Disciples 2: Servants of the Dark Review

To this day, Disciples II: Dark Prophecy is regarded by many as one of the best fantasy-themed turn-based strategies on the market. Its intuitiveness and smooth gameplay, enriched with excellent high-quality visuals and audio, made the game extremely addictive and brought quite a nice refreshment to the genre. Soon the game received a long-awaited add-on entitled, Disciples II: Guardians of the Light, which only allowed players to play on the good side. Similarly, Servants of the Dark restricts players to the other side of the Disciples world - i.e. you play as the bad guys, without being able to choose the races from the light side. Players who are completely new to the Disciples series will be pleased to know that Servants of the Dark is a stand-alone expansion that includes the campaigns from the original Disciples II.

Disciples II: Servants of the Dark gives you a chance to stand as a leader of the Legions of the Damned or the Undead Hordes. If you take side of the Legions of the Damned, you'll be joining their effort to spread Bethrezen's plague throughout the whole of Nevendaar. The Legions of the Damned also have a plan to increase their power and strengthen their reign by stealing the incredible power of the recently reborn Elven god. On the other hand, you may choose to be on the side of Mortis and her greatly numbered Undead Hordes. Mortis steps into conflict with her resurrected husband Gallean, who had discarded her for what she had become over the years. Revenge and blood are on her mind, and she will stop at nothing to unleash her wrath upon Gallaen's people...

The main purpose of any expansion pack is to squash any remaining bugs/gameplay glitches and add more (preferably innovative) content, thus expanding the original gameplay. Unfortunately, Disciples II: Servants of the Dark doesn't offer that many innovations over the original. Players who have been waiting for the expansion pack since DII: Guardians of the Light will surely want more than this game has on offer. Granted, both of the new campaigns seem to provide miscellaneous new maps and story-driven scenarios, but that doesn't seem to cut it. The add-on simply craves for more new units, items, and features. Another negative point is that some drawbacks from the previous game are still present this time around. To be honest, it seems rather difficult to make out certain units on the maps. This presents a very annoying problem when you're hurrying your heroes through the region. For example, you could be returning to your hometown with intention of healing your army and adding a few more units to your ranks. Suddenly, a battle may occur because you came across a horde of orcs, which could hardly be seen on the map (regardless of the resolution you happen to be playing in).

As I had mentioned earlier, the original Disciples II campaigns were included in the expansion pack. The idea was to give gamers an opportunity to go through all the missions so they can reach level 10 with their leader characters. If you don't have a saved game with a character of level 10, there's no chance you can play the new add-on. No chance? Well, it's not entirely hopeless. If you take the time to check out the readme file, you'll find out that the developers have included several high-level leaders in the "Bonus\Exported Leaders" folder on disc 1 - hm, that's a dirty trick. Be warned that if you use any cheats, the exported leaders will be disabled. Drat! What can I say... they really know how to play hardball, don't they? Also, if you are new to the Disciple II series, it's highly recommendable that you take the time to play the game from the very beginning, so you can get acquainted with the rules and basics of gameplay. Later on, you may use your high-level leader characters for playing the expansion pack.

Visually, nothing has changed since the original Disciples II. Fair enough, there are a few welcomed extras here and there. For starters, players will be able to see a number of brand new characters throughout the campaigns - which have exhibited original and cool-looking concept art. All these characters were also vividly animated and they fit well into the gameplay. The new maps may not look like much, but they were beefed up a bit and can now be viewed in the new high-res mode (1280*1024). Technically, the game seemed to have improved to some extent over its previous incarnation; occasional bugs that were present in the previous game have now been removed, hence the entire game works smoothly and without any issues. On top of that, the sound was tweaked a bit further and players may now hear a variety of new music themes (if you should become bored, you can always put in your very own MP3 list and listen to it during the gameplay - which is always fun).

It was a tad disheartening when we saw that the game didn't bring even more innovations when it comes to visuals. Still, one has to bear in mind that this is just an expansion pack. Primarily, however, I expected a lot more content in the expansion, playable campaigns, and other features that could've improved the gameplay and rekindled all the good aspects of the original. The 16 new skirmish missions and a small choice of new characters doesn't seem to cover it. Make no mistake though, Servants of the Dark is fun; it's just that the whole experience is a bit short when compared to the lengthy and extensive original. Consequently, there may not be much in the game to keep hardcore fans occupied for long. Once you finish the two new campaigns, the expansion pack doesn't appear to offer any interesting features that might bring you back for another ride.

Clearly, Strategy First would've have made a greater impact if they merged both add-ons (Guardians of the Light and Servants of the Dark) into one stand-alone project. It's almost certain that such a game would've met a more favorable response from the hardcore crowd, as well as the rest of the gaming community.