Disciples: Liberation Review - Page 4
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This allows you to experiment with your party composition a great deal, especially when you also consider the fact that apart from the regular troops you can have up to two companions with you on the battlefield, and three units in the backline that don't directly participate in battles but can still help out a lot with their support abilities.
The game has a pretty interesting take on the 2AP system, where you have three different types of action points. You can spend your blue AP to move, the red ones to attack, and the rare gold kind can do both. More advanced units tend to favor the gold AP, while the early ones can usually only attack once per turn.
But, as opposed to the earlier Disciples games, early units don't evolve as they gain experience here. They just become stronger with each level, which creates a situation where even the lowly tier-1 units can have thousands of HP and pose a theoretical threat in the late game. They'll just be very boring about doing so.
The game's act structure comes into play here, making it so you only get access to the stronger units as you advance through the story, and the enemies you face mostly follow the same pattern. And seeing how there are only faction units in Liberation and no unique neutral ones, it won't take long for you to get sick of fighting zombies and cultists while only using zombies and cultists of your own.
Companions are a great help here, as they obliterate just about everything in the early game. They become more fragile around the second act, but by then you're able to hire some decent units. And once you reach the late game, you unlock spells that just win battles for you.
And you'll love them because of the game's biggest flaw. My earlier issues with Liberation can easily be overlooked or just be seen as funny or silly moments, but this one is completely unacceptable in a game where you'll be doing a lot of fighting.
The animations in Liberation are extremely, excruciatingly slow. The game has a slider doubling their speed, but that doesn't help much, because the problem isn't the animations themselves but all the waiting you'll be doing. The game can only play one animation at a time, and between each of them is a delay. Not an issue when we're talking a single battle. But over time these delays add up, souring the entire experience.
At the same time, the game's underlying combat system is actually pretty solid. Clever positioning can turn the tide of many a battle. Just about any unit has access to status effects that can synergize in interesting ways like your snipers always critically hitting slowed targets, or a certain summoning spell requiring a number of enemies to be frozen to work. You can even find special named units that have much better stats than their regular counterparts, incentivizing exploration.
But seeing how the game lacks any challenge, you don't really get to flex your tactical muscles and utilize the full potential of the combat system. Nor would you want to, because, with all the animation delays, you'll just want things to be over as soon as possible.
And that's even when you consider the fact that you can instantly win most optional fights by using the "Conquer" button. I was using that button at every opportunity, and even so, my playthrough took me about 40 hours. And if you want to see that secret ending, you'll easily double that.
If you think I'm mentioning my playthrough length purely to set your expectations, you are mistaken. The game's areas, apart from offering you quests, dungeons, loot, and enemies to fight, also have mines you can capture. And you might be wondering, with the game not being turn-based during exploration, how do mines work?
They work in real-time. After you capture a mine, it starts working for you, gradually filling a reservoir back in Yllian. At certain intervals, that reservoir fills up, inviting you to drop what you're doing, go back to base and claim your resources. I honestly have no idea how a mechanic like this could end up in a PC game.
But hey, at least you can always instantly teleport back home by pressing T. But only when you're outside. Because not having to run back all the way through a cleared dungeon would just be too convenient.
