Among the many titles that around the nineties influenced and gave visibility to the turn-based strategy genre, the saga of Disciples has always managed to carve out its own space and its slice of users. Within the recent “fashion” of the relaunches of the videogame past, the boys of Frima Studio have decided to finally give birth to the fourth installment of the franchise. Disciples: Liberation, as you will read in our review, it is a return to the origins of the genre, which embraces all the classic features of RPGs, but trying to innovate to compete with the current market. Let’s find out how it went.
A new beginning
Right from the start, Liberation shows the new path taken by its developers. From the initial menu of the game, in fact, we will be able to choose a single main protagonist, Avyanna. Abandoning the game structure to Campagne, the title aims to build a solid path with a single character and a single adventure: no more restarts, we will be able to build our epic in a reasoned and gradual way, making, thanks to our choices, Avyanna a character positive or negative, a mercenary or a killer, and so on. Abandoned the old rigid faction system, we will choose the orientation of our character thanks to multiple dialogue choices (which, unfortunately, was not dubbed in Italian), as well as being able to create a leveling path that will no longer have to start from scratch at the end of each chapter .
From the point of view of the narrative, although the horizontal plot is full of ideas and twists, the developers have not met the new generation as they would have liked: it is unlikely, in fact, that those who have not played the previous chapters will be able to keep up with the numerous turns of lore, in addition to the fact that some backgrounds of important characters are taken for granted. Avyanna, an unfortunate mercenary in the kingdom of Nevendaar, will find herself involved in the struggle of poor oppressed citizens for freedom from the yoke of the evil empire, mission after mission. Based on our choices we will forge alliances with many interesting characters, leading to the liberation of Nevendaar, or his final downfall.
Unfortunately, however, this is ours freedom of action will remain only on paper, since moving continuously between the different factions along the four chapters that make up the story (about 80 hours of main and secondary missions), will be confusing in the long run, as well as having little impact on 5 finals available.
Explore, fight, manage
The heart of the gameplay of Disciples: Liberation, as we want to emphasize in the review, it is essentially structured in three aspects: the exploration of the game world, the pitched battles, and the economic management of our resources, both economic and human. As for the first, unfortunately, here too we find ourselves in a fluctuating situation. The game world has been well done under the artistic and technical side, as well as being vast and agile to explore thanks to our mount. However the interaction with the environments is limited, and we will find ourselves, among searches for treasures and new allies, almost always having to move several times from point A to point B to satisfy the objectives of our secondary missions.
From the point of view of the fighting the clashes prove to be the strength of the title. Taking with both hands from its own tradition, Liberation takes us back to the usual 7 × 11 hexagonal grid, where our every decision will make the difference between victory and a crushing defeat. Fortunately, the learning curve is gradual, although this leads to it general difficulty in being calibrated downwards.
The title will show us how to manage our resources, spells and, most importantly, our team. The choice of our troops and their unique abilities and how to deploy our allies on the battlefield will prove to be fundamental, although the level of artificial intelligence of our CPU-controlled opponents will almost never – at least in the first half of the adventure – really put our backs to the wall.
Not only that, our heroes will come back to life at the end of the battle, while the classic “slaughter units” can be easily replaced, making everything too simple at times.
From a management point of view, the citadel of Ylian will be the beating heart of the kingdom of Nevendaar and our adventure. From here we will be able to trade, train our troops (easily bringing them to the rank of heroes), and buy new equipment.
Not only that, we will be able to choose which faction to side with, changing often and shuttling easily between one and the other, making everything very confusing. Unfortunately, our fortress will never be attacked, making the management and accumulation of resources and units too simple at times. the economic management phase. In fact, we will end up accumulating many resources in the long run, almost never feeling the need to go on an adventure to look for new ones.
Nevendaar’s future
Disciples: Liberation, is an excellent evolution of the saga. While remaining firm on the key elements of the genre, it succeeds, except for the narrative component, to bring new players closer to the franchise. The learning curve is gradual, the gameplay, albeit not full of particular ideas, is pleasant and functional, and from a technical point of view the title of Frima Studio succeeds without some flaws to have its say. The choice to abandon the campaign system makes the experience smoother, although a dubbing in Italian would have made it more immersive. A final note must be made about the dialogue choices, which influence the story too little, and do not seem to really impact the chosen faction or the ending.
Precisely for these reasons during the adventure we will be led to put aside the plot to focus on the clashes, which although anchored to tradition, manage to be layered and complex at the right point especially in the final stages of the game. Net of a few flaws and despite the review vote not being idyllic, Disciples: Liberation it could be the starting point for the relaunch of the saga, in the hope of a next chapter that can further improve it from different points of view, leading it to establish itself again in this current generation.
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