Product Details
 | Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim |
| List Price: | $29.99 |
| Price: | $6.16 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details |
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Ships from and sold by Hitgaming Video Games
40 new or used available from $4.66
Average customer review:
Product Description
In the world of Majesty, you are the ruler of the kingdom. At your service are your loyal and somewhat obnoxious subordinates, who have their own minds about how things should be done. In fact, Majesty is the only game where your heroes decide on their own what should be done and when, leaving you to try to control them through monetary incentives.Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #2062 in Video Games
- Brand: Paradox
- Model: 00206
- Released on: 2009-09-15
- ESRB Rating: Teen
- Platforms: Windows Vista, Windows XP
- Format: CD-ROM
- Dimensions: .25 pounds
Features
- Play through 4 different campaigns with more than 15 missions, as well as a stand-alone sandbox mode and a variety of multiplayer maps.
- Build the fantasy city of your dreams and experience an engaging world, but beware: monsters are waiting to lay siege to your domain.
- Defend your realm with noble Warriors, spell-wielding Wizards or wild Barbarians. Choose from more than 10 different classes to oversee the protection of your lands.
- Characters will develop in completely different ways, making every hero unique.
- Gamespy multiplayer for up to 4 players over LAN or Internet, including support for ranking ladders and tournaments.
Customer Reviews
Starts with promise, ends with dissapointment
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.
If you liked the
original, steer clear of the sequel.
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.
Disappointing Sequel to Great Game
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment