Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim

The first Majesty was a niche game that combined some city-management along with some real-time-strategy elements. It wasn't a first-line title by a long shot, but it was a lot of light fun. Majesty II starts with the same basic premise and ideas and gives the game a much needed graphical update.

Yet, despite what should be a great premise, flaws in the game become legion. In nearly every single way except graphics, the game falls far short of the original. The scenarios, beyond the first few, become glorified defenses against 'zerg rushes'. The AI of your heroes, the key to any game, is abysmal. Each mission becomes a quest of 'beat the right spawn points, in the right order, or lose', a guessing game on how the designers put the mission together. The blatantly bad AI is 'made up for' with increasingly insane levels of difficulty for the monsters you must fight. Strategy becomes virtually non-existant.

To make matters worse, unlike the first game, there is no random map generator. There's the campaign, and a few 'set' encounter maps, and nothing else. There is also no tool for creating new maps to play on, so even that functionality is gone. It's a game that, if you can slog through it, lasts about three to four days of play time. After that, there's no point in playing.

If this had been a budget title, $19.99 or so, or sold in the discount racks in a jewel case (which is, coincidentally, how you can currently find the first game's Gold version), some of these flaws might be forgiven. Unfortunately, at a $40 price point, it's supposed to be a top-line title, and it certainly isn't. Anyone interested in this type of game should save themselves the bother and find the far superior original game. Failing that, read a book instead.

Long ago a picked up Majesty 1 by chance and was very impressed. The addictive game play and unique features (not having direct control of units for example) set the game apart from many other strategy games of its time. So when I saw the release of Majesty 2 I had high hopes. However, after a few days playing I was not only disappointed but frustrated to the point of uninstallation. The best thing about this game is that it reminded me how fun its predecessor was. The customization options have been dumbed down, the AI is terrible, the game goes from easy to incredibly difficult within a few missions, and my biggest complaint, NO FREE PLAY.

There are only two single player modes; campaign and single mission. Campaign mode is very similar to its predecessor, there are different missions each with their own objectives and difficulty settings. In single mission mode you get to pick from a very short list of missions with no difficulty settings or any tweakable settings for that matter. If you want a casual game don't pick single mission. With almost constant enemy attacks and heroes that will walk right by a monster sooner than attack them without a bounty you don't get much time to explore the features of city building. Additionally, the option players had in Majesty 1 to continue game play after the mission was completed was removed in this sequel as well.

The AI feels much worse than Majesty 1. I can't even count how often a monster will by attacking a structure while heroes walk right by, sometimes even going into the attacked building to buy goods as if nothing was wrong. One of the most distinct features of this game franchise is the fact that the player has no direct control over the heroes, which is what made the first one unique and fun, but in order to pull it off the heroes have to have good AI which none of the classes do in this sequel. It ends up being frustrating and costly having to put attack bounty flags on monsters IN YOUR CITY because your heroes are too busy buying healing potions a few feet away.

Additionally, having played through Majesty 1 I found this game much harder even from the start. While typically the non-campaign mission are more casual they all seem to be permanently set on expert in this game. There are MANY more expenses and hero upgrades in this expansion which adds additional fun game play but also hit your wallet...hard. For instance in the smith you have to upgrade all 3 class types (melee, ranger, magic) separately now. One level 3 armor type costs 3000 gold as well so just upgrading all your weapons armor from level 2 to level 3 will run you 18,000 g. And because you sure as hell have to create heroes fast for the inevitable and constant monster attacks that start 2 minutes into the game, I usually spent the first half of the game constantly scraping by and the last half with more money than I know what to do with. Also because trade posts are much harder to build (you can only build temples and trade posts in designated areas now, usually surrounded by monster dens) your income is slower than the original as well.

What stunned me the most however was the lack of any type of free play. Even in majesty 1 the player could choose a randomly generated game based on difficulty or customize their own. Hell, almost every strategy game in the last 10 years has had some kind of free play/custom map option. This was my favorite part of the game especially early on as I could make an easy game and experiment with the different temples and heroes. The ability to build and maintain a big city is lost in this sequel since you are confined to these predetermined missions and have no option to continue playing after the mission is complete.

