7 (and even 8 with specific items). Also transform, revive and other additional leader skills come quite handy.
- It's much easier to conquer enemy capitals. In Disciples II you had to use whole arsenal of potions, artefacts and spells to atleast have a chance against defenders of the capital (and not always it was enough).
- Node guardians is a good idea. They are strong and most of the time they are able to defend themselves, so you don't need to worry about loosing your resources and burdensome rod-planting character management as in Disciples II.
- Achievements. Atleast for me they provide a bit of extra motivation.
- Thief is a fully-functional leader with initial leadership of 3. In Disciples II, Thief had no leadership.
- You can carry all you items to the next act. In Disciples II, you could only take five items with you.

Cons:

- Battle system is the worst aspect of this game. The battles are long and repetitive. After few level ups, when it's not possible to lose anymore, I think everyone finds himself pressing the Quick resolve button. Also I found the obstacles annoying. They needlessly limit the movement of units. Also I'd rather prefer the static battles without tactical map movement as in Disciples II. Thus the initiative actually had some meaning.
- No shortcuts, except for Space (End turn)
- Camera rotation and zoom level in battles also are far from perfect. It's not possible to rotate the battlefield 360 degrees and zoom level is not sufficient - all units look small. The lower corners are almost out of reach. If an enemy is hiding in the right lower corner, you have to turn camera to that corner on every attack to actually perform it. And that is annoying.
- Sometimes it's hard to find the way, because there are trees or building covering the field of view.
- Not only spells are limited to once per turn (twice for Archmage), but this limitation apply to whole of the spellbook. In Disciples II, this limitation applied only to a particular spell. So, spells are not actually that important for victory and it's not worth to research them all. Most of the time I used only healing and damage spells.
- I never had a need to use a thief. I don't actually know what is his special trait. So Guild as a building is useless. Atleast for me.
- Due to spell limitations and lack of Thief actions, it does not make that much of a difference which gameplay style you choose (Warlord, Archmage or Guildmaster).
- Also the interface is not very intuitive. It took me about 45 minutes to understand how this game works.

My overall rating is 5/10.

I think I will return to this game just to enjoy the story and graphics, when I will have nothing better to play. And perhaps my opinion will change. But for now, I can't recommend this game to anyone.

p.s. Disciples 3: Reincarnation is out, which is sort of a remake of Renaissance and Resurrection. Perhaps it is better. So if you are considering to try Disciples 3 afterall, perhaps you should buy Reincarnaction.

Honestly? Like others said. Save your money and buy the Disciples 2 set. The maps were a series of linear paths, the campaign was pretty tedious for me and the difficult curve pretty damn crazy. The first two scenarios were not particularly tough even at the highest difficulty. The last one I found brutal even on easy.

Oh and the magic? Pretty worthless and unimaginative. Pretty much all of the sides have carbon copy spells, the only difference is how much it heals or damages. Which for any veterans of the series know that all four of the original races had clear advantages in one area or another with some overlap between the respective good or evil sides.

I'm sure I can think of other negatives but I really don't want to. The positives was the fancy graphics and the music... which actually still pales in comparison to the previous games in my opinion.

Which reminds me of citys/capitals... you might as well not bother leaving your people at them because they do not function as effective fall back points or R&R sites. Partly because the basic units are so weak and the other side because any stationed armies can still get blasted back into the stone-age. All in all I found the game to be deeply disappointing, to say nothing of the node guardians or lord bonuses... Don't play anything other than a warlord. The mage is pretty pointless and so is the guildmaster.

Too many bugs, ruined the fun =,.=

I played through all 3 stories, but I got the worst bug ever on a computer game. After I did everything to finish the last level, there was supposed to be a portal to enter to fight the final boss. This portal did not appear, so the game just left me stuck on the map with nothing that could be done to finish the game. I got this game in a bundle deal so it we very cheap, but it was a waste of time to play. You play the same battle on the same battle map over and over as you walk down a 1 way path that has encounters closer together than the old RPGs and you can see the enemy on the map, but you have to fight almost every one since the path is too small to walk past them. All they did was reskin the battle map and enemies and units on your team and they have you relevel your units each time you get to a new level even though it is super easy because they put in buildings you can click to buff your party and spells that basically let you cheat in game. When you get to a certain point, you can buy unlimited stat raising items and make an invincible character. I'm not sure if this was a glitch since on some levels the stat potions were limited, but others they were unlimited. I also had a glitch on a few levels where the game would freeze if I ended my turn. I could only play by using editting my movement points so I could complete the level without ending the turn that would freeze the game. I liked the music and the artwork. The story could have been good if it was fleshed out more and had longer cut scenes. The game plays just like King's Bounty or HOMM, but you have single units instead of the moronic stacks that the other games have, so I had hoped this would be the first tactical game on the PC that is similar to the console games like FFT, Fire Emblem, or Shining Force. All of those game had single units that you developed, maps to fight on that changed shape between levels instead of just randomly laying some rocks and bonuses on squares, and could be played through without a game breaking bug. Maybe I should give up on ever having a game like that on the PC. I just wish I had my time back.

