Maybe Disciples: Liberation is not so hopelessly dark and almost nothing like its predecessors, but the Friv2Online series was nevertheless raised from its knees as best they could, dressed up and brought to life. We tell you what will please the new chapter from the history of Nevendaar.
Friv2Online is a team of not too well-known and really outstanding works, referring to which one could not worry about the fate of Disciples, it is not listed. In light of this circumstance, many began to scold Liberation from the very beginning, and after the release of the demo, they looked at the studio's bizarre decisions with undisguised pessimism. And yet, the friv game was a success for the Canadians, albeit not quite in line with our expectations.
Disciples: Liberation continues the story of Nevendaar. A world twisted by endless wars, from which even the gods who created it finally turned away. Tired of poverty and crappy inns, the mercenaries Orion and Avianna, known as the Twilight Twins, accept an implausibly lucrative commission to kill a priest named Sebastian, supposedly declared an enemy of the Empire for treason.
After waiting for nightfall in the catacombs under the church of St. Darchild, the partners make their way past the patrols, but when they reach the nave they fall into a trap. When the men at arms around them draw their blades, Avianna accidentally opens a saving rift, and in the next moment the Twins find themselves at the gates of the forgotten city of the holy angels of Illyan, which has not yet been set foot by a mortal.
This place seems familiar to Avian, and everything that happened to them is providence. The partners decide to sit out in the newfound house until the girl becomes skilled in portal magic, and then look for allies among the races inhabiting Nevendaar. They are convinced that sooner or later the Empire will call them to account for the assassination attempt on the High Priest of the Veil, and then burn their Garden of Eden to the ground.
From this point on, players choose one of four areas where they will go first: to the inhabited cursed strongholds of Eureka, to the Hale outpost besieged by imperial rebels, to the White Lands, where the dwarves once lived, and now inhabited by the elven people, or to the gloomy Greywood - fiefdom undead.
Illyan is a spacious town with building sites that players will develop throughout the campaign. Buildings of all factions are obviously built on several foundations, a few more are empty - on them, when the corresponding drawings are found, a market and a forge will grow for buying and upgrading equipment.
In fact, each faction has three of its own buildings. All have a separate set of units, divided into four stages. To build a new building and upgrade it to the next rank, you will also need blueprints, as well as resources and a good reputation with the corresponding race.
The main building is the Castle, where you can chat with your companions, write down spells from scrolls in a book, and redistribute the heroine's talent points for gold. Also, all the materials obtained from the enterprises captured by Avianna are brought here, and it is necessary to visit Illyan regularly to replenish the treasury.
The castle also has several stages of development, each of which increases the heroine’s leadership points, makes it possible to improve other buildings and learn more powerful spells, but you won’t be able to pump it until you advance through the main plot, as well as empty the city treasury with chests sealed inside, where you can even wander on your own two feet.
The gameplay is now based not only on horseback travel through a picturesque, detailed world and tactical turn-based battles, but also on foot exploration of dungeons and a text-based role-playing system that allows the player to influence what is happening and shape the character of the main character to your taste.
The user actively participates in the dialogue and, depending on the situation, asks questions, intimidates, tries to deceive, tease or console the interlocutor. Can pounce on an opponent, offer him a strategic alliance, take risks and issue a cue with an unpredictable outcome, and sometimes even flirt. All choices will be reflected in the development of events and will somehow affect the overall course of the plot.
The inventory of the character is decorated with dignity, for each characteristic there are intelligible explanations. The girl has four slots for equipment, one for weapons, and another one is inserted into a fragment of emotions - these are local artifacts with positive effects. You can also distribute one of these shards to each unit in your retinue, whether mercenaries or companions.
There are four schools of magic in the friv game, all spells belong to one of the four levels. Divine magic is mainly aimed at healing and protecting allies, primordial magic turns to the forces of the elements to deal damage, unholy discipline is built on poisons and all sorts of curses, and twilight allows you to impose various effects on opponents and allies.
Friv2Online developed a spacious ability tree for Avanna. At each level, she gains a knowledge point, which can be invested in branches to create a build that suits your play style. The “Magic” branch will allow Avianna to learn the most powerful spells of the three main schools, the “Combat” branch will greatly strengthen the heroine herself, and the “Nephilim” will increase the combat potential of your squad.
