Disciples: Liberation short review
Published on 2 July 2025

She'd seriously jump on anything that moves!
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Desperate for a Heroes of Might & Magic fix? Don't get your hopes up yet. Disciples: Liberation looks the part with its grim-dark world, but it's crippled by baffling design choices seemingly born from mobile gaming. My short review covers the atrocious UI, the piss-take of a real-time resource system, and how the combat turns into a mind-numbing chore. A true test of patience, even on sale.
I recently had the urge to play a Heroes of Might & Magic style of game, a niche genre with precious few offerings these days. Songs of Conquest was definitely not it (it's arse). So, I gave Disciples: Liberation a go. Having never played a previous entry, the Steam Summer Sale price was cheap enough to warrant a "why not?". Ten hours and nearly four maps later, I'm honestly about done with it.
Let's start with the decent bits. The world and lore, clearly built on previous entries, are okay. It's your typical grim-dark fantasy setting. The story is fairly generic but just grim enough that you want to see what disgustingly horrifying thing happens next. The characters are so-so, though the main protagonist is as horny as they come; she'd literally jump at anything that moves! The voice acting is a mixed bag, ranging from cringe to not bad, with some NPCs sounding decent while the protagonist is bloody awful. Art direction is fine, and some map designs look good enough.
The game boasts choices and consequences, but it seems they mostly just result in reputation changes with factions or a few extra units. There are a lot of illusions of choice here, I didn't need to play the whole game to tell that much.
Now, let's get to the questionable and downright "Bruh" design choices.
First, the resource system. If you've played HoMM, you know the drill: gold, wood, ore etc. for building, upgrading, and recruiting. Here, you can find resource nodes on the map and capture buildings for passive income. But what did the geniuses behind this game do? They made the production nodes generate resources based on real-world time, and only while the game is running. Yes, you heard that right. It’s a mechanic ripped straight from a mobile game. Why? A quick look at the developer, Frima Studio, shows they made a fair few shitty mobile games before this. It all clicks into place. Some might call this "peak" stupidity for a paid, single-player, offline RPG.
Next is the atrocious user interface. Again, clearly borne from their mobile development experience, it's just straight up arse. It takes multiple clicks to do simple things. You have to hold the right mouse button to dismantle items (who does that?). 'I' isn't the key for inventory. You have to press Tab in battle to end your turn, not space or enter. The entire UI is filled with this horrendous mobile design and lacks basic quality-of-life features. Let me just hold the right mouse button on each piece of equipment to dismantle it... separately... for two seconds each. Seriously.
While we're at it, the loot is pretty bad too. The stats on equipment are completely random. A chest guarded by a level 20 group might give you the same trash as one from ten levels ago. It won't be identical, because the stats are random, but it might just be one more point of strength than the garbage you got ten hours earlier. There is no sense of reward from chests or items in general.
Let's move to the game's core focus: the combat. The units are cool, with a lot of variety and unique skills, models, and playstyles. There are plenty of combos to mix and match. Unfortunately, using them quickly becomes a chore. Early on, combat is fun and quick. But as you progress, getting more units, the battles drag on. My current party has eight units I have to control manually, out of a maximum of fifteen. Yes, you have to manually control every single skill and movement, and watch every animation, even at 300% speed. Did I mention that higher-level enemies often bring their own stacks of ten or more units? What starts as an "ooh, an interesting battle" quickly becomes "urgh, I really can't be bothered".
There is a "Conquer" mechanic to auto-resolve fights against weaker optional enemies, but it feels completely arbitrary. Resource battles can be conquered, but for chest guardians or random map enemies, it's a toss-up. A random mob that's weaker than your party might be deemed "important" for no clear reason, forcing you to waste time on a pointless fight. This brings me to another peeve: the game often throws you into battles without any clue about the enemy's composition or level. If it's a story fight, you don't even get an option to retreat and prepare. You have to start the battle, quit, and reload. Oh, and if the enemy has higher initiative, you have to watch their entire turn play out before you can even press escape to quit.
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By about a quarter of the way through the game, enemies just start spamming area-of-effect attacks that hit you from across half the map, or immediately counters melee, or reflect 50% damage etc. It's just cheap, eye-rolling bullshit.
As I'm writing this, I've realised how much shittier this game is than I first thought. Many of its fundamental designs reek of a disgusting mobile game mentality. You can't help but think they originally planned for this to be some sort of live service game. You know, "Pay 99p to instantly fill your Divine Essence node!"
✅ The Verdict
So, my verdict? It's still more interesting than Songs of Conquest. Get it on a deep sale if you're desperate for some HoMM action. While I'd like to see the story and my choices through to the end, I doubt I can take any more of the chore that is everything else.