Do not buy this game on Steam. If you get this game in a bundle, save yourself a disapointement, and just never play the game. Maybe have Steam hide it or file it to your junk games group.

NEVERMORE

Cool game but had issues with the mouse not moving on the screen but still moving but invisible. It would highlight anything it could normal interact with when over it, but it was a guess of where it was located most of the time. I got frusturated and did not wish to pursue a full answer as to why it wasnt working at the time so I havent played much of the game.

It feels like it wants to be among Heroes of Might and Magic and Kings bounty. Although I only managed to play through half the human campaign before giving up out of boredom it felt just lazy and boring.

You get only one Choice of units for each scenarioas you got only 1 city to upgrade, and although you can recruit more heroes, there is really no point. You can also get permanent stat icreases from potions and money is not a problem as long as you can wait some turns and since there is nothing else to buy, why not.

Speaking of turns... They are nigh irrelevant as most of the turns you're the only one active.

The only good thing about the game I saw so far was the theme of the humans. It's the rabid theocratical one that is very close to the one in Warhammer 40K and that brought me a big smile.

All in all a bland repetetive game. 3/10

If you have a ton of time to burn and you want a strategic RPG in the vein of Might n Magic and you've already played Might n Magic and King's Quest and literally everything else in this genre, this would be a good way to spend your time. otherwise, play a better game.
it has: nice graphics. a setting I could actually probably care about, maybe.
it does not have: polish, sophistication, an appropriate sense of strategy other than grinding levels, good voice acting, good music, or anything else that might make this an diamond in the rough.

Starts well, but then becomes boring because it's too repetitive before finishing the Empire campaign. Also, it's too hard to the point of frustration or too easy to the point of meh.

was kann man über dieses Bug massaker sagen ... nunja es ist unspielbar .... der sound verschwindet öfters mal , einige texturen werden einfach nur schwarz abgebildet, es lags dann und wann und als ob das noch net reicht nein es stürzt pro map an die 20 mal vollständig ab ...
aber es hat auch gute seiten, die grafik ist recht hübs der sound (wenn er da ist) ist stimmig auch wenn er sich STÄNDIG wiederholt, die gegner ki ist ok

alles in allem ist es für mich eine herbe enteuschung und bekommt daher nur ne 2/10 währen die bugs nicht könnte man ne 3 oder ne 4 draus machen aber dennoch kann ich es NIEDMANDEM empfehlen spielt lieber teil 2 da hat man wenigstens noch spaß bei

Macht einfach Laune andere zu plätten :D

OK, let's say "recommended" because the dark fantasy universe is really nice and because that makes a good-looking tactical RPG catchy enough to stay stucked on it a few hours.

For the rest, I would say that this game is far too easy if you are patient enough to do some levelling (to be started again at EACH of the game level from the beginning) thus making it awfully repeatitive, with too few tactical possibilities. At the end, I was just leaving the computer resolving automatically the fights... well, that's not really what you expect from a game.

So recommended for a short time and as a starter if you cannot bear teddy-bears high-fantasy worlds, but unfortunately quite fast boring.

This game makes me sad. I loved Disciples II, and I really wanted to like the third version, but the longer I played the game the more I kept asking myself "why?" The story is drivel. You have to fully watch the 20 second animation for every spell you cast. The user interface is a completely overwraught, tangled mess. Worse there's no gameplay to speak of. See, all the difficulty is frontloaded. The first ~20 turns are just unreasonably hard, even to a veteran of the series on normal difficulty. Worse, after you level up basically once, you are just coasting on easy mode with an unstoppable army. Why bother playing?

Disappointing. Disciples 2 was an amazing game with everything good about turn-based games. Disciples 3 falls very short with too much simplicity and a strange storyline, plus the voice acting is terrible.

Hideous clunky UI. Absurd keyboard shortcut choices. Sluggish camera.

Grayish units that all look just the same...

Thanks god I've got this in a bundle. Don't buy this.

Eh. Save yourself the money, go get Disciples II, ROTE. Aside from graphics, they gutted the love from this game and dressed it up like ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ honey boo boo.

Do not expect an improvement on Disciples II. This is diabolical in comparison.

Completely different from Disciples 2 they've lost the magic that was in the second game.