>>11857596Disciples is more RPG-y. Instead of commanding armies, you control parties of a hero and up to 5 units that gain XP and pokemon evolve across branching upgrade paths. Combat is also like JRPG combat where parties stand in front of each other and exchange attacks, there's no hex/grid movement and the strategy comes from HP management and prioritizing targets. The core gameplay is about taking the optimal route around the map to level up your main party and gather items as efficiently as possible for the final battle. Fights can be their own reward for the experience even if there are no items or resources behind them. Meanwhile town management and macro are less important, the game even discourages you from winning scenarios by capturing the opponent's main town by having it guarded by an almost unbeatable superboss. You gain resources by transforming the land to your alignment, either by capturing neutral towns or having a special hero create small patches of your land by placing rods.
Presentation-wise both Disciples and HoMM3 are iconic to me, but I really dig Disc's gothic as fuck French pseudo-anime artstyle. I don't know why they went with renders instead of hand-drawn portraits in the sequel, it's one thing that I think is objectively inferior about it.
Nothing beats HoMM3 in the replayability department especially with the random map generator, but sometimes I just stop and think "hmmm today I want to level this particular party comp in Disc" and drop a couple evenings on it
