Disciples II: Guardians of the Light (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 7.0 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Greg Kasavin
• Reviewed on: 06/18/2003
• Updated on: 07/16/2003
• Released on: 06/14/2003
• Originally published on GameSpot: Disciples II: Guardians of the Light (PC) Review

Though you can find plenty of fantasy-themed turn-based strategy games on the shelves, last year's Disciples II is still one of the most distinctive and one of the best. Featuring some unusually detailed and stylized artwork, the game also incorporates many role-playing elements to lend continuity and an epic feel to its campaigns. Now, about eighteen months after its release, Disciples II finally gets a well-deserved expansion pack. Two, actually, since Guardians of the Light is being closely followed by the similarly styled Servants of the Dark expansion. However, Guardians of the Light isn't very substantial. It's halfway suited to new Disciples II players, who could just as well pick up a dirt-cheap copy of Disciples II from their local bargain bin, and it's halfway suited to experienced Disciples II players who would probably expect more from this add-on than what its dozen-odd skirmish maps and two high-level mini-campaigns provide.

The Guardians of the Light expansion only lets you play as the good-aligned factions of Disciples II: the Empire and the Mountain Clans. The Undead Horde and the Legions of the Damned, Disciples II's evil factions, are still present as adversaries, but cannot be controlled directly. As you'd expect, the Servants of the Dark expansion is the exact opposite. This is a strange design that simply limits the appeal of both games, since one of the great things about Disciples II was in how you could play from the perspective of four dramatically different and uniquely powerful sides.

This add-on actually contains the complete original Disciples II campaigns for both the Empire and the Mountain Clans. That's a lot of content for players new to the series, though again, they might as well just look for the original game since it's even cheaper now than this budget-priced expansion pack. Meanwhile, those who already own Disciples II have already seen this stuff.

The main reason the original campaigns are in here is because the new high-level campaigns may only be played if you have a leader character of 10th level or higher. So unless you've finished the original campaigns and still have the saved data on your hard drive, unless you've downloaded someone else's saved game, or unless you happen to look down in the game's readme file to find the clause about how some high-level leaders are hidden on one of the game discs' directories, this means you'll need to play through the original campaigns before you can get to the new content. The scenarios comprising the two new mini campaigns are very challenging and filled with little scripted events, so they're good as Disciples II missions go. They let you fight with and against many of the game's most powerful units, which were a relatively rare sight in the original.

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