Developer: Artefacts Studio | Publisher: Kalypso Media | Platform: PC | Genre: turn-based strategy/RPG
A legacy that is hard to bear
There are games that revive the old series, and then there is the new Disciples. I grew up on good old Disciples 2 – a dark, gothic, brutal world that wasn't graced with pastoral landscapes or heroic optimism; it was riddled with death, corruption, and eternal war between the Empire, the Legions of the Damned, the Horde of the Undead, and the Dwarven Alliance. The system of occupying the territory, unique units with interesting upgrades, tactical combat that was reminiscent of Heroes of Might and Magic, but on steroids, with a darker soul and stricter rules, all this gave the game a special charm. Disciples: Domination is a sequel that puts that legacy on its back and stumbles under the weight.
A queen without a crown
It takes place fifteen years after the events of the previous game, Disciples: Liberation. After freeing the kingdom of Nevendaar from the clutches of cruel gods, our protagonist Avyanna became queen, but that title remained mostly formal. Instead of ruling, she withdrew from duty, avoided responsibility, and now, at the beginning of Domination, she sets out to restore what she left behind. On paper, it's an interesting premise. What happens after the hero wins? What does governance look like in practice, away from epic battles and prophecies? Unfortunately, the game barely touches that potential.
Avyanna feels like a character who has forgotten everything he has lived through. Instead of an experienced ruler, we get a protagonist whose tone is light-hearted, almost naively optimistic, closer to someone interviewing for a student job than to a person who could once have become a tyrant. None of the NPCs treat her as a sovereign; interactions act as if you are still a level 1 mercenary, which completely destroys the illusion of power. It's hard to feel like the ruler of an empire when no one sees you. You literally run into a scenario where the common pedestrian doesn't want to get out of your way.
The narrative rhythm oscillates between casual adventure and occasional attempts at serious drama, which almost never come together without a jolt. Avyanna's voice acting especially hurts: it's delivered with an ease that doesn't match any scene she's in. It's hard to be emotionally engaged when the protagonist sounds like she's ordering something at a coffee shop, not like she's carrying the fate of a nation.
Mechanics — Three columns, of unequal height
Disciples: Domination builds its loop around three core activities: real-time terrain exploration, tactical combat, and a diplomatic-royal management system.
Exploration works neatly: you move around maps, collect resources, open chests and come across dialogues that push the plot forward. The environment is visually decent, including ruins, cursed forests, volcanic plateaus, but interaction with it mostly remains at the level of passing from one point to another. There is no real organic presence in these spaces; everything looks like a backdrop set up for the player, a diorama you walk through, rather than a living world that would exist without you.
Thrones mechanics bring freshness to the game concept: you return to Yllian, your base fortress, where you resolve faction requests, build facilities and gain advantages for specific unit types. The intention is commendable - the developers clearly wanted you to feel like a ruler, not just a soldier. But Yllian quickly turns into a factory column that you access automatically between missions, devoid of the weight that the headquarters should be able to carry.
A fight that fights with itself
The most problematic part of the game is paradoxically the one that should be its heart: the combat.
Sustav je postavljen na heksagonalnoj mreži i donosi određenu taktičku dubinu – pozicioniranje, sudar jedinica, mehanika guranja i privlačenja, interakcija s leševima za nekromantske jedinice… Statusni efekti su prisutni u obilju, gotovo svaki napad će nekoga oslijepiti, zapaliti, smanjiti mu obrambene sposobnosti, usporiti ga…
The palette is impressive on paper. In practice, however, these status effects rarely feel understandable. The game doesn't adequately explain many of them, and their impact on the outcome of the fight often seems invisible — you apply them, you see a bunch of icons on already tiny units, but the connection between the effect and the actual change in the opponent's behavior remains unclear. Instead of presenting an interesting tactical layer, the status effects mostly pass as visual noise.
