Disciples 3 blows King's Bounty 1 & 2 out of the water!
 

Let me just say that I have played both King's Bounty games MANY times over and still like them and await the sequel, having said that and after finishing the Disciples 3 campaign after more than a month of playing though it (it is VERY long) I have to say the game is SUPERIOR to kings Bounty in every way, in fact, it steamrolls it and leaves it flat on the ground.
This is the only game that actually made me lose track of time and continue playing it long into the night, I didn't even do that for KB:AP, it is realistic in that it isn't cartoony like both KB games and it has this very exciting resources and building aspect built into it, your units evolve over time as long as you have the necessary building in your capital, the combat is top notch and the game very interesting, it is now my number one game of all time, it was so good.
For the next KB, it should borrow some aspects of D3 to make it more interesting.

I haven't met a person in real life that likes Disciples 3. Therefore, you must be a figment of my imagination.

Yeah right :)

First of all, KB doesn't crash. Dcp3 crashes all the time
KBAP is a form of an upgrade to KBTL -more units, more spells. Dcp3 is Dcp2 and it's expansions with less content.
KBAP is 5 gigs with a lot of diverse maps and islands, ever changing enemies, wondrous randomness and has more content coming our way. Dcp3 is over 7 gigs has only a few free play maps and all that changes in some campaign maps is the monster composition.
KBAP allows for tactical combat. Dcp3 combat is very, very simple, and stupid, for that matter - take the focus points and you can beat 5 times stronger opponent.
KBAP has decent monster composition based on the difficulty and location. Dcp3 can put you against a lvl 17 opponent with a bunch fof healers which either stops you from leaving you own little area until you trash enough troops and spells into him, or if that's the case with the opponent, he may never get out of his area and you get an easy victory. No fun at all this way.
-> in addition to this, the free play maps favor the AI. The AI can pass through any enemy without needing to fight it and steal all the resources he can, while you must punch your way through every enemy. The map is big, I've only cleared a few stacks since I had no other alternative and hello, enemy! He's already stealing the resources around my capital.

Dcp3 is so unbalanced and awful at this point, that it requires a lot of hotfixes to make it decent. First of all, you can't select a leader for the hotseat maps. You're set with everything the game gives you and if you don't ike it, you must wait till you get 500 gold to buy a new leader+troops, which gives the AI 4-5 days head start. Then, it's the AI who passes through enemies without fighting them, and if you gave it a head start, good luck! Ever wondered why in the hotseat the game always puts you against a human opponent? Because the AI needs a lot of work still. What's good about it that is has a decent storyline that may well keep you occupied till you play it out.

So I did play it out, I did play the free play maps and that was all. On the hardest difficulty the game is really, really easy. Focus points for the win!

i agree
dc 3 was fun at sight but
after playing it
IT WAS SO HORRIBLE EASY

not to mention it got ALOT OF BUGS
so frustrating...

someone they ai let u switch from town during the campaign
and u can't upgrade your town
unless u save and reload
-.-

pain in the ass

but all in all
it is quite funny to play
but rather easy

It's funnier when you fail to notice that you're not in your own town and start building up your opponent's town. Then you'll be like "OMG - AI's cheating!!!"

I'd love to give more credit to Dcp3, if only it wasn't fully copying Dcp2 in terms of unit trees (ok, you now have rocks to collect in addition to the gold - big deal! Gold is used to buy rocks in the usual life anyway) and it wasn't copying King's Bounty in terms of combat setup. All that is new in Dcp3 is the remastered models and improved graphics.

Shall we compare Dcp2 with Dcp3?

Graphics: Dcp2 < Dcp3
Gameplay: Dcp2 >= Dcp3 (at least in Dcp2 everything was set properly, the AI was good and was always providing a challenge, but Dcp3 has its merits, so one may consider them equal)
Content: Dcp2 >> Dcp3 - Dcp2 is much better because it had a ton of campaigns, one for each race, had more races, had more free play maps, had it all. In addition to that there were quite a bunch of player contributed maps.
Replayability: Dcp2 >> Dcp3 - Dcp2 had a ton of maps that could either be replayed alone or with a friend, and there were a ton of player-made maps that worked perfectly. all that Dcp3 has is 3 campaigns of 6-8 maps each and bout 6-7 free play maps that quickly get boring.
Here's a link: http://www.disciples2.com/d2/downloa...?ifiletypeid=6 - many, many Dcp2 maps for everyone.
Challenge and Battles: Dcp2 >> Dcp3 - Dcp2 is much, much better. In Dcp2 you can't beat an enemy army that is much better than yours with a vastly inferior army. The fact that there was no battlefield meant you can't run around and fool around with the AI like crazy. In Dcp2 you could actually lose it all to the AI. Dcp3 has a battlefield, has focus points. Put your leader on a focus point, put a second tank next to him for cover, leave all your mages, archers and healers behind and have fun with the stupid AI. Or of course, if you have a bunch of creatures to summon, do so and watch the stupid AI go for them first. At least in Dcp2 the AI always tried to deal with your healers/damage dealers first.
Capital battles: Dcp2 > Dcp3 - in Dcp2, taking a capital was always a big challenge. here, you can make utter fun of the enemy Capital Defender (the unit with a 3500 HP and 250 divine damage/all) with any army, as long as you have decent defenses and/or decent healers and/or decent spells stacked in your inventory (1600 damage anyone?!). The rest of the army can be comprised by any unit that will not die by the initial attack.
RPG system: Dcp2>=< Dcp3 - here's it's a matter of personal preference. In Dcp2, the RPG system was simplified and it worked perfectly. You could get what you wish without getting way too overpowered and without making an overwhelming army. In Dcp3 you can make an overpowered hero, but that comes at a price - the enemies stop hacking at him and go for any other unit you have.
Bugs: Dcp2 >> Dcp3 - out of the box Dcp2 had few bugs, while out of the box Dcp3 was almost unplayable.

