Majesty

Developer: Cyberlore
Publisher: Microprose

 

System Requirements Pentium 166 Mhz, 64 MB RAM

Recommended Pentium II 266MHz, 64+ MB RAM,

Ratings
Code Issues Graphics 5 : Yeah it’s a strategy game and graphics shouldn’t matter, blah-blah.  But to have 2D graphics that become choppy on a mid-ranged machine is unacceptable. Audio 6: The voice acting is cool, the music pleasing.  But the typical grunts and other assorted unit sounds are standard fare. Interface 6 : A bit too much at your control for a game that doesn’t allow too much control.	Play Issues Solo gameplay 8 : Just plain fun, with it’s easy to learn gameplay and subtle depth. Replay Value 4: Beyond the 18 quests, you’re left with skirmish mode and a boring multiplayer mode.   Multiplay 4: This part of the game doesn’t really work out well, with everyone building up the same, boredom, drop outs and stalemates are all too common. Learning Curve 6: Very easy to pick up, but how everything works as a whole requires your attention.
Other/Notes Documentation 7 : Thin book that gets to the point and tells you what to do without giving away all the secrets. Pros:  easy to learn, interactions of different units fun to learn   Cons:  too short, multiplayer not implemented well. Overall: 7.4

Cyberlore Studios are no strangers to making a commercially successful product. Just look at Warcraft 2: Beyond the Dark Portal and Heroes of Might and Magic 2: The Price of Loyalty and you’ll realize that this is a small studio that creates quality software.  Now out under the Microprose brand label (and hence Hasbro), is there latest title Majesty, the Fantasy Kingdom Sim.  

First things first, this is not a fantasy kingdom sim.  It is a unique game that is essentially an RTS game.  To tout it as a sim of any kind is the mistake of a marketing ‘genius’ who didn’t really know what it was.  A sim after all is a simulation of something that mimics reality in some shape or form.  In this case, you would think the game akin to a fantasy version of one of Maxis’ classics, most notably SimCity.  Alas, that is not the case.  Majesty is just a real-time strategy game.  You have your atypical tech tree; you’re limited to certain buildings/units, depending on the map, etcetra, etcetra.  And that is the allure of Majesty.  It is what we would call a niche game. As is the norm for niche games, people will either really love it or just plain hate it.  The reason?  It does not follow normal RTS conventions and is an attempt to break away from it.  It is this reason alone that we should tip our hats to Hasbro for taking a chance on a title such as this.

Majesty is set in a fantasy setting currently besieged by all manner of evil.  Your role in the game is that of a noble ruler seeking to unite the land.  This is accomplished by going on various ‘quests’.  The quests are essentially different maps to conquer.  Each quest begins with your advisor giving you a little backstory.  None of the quests are really linked in anyway, and you have the choice of which ones to conquer in any order you desire.  Note that there are some special quests that are only unlocked after you have completed some of the mainstay quests.

In game you will always begin with the Keep.  This is your main base of operations.  It is from here that your peasants wander out into the land to do your bidding.  They will build and repair buildings that are accessed through the keep.  Like any RTS, certain buildings are only available when others have been built.  And more built. Built, built, built.  Am I going mad?  No.  You see, in Majesty building is one of the few things that you have direct control over.  You choose the building from the keep, than place where you want it.  Your peasants will than move to build it.  Why?  Because you demand it.  But you have no direct control over their actions, and this is what makes Majesty unique (and what you will either love or hate about it).  You will have them build a Rogues Den.  This guild (as they are called in the game) can support up to four heroes.  You pay a certain amount of gold to bring them into your realm.  Heroes have stats that make up how powerful they are.  But unlike other games, you cannot control what they do, only influence.  These rogues will move about the kingdom and the land of their own freewill.  The same goes for the warriors and paladins, the rangers, the wizards and the special temple units.  These units move about the land looking to gain experience and gold.  So how do you influence them?  Gold, gold and more gold.  From your keep there will appear a tax collector.  He moves about the kingdom collecting tax from each building you have constructed (there are some exceptions).  This gold is added to your coffers.  You have two abilities within the game that allow you to influence the heroes and it is gold that activates the ability.  The first ability is in the form of the explore flag and the attack flag.  By placing these flags and adding an amount of gold to them, they will attract your heroes to explore unknown regions of the map and slay certain beasts, respectively.  Sounds simple, right?  Maybe too simple?  Maybe too lame?

