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A meager gem

Disciples: Sacred Lands is when you take all the color and joy out of a Heroes of Might and Magic and instead force the author of the Witcherbooks, Andrzej Sapkowski, to draw a fantasy world in Bob Ross-esque fashion where a happy ending is most likely to equate to death by natural causes. The lore of Disciples resembles the biblical model - the orthodox one, mind you. The game is gloomy, oppressive. Angels fight devils, the undead maraud and dwarves are nasty little mountain bastards.

The game often makes us feel powerless as we watch our units die, but it is also honest in a way. Where other fantasy games laugh dirty in our faces with bright colors and gaudy effects while we get punched in the face, Disciples doesn't even look at us. 'Your problem', it seems to say. And somehow that's true.

The game is not so dissimilar to the Heroes-series mentioned above: Here, as well as in the latter, we recruit heroes who explore a world from the iso-view, fight monsters, collect resources and conquer cities. We can add one building to each of these per round, which allows us to unlock new or stronger units, learn spells or gain access to other useful items. But that's where the similarities end.

Firstly, there are only five resources in Disciples , of which we only need gold to upgrade cities or purchase units and items. The other four resources are mana crystals from the various deities. We need these to unlock and cast spells. So we are not limited to the mana pool of our hero, but to our financial reserves. If we want to heat up an enemy with fireballs before battle or teleport from A to B, we can do so as long as our reserves are full.

Secondly, unlike in the Heroes-games, we do not recruit unit stacks, but have a maximum of six slots (or five minus the hero) in our armies, which we can fill with individual fighters. As some units also take up two slots, our hero squad can sometimes consist of just four warriors. So instead of managing numbers, we try to keep our soldiers alive with potions and spells in every battle. This is because they gain experience and, gaining enough of it, level up, turning a knight into a paladin, for example - provided we have constructed the necessary building. More on this in a moment.

The battles are quite rudimentary: lined up in pairs, our men follow their initiative value and hit their opponents one after the other until their life bar has reached zero. There is no tactics on a battlefield like in Age of Wonders , the only decisive factor is whether we have placed our melee fighters at the front. This makes skirmishes less challenging and only really exciting because of the question of whether our units survive the battle as unscathed as possible. Because if they don't and we don't have a graveyard to resurrect them for a good chunk of money, we have to laboriously level up our reinforcements again. This is potentially very frustrating, but is balanced out by the joy of a completely overpowered constellation of units.

But its real strategic appeal Disciples presents even before the fights. Namely in the question of which buildings and consequently which upgrades we build for our units: Do we want our cleric to be a strong healer or would we prefer a witch hunter who can shoot from a distance? And do we take a knight as our hero who can fly quickly across the map on his Pegasus? Or would we prefer a mage whose spells cost less?

Beyond these questions, it's simply fun to watch your troops level up and observe how the world map becomes more and more covered with our terrain. This happens automatically within our city's sphere of influence and differs from faction to faction: humans get grass, the mountain dwarves snow, the undead dead land (duh) and the demons classic lava landscapes with nasty rocky outcrops. In combination with the character artwork, which is still very stylish today, Disciples: Sacred Lands really hasn't aged badly, even if nostalgia might get the better of me. It's certainly not a must-play, but it's definitely worth a look for genre fans.

Meanwhile, the soundtrack by Sébastien Thifault is also worth a listen. Although he has not produced any other compositions apart from Disciples: Sacred Lands - which is hardly surprising as he is mainly listed as a visual effects artist - he apparently has a net worth of 11 million dollars . If you're confused now, welcome to the club.

The OST comprises 25 tracks, more than half of which can be directly dismissed as the "Ambient"-trackks are background effects, the content of which ranges from frogs croaking to crows crowing to owls hooting. Also rather bland are the city screens ("City", "Dwarf", "Heretic", "Human", "Undead"), which means that we can't listen to any beautiful themes like in Heroes of Might and Magic ... what a shame.

If you exclude these non-songs, the score begins with "Battle" - and yes, there is only one piece that plays during the battles. The fact that I still haven't grown tired of it should speak volumes. Somehow I like the simple melody that loops towards us. Reminds me of the Commandos-games. This is followed by the nice "Golden", which is a bit Deus Ex-esque. In general, the tracks are quite catchy and simple, which may be due to the time before the millennium, or may be a stylistic device for this subdued high-fantasy setting.

The highlight of the score for me, however, is the "Menu" theme, which oscillates somewhere between inconsequentially simple and brilliantly motivating. The combination of flute, harp and drums has a wonderfully archaic character that suits this rough diamond of a game. It is not refined, not cleanly crafted or polished. Here's a piece where the composer says: 'Hey, I had an idea for a cool melody, I'll try to realize it as best I can'. That's enough for me, and apparently for Thifault too, as it appears as a quote or variation in almost all the other pieces such as "Camp", "King of the Sacred Lands" (cheerful), "Midgard" (triumphant) or "Undead 2" (depressing). For some, this may signal a lack of ideas, but I think it makes sense, as I often emphasize, because it establishes a sense of identity. And since the score doesn't have much else to offer anyway, it's all the better that at least the theme works.

As mentioned at the beginning, nostalgia may speak for me here, but for a game that was less successful than it deserved in my opinion, the soundtrack is really well done. It's annoying that the tracks have all been looped once, but as they would otherwise have been a bit short and the melodies are catchy enough not to be annoying, I have no problems with that. I would definitely recommend giving it a listen, especially as it doesn't take forever anyway. And afterwards you can still tell me that I have no clue what good music is.

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Nostalgia warning

The rating of the individual tracks is purely subjective and clearly colored by my own experience with the game. You can find out more in the article About Nostalgia.

Nr.	Title	Interpret(en)	Ratings
01	Ambient 01	Sébastien Thifault	1
02	Ambient 02	Sébastien Thifault	1
03	Ambient 03	Sébastien Thifault	1
04	Ambient 04	Sébastien Thifault	1
05	Ambient 05	Sébastien Thifault	1
06	Ambient 06	Sébastien Thifault	1
07	Ambient 07	Sébastien Thifault	1
08	Ambient 08	Sébastien Thifault	1
09	Ambient 09	Sébastien Thifault	1
10	Ambient 10	Sébastien Thifault	1
11	Ambient 11	Sébastien Thifault	1
12	Ambient 12	Sébastien Thifault	1
13	Battle	Sébastien Thifault	4
14	Camp	Sébastien Thifault	3
15	City	Sébastien Thifault	1
16	Dwarf	Sébastien Thifault	1
17	Golden	Sébastien Thifault	4
18	Heretic	Sébastien Thifault	1
19	Human	Sébastien Thifault	1
20	King of the Sacred Lands	Sébastien Thifault	4
21	Menu	Sébastien Thifault	5
22	Midgard	Sébastien Thifault	4
23	Undead	Sébastien Thifault	2
24	Undead 2	Sébastien Thifault	3
25	Unspoken	Sébastien Thifault	4