Disciples: Domination from Kalypso Media and Artefacts Studios is a turn-based strategy RPG in which you must try to keep together a crumbling kingdom. Check out our Disciples: Domination review!
Disciples: Domination from Kalypso Media and Artefacts Studios is a turn-based strategy RPG in which you must try to keep together a crumbling kingdom. The game takes place fifteen years after Avyanna freed Nevendaar from the tyrannical grip of the gods. You’ll, therefore, be stepping into the role of Queen Avyanna, as the crushing weight of the throne lingers over your shoulders at all times. You will need to decide how to proceed in a new world in which alliances have been broken, and conflicts lurk around every corner. Choices will have consequences, and they will help to shape the future of Nevendaar.
You’ll be ruling what remains of your realm from the capital of Ylian, and will need to consult your companions for the guidance needed to make the right choices – or the best choices possible given the circumstances. Sitting at the throne means that Queen Avyanna now fears she’s become the very thing she had always fought, which led her to a very dark place. Having abandoned her people, her people abandoned her, and this is why the region – left unattended – is now falling into chaos due to a poison that is slowly consuming the land, the animals, and the people. It’s been years since you’ve stepped outside of the walls of Yllian, and what you find is even worse than what you had expected…
You can play through Disciples: Domination by choosing one of five different difficulty settings: Story, Standard, Hard, Brutal, and Custom. Each of these will have an effect on the values for enemy health, enemy power, enemy critical chance, enemy resistances, enemy damage, healing from Unspent AP, end of combat healing, fountains refresh time, and random additional battle event chance. As you can probably guess, choosing the Custom difficulty option will allow you mix and match the values for these, so that you can find the right combination for you.
You’ll also need to pick a class for Queen Avyanna, which is certainly a major choice for this journey, since each class will have a different skill tree, abilities, and strategic roles when out on the battlefield. The good news is that you will be able to change your class later by paying some gold. You will be able to choose between the Warmaster, the Primordial Ruler, the Holy Regent, and the Witch Queen. The Warmaster excels at close-range combat, dealing high physical damage while protecting allies. The Primordial Ruler can command the Primal forces of the world to debuff and damage opponents. The Holy Regent is a keeper of life, focusing on healing the wounds of its companions while using divine magic to attack enemies from a safer range. As for the Witch Queen, it leans heavily into the dark arts, accumulating unholy power that can wreak havoc through the enemy lines.
The game’s combat is of the turn-based variety, with battles taking place over a grid. But before that, as you can tell from the trailer and screens in this Disciples: Domination review, we need to talk about the exploration part of the game! You’ll be directly taking control of Queen Avyanna, interacting with points of interest and objects, as well as with the people she finds along the way. This will be handled by using the left analog stick to ride through each location, as you press the X button to interact as needed. This will sometimes lead to making some dialogue choices, so be sure to pay attention! The icons for each choice will clue you into what Queen Avyanna might say next. A question mark is for a question that will be asked. A heart will be for an attempt to act romantically toward another character. Crossed swords means she’ll stop the conversation and attack the other character.
This is why, every now and then, you’ll find an interaction that leads you into battle. The first step will be to choose your starting formation. For this, you’ll get to pick the many units that are under your command so that you can place them on the corresponding hex of your choice. This is important, since it will allow you to plan your strategy in order to maximize the strength of each of your units while trying to compensate for their potential weaknesses in combat. As each turn takes place, units on your side and those for your opponent will act based on their overall stat values, with more powerful units acting first. You can review the turn order by checking out the timeline at the top of the screen.
While they act, a unit can choose to move over several hexes within its movement range, attack another unit, or use an ability. These will use up one of your action points (AP). A unit can have up to three different types of AP. Blue ones are for moving over tiles of lower or equal value to a unit’s specific movement stat value. Red ones are for using an ability. As for the yellow ones, they are for moving or using an ability. Any AP that remains at the end of a unit’s turn will be used to heal a percentage of their total hit points (HP), based on the difficulty setting you choose.
The remaining AP that a character might also grant a buff to a unit based on its color. Blue AP can grant the agile status, so that it can act sooner next time. Red AP will grant the strong status, which will allow that unit to deal more damage with its next attack. As for the yellow AP? It will grant BOTH status buffs, making it extremely useful! Will you use all of your AP in a single turn in hopes of defeating an opponent? Or will you take things a bit more slowly and try to make the most of the buffs you get so that you can set up your next turn accordingly?
Friendly and enemy units can have a condition applied to them when an ability is used on said target. This will be displayed either by a green arrow for positive conditions or a red arrow for a negative condition. On top of that, there will also be a number shown that will indicate how many of said conditions are currently on a unit. Conditions can also have a number on their icon in the bottom half, which will let you know the remaining duration for said condition. Some examples include Taunt, which will make units automatically attack the unit that placed the Taunted condition on them, or Runic Mark, which makes a unit with said condition trigger an area of effect centered around the unit that deals primal nature damage when said unit takes collision damage.
There’s also the possibility of using the elements present on the battlefield to your advantage. Say there’s a Seal of Terror near one of your opponents. Pushing them onto that particular tile will inflict them with the Afraid status ailment. Noticed an Orb of Regeneration near an ally that has been hurt? Then send them to that particular tile to collect it so that it restores 25% of their max HP while also granting the Regen buff, which means they’ll get to regenerate some additional HP over the next few turns. Since units can lose HP during fights, you’ll need to either use a healing spell during combat or interact with a health fountain when exploring a dungeon or the field.