This is the beauty of Majesty.  It’s depth is hidden in the folds of seemingly simplistic gameplay.  No grouping large amounts of units and hot keying this and that.  You have limited control which, believe it or not, adds up to some interesting and deep gameplay.

This is not to say that you will be spending hours on Majesty, no.  The maps are small enough to go through one or two a night, the campaign itself a little short.  But you do have the skirmish mode and multiplayer capability over the MSN Gaming Zone.

The second ability is in the form of magic spells that you can cast to benefit your heroes (bless, speed, etc.) or punish the enemy (lightning bolt and what not).  Again, the spells aren’t something that you haven’t seen before, but the gameplay is.  To get these spells you need certain buildings, like the wizards tower and the various temples.  By upgrading these buildings, you are able to access more spells.  Of course to upgrade you have to spend gold.  Financing is one of the major points of gameplay.  Your tax collector fills the coffers that you need to empty by putting it back into the kingdom.  The more buildings you have, the more tax can be collected.  Not to mention you need to help your heroes out.  Wizards need you to build and research spells at the library so that they can learn them.  Warriors appreciate it when you build a blacksmith and spend gold on researching better weapons and armor.  And be wary of a gambling hall, rogues love to spend their hard earned gold here instead of putting it to better use.  But the game does suffer too from this.  After your third marketplace and subsequent building upgrades, you will finally make it over that hump and find your coffers brimming with the good stuff, allowing you to bring in an army of heroes.  This does have the benefit of making the end game move on quicker, but this is at the expense of losing the tension of the early and midgame, when your funds are limited and your kingdom weak from roving monsters.

The units themselves have unique talents.  Rangers have missile weapons and love to search out the unexplored regions of the map.  Beware, though, that they don’t run from a fight in the wilderness and bring something unsavory home with them.  Wizards are powerful units when they have advanced far enough, but are very weak early on.  Better have warriors around to protect them.  You will also have to figure out which temples you prefer, since certain ones don’t get along with others (meaning build one type and you lose the ability to build another).  Temples bring you spells to use directly on the map and intersting units with special skills/powers (monks, healers, barbarians and more).  As you can tell, Majesty’s hidden depth is subtle.  Monsters wander into your kingdom and they end up killing your tax collector.  Guess what?  All the gold he had collected is gone, lost.  Better build more guard towers, because tax collectors can make drop offs their.  Better still, put an attack flag bounty on creatures that do show up, the town guard can handle only so much.  Need your heroes to pick up an item and bring it back to you?  No problem.  By thinking creatively you’ll realize that you can plop an explore flag next to it and they will come (automatically picking up the item).  You would figure without so much direct control that there would be down time in the game where you just watch the action.  Not so, there is always something to do (this may be the reason why the maps are small, it keeps the action quick and in your face).  Now here’s the subtle depth.  Say you put an attack flag on a dark keep (a building that creates wandering monsters).  Don’t be surprised if enemy heroes show up to destroy it and thus rob your heroes of the experience and gold, gold that would have been spent in your kingdom.  

Aesthetically, things could be better.  The graphics are 2D and, when you have a large amount of units on screen, are susceptible to slow down.  This on a PIII-450, 128MB of ram.  The buildings are nicely detailed, but nothing spectacular, save for the temples.  They are highly original and really add to the color of your kingdom.  The music is acceptable, the voice acting from your advisor sounds like a Sean Connery imitation.  The interface does the job, but can be confusing at times.  For a game where you have little actual control, the interface sure is cluttered.

All in all Majesty is a fun, lite strategy game.  Yes, the gameplay is subtle and has some depth, but after the basics you can just play around with different strategies with the varying quests.  The quests, thankfully, are varied in what you have to do, which is probably what makes you wish there were more quests, or just plain more campaigns.

Majesty is in the same vein as Dungeon Keeper, so if you enjoy this sim/strategy type of gaming, I suggest Majesty will please you.  For those who prefer more traditional based RTS games, Majesty may only frustrate you with it’s seemingly lack of direct control (or, hopefully, it will open doors in your mind to new venues of gaming).

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Reviewed by Anthony Sage