There are good aspects of the game as well, and improvements to classes. The new lord system and partys are cool. But you can read about those in any review. However, if, like me, you were a fan of the original game and expected a similar experience you may be disappointed. If you haven't played the original I'd say play that game first if you can deal with the older 2nd graphics. The game play/AI/game options are vastly superior to this dumbed down rehash.

The sequel to Cyberlore's original "Majesty", released in 2000, "Majesty 2" is a Fantasy Kingdom Simulator by a completely different studio that attempts to uphold the standard established by its predecessor. In some ways, it succeeded; in other ways, it could not.

Majesty 2 places you in the role of a king ruling over a fantasy realm. As with Majesty 1, you control the realm indirectly; you can hire heroes and cast some spells, but most of the work of the realm is carried out automatically. Once you've hired heroes, you can influence them with reward flags; placing bounties on monsters, or marking certain areas for exploration. Majesty 2 also adds two new flags - a timed "protect" flag that heroes will guard until it expires, and a "fear" flag that warns them to stay away from an area.

The economic system is taken from Majesty as well. Tax collectors are sent out from your castle to the various guilds and markets of your realm. Places for heroes to buy weapons and items are the most prosperous; heroes will go out, slay enemies, and then return laden with gold to spend it on upgrades, and thus bring it into your kingdom's circulation.

Heroes on the whole are similar, too, with a few differences. Warriors are your basic tanks, armed with sword and shield. Rangers carry bows and are the main explorers. Clerics heal allies (though you get them much earlier than you did in Majesty, which is a little unbalancing). Rogues are easily influenced by money, though their design is different than Majesty - they use knives instead of crossbows, which means that they're not particularly helpful in a fight due to their low health. Wizards are powerful spell-slingers, but are weak at low levels.

One difference with heroes is that they can be upgraded to a different temple-based class. This is roughly equivalent to hiring paladins, barbarians and the like in Majesty; all it really means is that in addition to hiring these warriors directly from the temple, you can choose to upgrade a lower class into a higher one - keeping experience, but leaving items behind. Another difference is that you can organize heroes into parties in Inns. Parties will hang out together, thus ensuring their group safety. Finally, at the end of every scenario, you can choose one hero to designate as a "lord". Lords can be brought from mission to mission, keeping their experience, gold, and items. This adds some element of connection to the game, and you can get attached to your more powerful characters if you use them enough.

The main problem with the game, though, is that the campaign is relatively short and there is no real Free Build mode. Majesty had a mode where you could set various options and just play on a random map; Majesty 2 lacks that feature, but has a few pre-made scenarios. However, since the free building was the main source of replay value in the game, this difference is a major problem with the game. There were so many different options in the original that the outright removal of the feature just seems silly.

The graphics are unpleasantly outdated. Stylistically, it looks somewhere between Warcraft III and World of Warcraft; lots of cartoony armor and stylized buildings. However, the actual effects and textures aren't that great, and it's not a particularly fun game to watch. Two years ago it might have been acceptable, but now it just looks outdated. It doesn't look distractingly bad, but it doesn't look good, either. You can't really arrange your town - buildings can't be rotated - so there's no joy in making a prosperous city since it's all a giant mess of structures.

Most of the voice acting is pretty bad, with the exception of the Advisor, who is actually the same voice actor from the original Majesty. Many of the lines of the heroes in the game are the same as the original game's, but because of the bad voice acting it just seems like a shallow attempt to appeal to the original's fans. The music is nice, but forgettable.

As a whole, Majesty 2 is kind of fun, but not good in its own right. The low production quality and the lack of random maps really upsets it. There's multiplayer, but it uses the archaic Gamespy Arcade for internet play. Honestly, it feels like it should have been released four years ago; as it is now, it's really just disappointing.

6/10.

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