Various Thoughts

There turned out to be a few more differences between this and Liberation:

• There are only 5 companions now, down from the previous 8.
• Ultimate abilities now only have an initial 2-3 turn delay.
• Line of sight for ranged units almost never matters.
• Flying units now take damage from hazardous floor tiles.
• Friendly fire’s been removed.
• You can now combine legendary shards at the Rank IV Blacksmith.

While Chapter V is much too long, for the most part I feel this game was paced better than the prequel; ended up hitting level 50 just after the point of no return and the final boss is level 44. Your last Leadership upgrade happens at level 45 though (170 with Rank IV Castle), so that’s really the main target to hit. Lack of gold turned out to be a constant pressure throughout, while a persistent lack of Divine Essence started to hit in Chapter III.

I ended up going with Liches and Overlords for my frontline army to great effect, while my backline remained static most of the game. Started out with Infernal Knight, Half Born, and Priestess and didn’t have to upgrade them until the Rank IV units became available (Knight was replaced with Sundancer and Half Born with Blood Shaman). Meteor was my go-to spell with Wotan’s Fury coming in second.

Much like Liberation, beating the final boss here unlocks a new game mode. All cosmetics start out unlocked, the tutorial is skipped, the companion limit is removed, new dialog options are available, and XP gain is supposedly increased. Not sure if I’m going to bother trying to play through it though, as there don’t seem to be any ‘target all enemy’ spells and the Auto-Resolve Battle button is almost never available. The closest thing to a 1st-turn win is to ~maybe~ field a bunch of Liches with a Witch Queen multi-casting Eventide followed by Blooming Corpses and Corpse Explosion.

A storyline and mechanical sequel to Liberation, Domination includes a few clear improvements alongside a far greater number of mixed changes.

As for the improvements: The visual quality has been enhanced, there’s now a number of waypoint teleporters scattered around each area, teleportation is no longer prohibited in dungeons, the dwarven faction has been restored, some units can now be promoted to higher tiers, spells are learned directly from your spellbook instead of having to find them, the MC gets a couple more equipment slots, class archetypes are now far more distinct, and it’s much easier to raise your reputation with the various factions.

More questionable changes would be the ~20% reduction in units to choose from for your armies, only being able to field a maximum of 10 units, no longer having the option to build or swap base buildings (only upgrade the ones that are already there), replacing the protagonist’s voice actor with one that sounds incredibly young, having to readjust your army formation every battle since the deployment area varies wildly from encounter to encounter, and tying equipment rewards for battle to completing difficulty challenges (like not using companions, or hitting a certain number of weaknesses).

In Liberation I took the Hexblade path while fielding a Demon/Elf army focused on unholy damage. I decided to take a similar path here as a ‘Primordial Ruler’, which is basically a primal-damage themed spellblade, focused on the spellcasting Elementalist tree. Faction choice so far has been the same to great effect (Infernal Knight, Executioner, Blood Shaman, Winter Witch), but maybe I’ll eventually mix in a primal-focused Dwarf or Undead unit.

The last Disciples game I played was the very first one, which at the time was enjoyable. Liberation is apparently the fourth in the series and bears a shocking resemblance to the King’s Bounty games.

Main differences would be that your army’s made up of single units instead of unit stacks and there’s a prominent quest system, including an assortment of companion quests. You also have to travel between different mid-sized maps instead of having a large open world and have to manually upgrade your recruitment buildings rather then find them in the wild. The storyline and dialog however are just as bad as in those games (although there are a number of roleplaying choices here), while the combat and exploration style are essentially identical.

Ultimately the main issue is that clearing the maps becomes incredibly boring quite quickly, which is not helped at all by the arbitrary availability of the ‘Auto-Resolve Battle’ button. If it could be used for any non-boss fight you significantly outlevel then map exploration would be immensely improved. As things stand I’m already basically burned out at the start of Act II from hacking & slashing my way through so many similar armies. The Act I boss also being a slog certainly didn’t help.

A few things to be aware of in the first act if you decide to play:

• While the order you visit the various faction locations doesn’t matter since enemy levels are to an extent tied to yours, visiting in Empire -> Undead -> Demon -> Elf order will minimize backtracking.
• The Bone Golem quest cannot be completed until Act II, and ~may~ fail if you try to complete it early by killing the undead queen.
• Most chests, particularly ones guarded by armies initially higher level than you, contain nothing but generic equipment.
• Since there’s no map function within dungeons, you’ll want to manually record any blocked paths or higher-level enemies you find for return trips.