Disciples II is underrated

In the good old days when when it was customary to pick up a game at the supermarket without checking online reviews first, you were always in for a surprise. In those days, you could only judge a game by its cover or, if it was a current release, check a magazine review, but that was about it. Purchasing games then was a lot more adventurous than it is today. 

Disciples II: The Dark Prophecy was such a spontaneous purchase for me. It had been out for too long to be found in a magazine, and the internet in the rural area from where I come was terrible (playing Counterstrike, just against bots of course, was rendered virtually impossible for entire weekends if there happened to be an update).

The Undead Hordes have some amazingly creepy units. Source.

However, this game did not disappoint me. I was astonished to see such beautiful graphics, which by now have aged fairly well. The artwork especially still feel a lot livelier than many newer dark, realistic games which often blend in one depressive office building into the next stage of postapocalyptic wasteland. Here, the situation is different, because there are strong contrasts: When playing the Empire of Man and planting rods to extend territory and gather resources, the territory gets as joyfully springlike as possible; when playing the Undead, a deathly wasteland spreads across the country. Thus, you feel an actual difference between the 4 different factions (diverse non-playable subfactions, such as the greenskins and the merfolk, add to the fun) and there is little monotony. 

 

Choose wisely

But it is not only the graphics that fascinate me; first of all, a game should be fun. And Disciples II is fun – which I would not have expected, because I am not a huge fan of turn-based strategy games. Heroes of Might and Magic, for example, is an absolute bore in my opinion. 

 

Not so Disciples II: At the beginning of the game, you get to choose a hero. He is the only one who will accompany you on your travels; all the other units in the team of maximum 6 small or 3 big units will be depleted once you start the next mission. Which is just fine, because you have a range of different units which serve different purposes. 

 

For example, when playing the Undead, you will, at some point, need units that do not deal “death” damage, because you fight a necromancer who will summon other undead who are immune to death-based attacks. You will need some units that use their swords and thus deal “weapon” damage. Thus, you have to arrange a new team in each mission, which is challenging. During the turn-based battles, units either stand in the front row or in the back, depending on whether they can only strike adjacent units with their sword or target them with their bow or spells. Each row consists of 3 squares.

Youtuber Micaelus Playing the Undead Campaign

Often, the wisest thing to do is to pick a sorcerer as hero. In the beginning, they don’t seem to be very effective, but by the end, if you choose to improve your heroes' initiative and boost his attack value, you can wipe out an entire enemy team before they get a chance to fight back. But one word of advice: Save your potions for the final boss, as those are surprisingly tough!

More addictive than Pokémon

Another fun thing is to watch the creatures and soldiers in your team grow. It reminded me a lot of Pokémon. Nothing beats watching your team of two ice giants evolve into the mighty Sons of Ymir – with a little magic, you can enhance their armor value, waltz straight into the capital of an enemy faction and kill the entire faction for that mission, which is a huge feat in this game. 

 

Each capital has a guardian which will instantly melt lesser armies. But once you win, it will feel utterly rewarding. Not only will they stop messing with your forces, but they will also leave all their money and spells to you, which make final bosses so much easier to beat.

The Add-Ons, all to be found in the Gold Edition, do not only add missions (although there could have been more) but also a new faction, the Elves. They truly are for veterans, for they may be slightly faster (meaning, the attack earlier) than the other factions, but they also are really, really vulnerable. You will have a hard time playing on “hard”, which, then again, just sounds about right, right?

Pick it up and have sheer endless fun. But don’t buy Disciples III, it's bland, both visually and mechanically.

Why the Thief Reboot Sucks

The Thief-Reboot is getting a lot of criticism on the internet and elsewhere, and this article will explore the manifold reasons. The general issue is (spoiler alert!): Thief  is not in any way true to its remarkably entertaining and demanding predecessors. It clings to all the bad things AAA Gaming (that is, top-selling "blockbuster" games) stands for, most prominently mass compability at the cost of originality.

The first problem of the game is that its designers refused to let Garrett be Garrett - an antisocial, sarcastic, clever outlaw. Instead, they came up with the following: Our hero is kind-of selfish and anti-social, hence the motto "What's yours is mine", but then he gets a young, obnoxious teenage girl he has to care for and rescue - of course. Why not have the girl be the hero instead of damsel in distress? Because they were scared to alienate the hardcore fans. But you know what's alienating? Turning the protagonist into a generic shell with superpowers that we can level.

Thief (Reboot) will try anything to appeal to a large audience. Source.

Thief wants to be as interesting as Dishonored or Assassin's Creed, but lacks any depth. What we get instead is a game where we play a thief who may or may not go on a murderous rampage without any consequences at all. From the same school of thought, apparently, derives the idea that the player needs flashy quick time events where we run over rooftops and have to mindlessly press buttons and spend the rest of the time watching boring videos, the illusion of player control once again taken away. The game has so little confidence in itself that it would rather be a movie.

 

 Lots of Magic, but far from Magical

Storywise, Thief tries to make up for its misguided action gimmicks by rejecting the steampunk madness/silliness of its predecessors, but doubling down on the sinister tone does not work if you have nothing to offer apart from a generic story about magic that apparently can do everything that the plot demands. The antagonist oozes with clichés from Doctor Frankenstein to Joseph Goebbels, but he feels like a comic villain in his obsession with Garrett. The hammerites, pagans, keepers - anything that made the Thief series stand out - gone.

As if this was not enough, the game manages to fail even at its most basic aspects. The one thing I found most annoying was that Garrett cannot even grab a chandelier without having a fancy animation that takes up several seconds. In the original Thief games it was hard enough to steal something, you did not need to go through this tedious routine. But now, you have to endure slow-mo Garrett rifling through each drawer individually, grabbing anything shiny - if it has a reflection in the moonlight, it's worth a grab, even if it's a plain pair of scissors. 

 

As may be deduced from the previous, salt-induced paragraphs, I consider Thief a huge step backwards. Thief 1 and 2 were great; Thief 3 already had somewhat of an AAA smell to it; but Thief (Reboot) comes with the stench of a franchises' death. Thief tries to be everything and to appeal to everyone but ends up being nothing.

Further watching:
Zero Punctuation about Thi4f