I hope I didn't forget something :P

We can also look at the scores these games received. Aggregator sites like gamerankings.com that collect reviews across various sites give you a good idea regarding the quality of a game.

Disciples 2: Dark Prophecy 8.4 (based on 28 reviews)
King's Bounty: The Legend 8.3 (based on 23 reviews)
King's Bounty: Armored Princess 8.1 (based on 13 reviews)
Disciples 3: Renaissance 5.9 (based on 12 reviews)

Those ratings pretty much summarize it...

Still Disciples 3 has the potential to become a really great game, with awesome graphics, story and gameplay, but the developers must really put their back into it, add the missing races and provide a lot of content. A map editor won't hurt either, as it will greatly improve the replayability options and give the players a chance to put their imagination to good use.

I am aware of all the criticism being thrown at this game, some is true but most is just blown out of proportion, the game was FUN to play and I am certainly awaiting for the 'Ressurrection of Mortis' addon, I'm sure with more patch work, extra content, and time the game will be great.

It will certainly be fun, but what I do not like is that you get a game, you pay for it, you see it's incomplete, and you need to wait for expansions which you'll also have to pay for, in order to make the game complete. This is a big money sink which Akella decided to make by copying Blizzard. Problem is that Blizzard always gives content when they make the money sink. A clear example is Starcraft 2 - the initial game has only the Terran campaign in it. However, to compensate for this it has various AI levels for all races, wondrous multiplayer, a lot of maps and a map editor. I would feel ok if Dcp3 had the lots of maps and the editor part of the upper sentence, but it doesn't...

When a person buys a game he/she always wants a complete product that is well worth the money. It is such simple tricks to make money that tick me off and this is why my opinion of this game is so low.

I feel I should also point out that the Terran Campaign is also the size of all the campaigns combined in the previous starcraft (in play time at least).

eww starcraft 2

i rather play sstarcraft 1 ;-)
^^

I have been sitting on the fence on Disciple 3 as I loved the first two versions. Sounds like I should wait a little longer. Eventually I will get it as I and II were a lot of fun and they were very good about adding content along with the fans.

Lower price and no cd will come later.

Buy it don't wait, if you don't want any troubles get the Steam version as it has some extra maps and is very stable, I myself have the UK version and it didn't give me any problems at all.:)

Ignoring the debate about whether D3 is good or not, that's some poor advice. I've been looking into Disciples 3's price within the UK, and I can get the game for £18 as opposed to £30 from Steam. 3 maps do not equal an extra £12.

Then what are you waiting for? Go get the UK version.

I already bought 3 games this month and Crossworlds and Civ5 are next month. So no need to jump on D3 right now. I still have many maps to play on D2.

In a few months I will have played enough of the new games and will be looking for something. By then D3 may have gotten another patch and possibly can be found on sale.

If I got it now, I would have to put down one of my current games, so no need to rush into it.

I picked up Disciples 3 on the release day, the boxed version. I played for a few hours and then put it on the shelf for later. I ran into various of the already mentioned bugs and issues. It is a very pretty game and the atmosphere is well captured and fostered by the att style (it's really well done), but it does need a few patches and definitely more maps. I had waited for years for the game, so I can wait a few extra months. :)

I'd disagree with the statement that "Disciples 3 blows KB out of the water". We get too few games in the genre for this to be a "either/or" decision, but the two King's Bounty games are gems of the genre and except the three AoW games I have not enjoyed a fantasy TBS as much as the KB games

Vmxa makes a good point about Crossworlds and Civ5 coming out next month, and in two days there will also be Stardock's Elemental, which loks promising (the complexity and gameplay, not so much the visuals).

I really like AoW and found a ton of maps for it. Surprised that they have not done a new game in all this time.