The biggest problem is the pace. Units have too much HP compared to the damage they deal, which is why even trivial random skirmishes can drag on for twenty minutes, even with the animations speeding up. The result is counterintuitive: a fight so exhausting that I felt like avoiding it, and when I have to bypass its key system in a strategic game, something fundamentally has gone wrong.
Avyannine klase nude određenu fleksibilnost. Protagonisticu možete specijalizirati u četiri uloge – Warmaster (okrenuta direktnoj borbi i zapovjedništvu), Primordial Ruler (magična i elementalna moć), Holy Regent (podržavajuća, s naglaskom na liječenje i aurama) i Witch Queen (tamna magija, debuffovi i manipulacija statusima). Reklasifikacija je dostupna za malu cijenu u zlatu, što daje dobrodošlu slobodu eksperimentiranja. Nažalost, razlike između klasa ne osjećaju se dovoljno drastično da bi svaka od njih nudila suštinski drukčiji doživljaj a Avyanna uopće ne djeluje kao snažni heroj koji donosi veliku razliku na terenu.
Problem frakcija – Kada sve sjeda za isti stol
One of the core tensions of the Disciples series has always been the irreconcilable hatred between the factions. The Empire and Legion of the Damned do not share maps; they do not negotiate; they war until extermination. This ideological and cosmological irreconcilability was part of the atmosphere. Liberation and Domination abandon that concept in favor of flexibility. Avyanna can lead a squad made up of demons, undead, and humans that function in perfect harmony, without any internal tension or narrative explanation to back it up. The result is mechanically practical, but atmospherically empty. The franchise has always rested on the feeling that the factions represent opposing cosmic forces — here that feeling disappears in favor of a system that deals everyone the same card. The game tries to portray Avanna as an independent ruler who jumps out of the factions and unites them under one wing, but damn, when a paladin, a skeleton, and a demon fight side by side it's just weird.
The graphics are decent, but soulless
Vizualni identitet igre je solidan. Okolišni dizajn je pažljivo izveden, s detaljima koji svjedoče o uloženom trudu: trošne zgrade, ostaci magičnih rituala, proklete livade… Animacije borbe su pregledne, efekti čitljivi, ali svjetlija paleta, preglednost koja gura prema casual estetici, izostanak one tijesne tamne gotike koja je definirala raniji serijal ipak daje taj neki jeftini, generični izgled. Nije ružno, ali nije ni prepoznatljivo. Lišena je vizualnog identiteta koji bi je učinio nezaboravnom. Animacije likova u emotivnijim scenama ostaju iznenađujuće ravnodušne: dijalozi koji govore o gubitku, izdaji ili egzistencijalnoj krizi praćeni su izrazima koji ne prenose težinu tih trenutaka.
An atmosphere that carries more than the rest
The soundtrack is honestly one of the few aspects of the game that hits the mark more consistently. The orchestral compositions are dark and appropriate, with thematic variations following the different factions and regions. The ambient sound design, the sounds of the cursed forests, the rumbling of the volcanic plains do the hard work: making up for the atmosphere that the story and characters fail to convey. The contrast with the voice acting is even worse. When the music evokes a dark epic tone and the protagonist sounds completely outside of it, the impression created is dissonant and harder to ignore than if there was no music at all.
Conclusion — A game searching for its past
Disciples: Domination is a technically functional, visually decent game that offers enough content to entertain a player new to the genre, but that content just isn't fun. Here, the franchise has traded identity for accessibility, and depth for flexibility. The result is a solid but impersonal strategy that could be any other dark fantasy title on the market. She lacks that something, that dark seriousness, that uncomfortable coldness that made the series worth remembering in the first place. I think there are far better tactical games with RPG elements than this game, and I would recommend it to the newly die-hard Liberation fans. She just made me reinstall Disciples 2.
Rating: 2.5/5
Functional, but boring and impersonal. It bears the name of an old series without anything that made it special.
A copy of the PC version was provided by Kalypso Media for review purposes
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