Whenever a unit is defeated, it will leave behind a corpse on the tile on which it died. You can move to a tile with a corpse, as it won’t prevent a unit from stepping on it. Units with the Corpse condition will count both as a unit and as a corpse. What can happen is that some units will be able to interact with corpses to produce things such as Runes or Skeletal Remains.
By returning to the Throne Room at Yllian Castle, you’ll be able to listen to and resolve the grievances of your people, which is an important part of being Queen of Nevendaar. You’ll be presented with a situation and a context that will help you better understand what is being presented, so that you can make your verdict. There are three different types of grievances: the main ones that are linked with moving the story forward, exploration ones that are found while exploring Nevendaar, and crisis ones that can have a huge impact on your relationship with the different factions in the game.
Some of these grievances include, for instance, deciding if you should provide some food to the Wulf Coast, helping with finding fresh water to drink, a crucial action now that the poison is steadily spreading through the land, or sending emissaries to settle the matter with the elves, which could help alleviate the many issues that Countess Wolfheart is currently having to deal with. Maybe the elven woods have become dangerous for travelers due to what some have described as an evil monster that lurks in the darkness, ready to jump at the innocent people foolish enough to enter. Perhaps placing some traps in the forest could be useful? You’ll usually need to spend a lot of gold and some additional resources based on your choice, which will limit how many of the remaining options you can pick for other grievances, so listen carefully to each grievance and choose wisely!
You can also work on constructing different buildings to aid you in your overall mission. The first one you’ll need to work on is the Dwarven Barracks. You know, because your first set of companions are dwarves. The Dwarven Barracks is a place of sanctuary for the dwarves of the Mountain Clan. By constructing this particular building, you’ll be able to recruit units from the Mountain Clan, unlock and research new dwarven warriors, and upgrade their strength so that they become better warriors in combat.
As you defeat enemies and survive battles, you will gain experience points. Once you have accumulated enough experience points, you will get to level up. This will, in turn, boost some of their stat values, which is good news if you want to be able to stand a chance against the continuously improving enemies that you’ll run into, which can certainly pack a punch, especially during boss fights! Leveling up will also reward you with a skill point. You can then use these skill points to invest them in your chosen class’s skill tree! As mentioned before, you can spend some of your hard-earned gold to switch to another class, and you can also spend some gold to refund the skill points you’ve spent so that you can work toward creating a new build type for your character.
Each of these skill trees will have different paths to consider, and investing more points in a path will allow you to unlock the next tier in the skill tree, as well as more powerful passive nodes. Let’s talk a bit about the Holy Regent to give you a better idea of what some of your customization options are for the skill trees. You could also use skill points to upgrade abilities. You have Angelic Strength, which increases Avyanna’s power by 5% for each beneficial condition on her, up to 15%. You can imagine why you’d want to upgrade this one if you plan on stacking her with buffs. Another one is Consecrated Field, which, at the end of Avyanna’s turn, creates a Consecrated Field on all tiles adjacent to her, so that whenever an ally steps on a tile, it gains the Protected buff while also having a random negative condition removed.
The gold that you collect can also be spent at Yllian’s market so that you can purchase new equipment, as well as additional resources. The items that you can purchase will change over time, so be sure to check back often! You could purchase a Majestic Scepter for some extra power, a Hatefu Amulet to boost your overall Mana and HP, or some Leather Armor to get some extra Mana as well as add some Primal resistance. The resources you can purchase include iron, wood, Arcane flux, or some essences.
You can learn spells in exchange for resources by visiting the Spellbook section. The spell domain that you can access will depend on your current class. On top of that, you will always have access to the twilight domain. Once you’ve managed to learn a spell, you’ll be given a chance to upgrade said spell up to the same tier level as your current castle tier, which is why it’s important that you also work on improving your castle tier. Say you unlock Chain Heal, a very useful spell that will allow you to release a ray of healing that will spread through your allies. You can probably see how boosting its healing by upgrading could be a lifesaver during some of the more challenging battles in the game.
This release features a full trophy list with a Platinum trophy for you to try to add to your collection. The list is split into 14 Bronze trophies, 16 Silver trophies, and 4 Gold trophies for you to work on. What will you need to do for that shiny Platinum trophy? Some of the objectives to complete include recruiting all companions, obtaining your first unique item, synthesizing your first Dual Shard, completing 15 secondary objectives, triggering a collision between four units with one ability, exploiting enemy weaknesses 50 times, defeating a tier IV unit with a tier I unit, completing all quests in a region, upgrading all buildings to tier IV, as well as finishing each ot the game’s story chapters, to name some examples.
Disciples: Domination is a turn-based strategy RPG in which you must try to keep together a crumbling kingdom. The game takes place fifteen years after Avyanna freed Nevendaar from the tyrannical grip of the gods. You’ll, therefore, be stepping into the role of Queen Avyanna, as the crushing weight of the throne lingers over your shoulders at all times. You will need to decide how to proceed in a new world in which alliances have been broken, and conflicts lurk around every corner. Choices will have consequences, and they will help to shape the future of Nevendaar.
The game is fully voice acted, which certainly helps to bring its many characters to life. Disciples: Domination is out on PlayStation 5 with a $49.99 price tag. There’s also the Disciples: Domination – Deluxe Edition for $59.99, which, along with the base game, includes the following:
– Character Skins
– Weapon Skins
– Resource Starter Boost Pack
– Digital Compendium
– Original Soundtrack
Disclaimer
This Disciples: Domination review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by Kalypso Media.