Avianna will eventually either become a powerful sorceress with huge area of effect damage, or an experienced leader, savvy in twilight disciplines, or the strongest unit in the squad with many combat abilities. True, a lot of talents directly depend on the class that you prefer for Avianna during the game, as well as on her reputation with local factions.
The combat system of Disciples: Liberation is one of the main trump cards of the novelty, which, however, not everyone liked. The tactical window for the deployment of troops falls on the corresponding section in the menu, where all the units available to the player are presented. Some are in the reserve windows, others are in the front hexes, and three more slots are reserved for front fighters.
The forward 15-hex line is provided to build the main detachment participating in the battle, which consists of Avianna herself, fighters hired by her from different factions and satellites (unique combat units, like the same Orion). If the number of mercenaries is determined by leadership points, then the number of satellites limits one more parameter. But morality as such is not here, there is only reputation: with a negative morale of the creatures of the corresponding faction, it will be low, and vice versa.
You can put any mercenary in the slots for the rear fighters, in total - three, but different. They will be impossible to destroy directly. Each mercenary in Disciples: Liberation, in addition to the main talents, has a rear one: the guardsman placed behind each turn imposes resistance and protection on the weakest character in the squad, the lower demon enhances the physical attack of the allies for the entire period of the battle, the zombie attacks a random enemy and poisons the victim.
The action point system here is also not quite standard. There are three types of OD in the friv game: blue, red and yellow. There is one action per AP: blue to move (the distance is determined by the travel range parameter); red to use a skill (including casting a spell from a book); and yellow can be spent on anything. Like other parameters, APs are assigned to the hero, mercenaries and companions in different proportions (Orion, for example, has two yellow turn points, while Avianna has blue and red).
At the end of the turn, unspent APs restore part of the character's health and impose a positive effect: from blue, the unit receives 20 to initiative, from red, the damage-reducing status "under protection", and yellow gives both bonuses at once.
The participants in the battle do not counterattack (if they do not have such an ability) and do not block nearby hexes, but in order to conditionally go behind the enemy’s back and inflict increased damage due to a flank attack, two must surround the enemy from opposite sides.
The arrows here do not go into melee when approaching the enemy, and magic does not damage allies, there are often obstacles and hexes with positive and negative effects on the maps that can be used for strategic purposes. Skirmishes sometimes drag on, but do not get bored.
Weaknesses of Disciples: Liberation also appear on the battlefield - the AI is pretty stupid. Enemy arrows often come too close, enemies often step on dangerous zones and ignore positive ones, several times they try to impose buffs that do not stack on each other, but on the enemy - effects that will not work because the conditions are not met.
Location maps are also presented strangely. Visited objects are not marked in any way, and the fog of war, as soon as the hero leaves, for some reason hides the entire area you have explored. I understand how this can be useful in multiplayer (and it, by the way, is also here, but there is no way to test it yet), but in a single game, fog makes it very difficult to navigate in space.
Many scolded Disciples: Liberation for mediocre texts, but this is fifty-fifty. Yes, the friv game lacks narrative depth, characters remain undeveloped, faction representatives rarely live up to the ideals of their race, and flirting is frankly inappropriate most of the time. For a project with such rich textual content, this is a significant and very noticeable minus.
The well-known racist elves are implausibly gullible, and their speech is never elegant, the undead have become soft-bodied, and only the fanatical Imperials are served relatively canon here. Disciples: Liberation is like creamed coffee - kind of fragrant and still very invigorating, but the taste and color have changed.
Many find fault with unit models, and there is something to argue about here too. On the one hand, yes, the same skeleton warriors or zombies familiar to us look completely unrecognizable, on the other hand, they are read quite tolerably, and deviation from clichés is not always bad. Remember what experiments the same Ubisoft decided on in their latest HoMM. The design could be better, yes, but the existing one is quite digestible.
Disciples: Liberation has a lot more positives than negatives, and if you look at the project in isolation from the main trilogy (which is exactly how it should be viewed, because this is not Disciples IV), Friv2Online succeeded in a very good role-playing strategy, from which the player, who misses such projects, it will be very difficult to break away.