I'd be absolutely thrilled if someone did an AoW sequel! :) There was a user created patch that was made with the help of some of the developers, which fixed some balancing issues and introduced a lot of content (located here). It's a few years old now, too. The community is still alive.

I recall a forum discussion with the developers about a possible sequel, but as far as I remember they said there was no interested publisher (hint, hint!), and that they were working on some action-y game instead. AoW was the closest thing to Master of Magic, and the franchise is generally appreciated and liked among strategy gamers, so perhaps some day someone will pick up the license. (1cp, you are reading, aren't you! ;))

Sorry, but what's AoW?
Also, does the Crossworlds game really come out next month or is it just the Russian version?
ATM I have the games I want but I'm currently waiting for delivery for my Mafia 2 pre-order and for my Spanish version of Drakensang to arrive, I already have the sequel Drakensang: The River of Time also in Spanish so I felt I ought to have both.:grin:

age of wonders is a turn based magic medieeval game

where u control a main hero and units to conquer enemy cities

it's quite addictive actually:)

but aow >aow 2 big time:)

I still have AoW and AoW2 Shadow Magic, but I never really cared for II.

Only played the demo of Disciples III, and although I didn't have any stability issues other than the fact that I couldn't actually save the game (:o), I found the campaign missions slow and tedious. Also the AI is very poor, which may or may not be improved with patches. This is a great disappointment to me, as I adore Disciples II and all the addons, and in fact I got onto King's Bounty originally when I was waiting for D3 in 2008.

But now, two years later, I feel that King's Bounty TL, AP and now Crossworlds to be far in advance of Disciples III in every department except for art direction, where Disciples III is excellent. But a pretty game doesn't make for a fun game. :rolleyes:

How you can like this abomination of Disciples series is really beyond my understanding and imagination.

Homm5 , Majesty 2, Disciples 3... ech Russians are really good in destroying sequels of my favorites games. <cry>

Katauri Interactive make exception from this with KB.

Homm5 was the only game I jerked off my system the fisrt day and returned to the store.

majesty 2 was quite good actually compared to the first(altough the dismissed some units)

homm5 was decent but had alot of patches to become good(but never compared to homm3) and it's mods


disciples 3 is quite a good game(but they fucked it with the mass amount of bugs in it)

and the race reduced to only 3
it could have been a great game if they only didn't mess with the disciples 2 setup which was near perfect for that game
(the only good thing they did was enhance the graphics)
props for that

Without them picking up the series, I'm pretty sure that we'd never have seen Majesty 2 or Disciples 3. I don't really think the problem is with the studios being located in Russia (lots of creative potential and technical knowledge there, with much lower wages), but with the market changing. Or rather, with what (western) publishers want. I think 1CP and their studios show that some of the best PC strategy games these days are indeed coming from Russia.

I thought Majesty 2 was a decent game. I got repetitive somewhere in the middle, but I thought it was well done and I had fun with it.

I loved AOW and AOW2, I didn't care really care for Overlord though... i found that taking the click out of point and click combat really made the gameplay a bit shallow. (Triumph Studios).

Disicipes 2 was a great game, though I tired of it after several campaigns and didn't play all the expansions.

As for the Russian Strategy Developers.

Katauri: Smashing brilliant success. If their next title was "Poo in a Box", I bet that poo would be well developed and well worth the money.

Nival: Developed Silent Storm, a couple games I didn't play, and then HOMM5. I enjoyed Silent Storm a lot and felt it featured a great turn based strategy engine. In terms of gameplay and features, it had a LOT. I can see why people wouldn't like the wonky story though. HOMM5 was alright.

Akella: Made Disciples III. Haven't played it but heard some bad things about it. They WERE working on Jagged Alliance 3 prior to Disciples... Perhaps its a good thing they stopped?

Czech Developer Altar: Made a bunch of those newer gen UFO games. I appreciate their efforts in trying to modernize an old franchise and hammer out its flaws... but they've lost a lot of the appeal of the original product.

I for one am glad the Russians are working on turn based strategies.

Well, at least some of you guys could play D3. I am in America so my box version came with the put the original disk bug even though I had the original disk. To get the patch for this wonderful DRM you need to email the folks at kalypso. Some of my friends couldn't even get that thing to install. The patch also took quite a bit of time to develop, considering that legit players couldn't even get the game to start. The only way around the problem for quite sometime was to download a no CD crack.

No thank you, for my money I would like a game that I can actually play without having to email the developer and hope that I get a response back allowing me to play when I have already paid. The game has some potential but the NA release was butchered to say the least. Heck, gamestop even let me get a full refund because every single copy that they had was unplayable in one way or the other.

Disciples 2 was a great title and it is very disappointing to see a sequel butchered, particularly one that was a long time coming and greatly anticipated.