Disciples III: Reincarnation Reviews

I don't normally leave negative reviews as I'm normally trying to find the positives even in the messiest games, but every now and then I just have to make the call - this game isn't BAD, per se, but pretty unsatisfying. Technical BYB note - the game's not exactly stable, it can crash fairly often, but with autosave features it's not something that could make you lose progress, just annoying. Some positives before the negatives pour: - I do actually enjoy most of the art direction in the game, which seems to be a bit of a controversial topic; - There are A LOT of different mechanics to employ - one would argue, too much, but you can always just not concern yourself with some of them; - The overall story is pretty interesting, although the timeline is pretty confusing. Now, why NOT recommended. 1. The game is NOT balanced at all. The Hordes and the Empire are undeniably OP where Elves and Legions can barely fend for themselves, which moves into another point; 2. Whoever designed the campaigns, never seemed to playtest them. It's not just the difficulty that varies wildly, but the amount of times when you're not given any tools to progress before big moments is ridiculous (worse of all, in the Undead campaign, which seemed incredibly half-assed by the end); 3. The AI is moronic. The only thing creating difficulty when you play against the computer is the amount of high-level units the game throws at you right off the bat. Worse still, if you want to speed up easier fights, the auto-combat feature will get your best units killed in the easiest situations; 4. For the final release, the game's incredibly unpolished - every now and then even in the English version you have Russian voice lines (which is the original development language), you regularly encounter world objects you can't interact with because someone opened the wrong side for interaction. All the negatives and problems are technically things you can live with, but it's not the "definitive", stable edition you'd want to buy - unfortunately, though, it's the only one you'll ever get now. Plenty of good ideas wrapped in bad execution - but if you're a fan of the franchise, it's still worth taking a shot. Took me over 120 hours to 100% all campaigns, but I cleared every map and I'm a pretty slow player.