Majesty 2! Finally!

S

Stg Granite

Look, Ma! Two Heads!
Who of you have played Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim? You take the role of the king, but, instead of controlling your units, like in other RTS games, they act for they own.
Now, there comes Majesty 2, which is being deleoped by a Russian studio.
Here's an interview with Alexey Kozyrev, done by Rock Paper Shotgun.

There are a few screenshots at Gamespot.
 
Know the game, played the game and expansion. Loved game play and voice narration, although felt it could have had more stuff. Definitely will be waiting, was pleasantly surprised by Kings Bounty hope will get the same enjoyment from Majesty 2.
 
Huzzah, only played the demo of the original but the concept was fun and it was nice watching adventures wandering around.
 
Hrmm I've never played this one but the concept sounds similar to Settlers. I played Settlers but got bored since your guys do everything for you. How different is Majesty?
 
Bulderbak said:
So, our goal is to reinvent as many aspects of the original game as possible, to bring them up to date
Click to expand...
For fuck's sake not again!
Click to expand...
Precisely. I liked Majesty very much and consider it to be something of a hidden gem, but Majesty 2 seems to have changed too much, and in the wrong direction. By bringing aspects of the game "up to date" they apparently mean making it 3D and designing it first and foremost for multiplayer. The way the aspects of the original were invented the first time was what made the game good.

I could be wrong though. I hope I'm wrong. I have my fingers crossed.

On the bright side, if they screw it up, at least they're only screwing up Majesty and not Fallout. :wink:
 
SimpleMinded said:
Hrmm I've never played this one but the concept sounds similar to Settlers. I played Settlers but got bored since your guys do everything for you. How different is Majesty?
Click to expand...
I've never played Settlers, but in Majesty you "control" your units using "reward flags", which you can put on enemy units, buildings, items or unexplored areas. Whether your units will hunt the bounty or not, depends on the kind of enemy, your unit's level, and the amount of money promised. Of course, they act not only for money, and may want to kill or destroy something just for fun, greed or whatever.

Bulderbak said:
For fuck's sake not again!
Click to expand...
Yeah, let's just hope for the best...
 
SimpleMinded said:
Hrmm I've never played this one but the concept sounds similar to Settlers. I played Settlers but got bored since your guys do everything for you. How different is Majesty?
Click to expand...
Quite different from Settlers, I would say. More like Warcraft 2 with more depth and without any of the annoying micromanaging of units, because they act on their own with their own motives. A blending of Warcraft with a sim game. Your units aren't soldiers in an army, they're heroes who go out adventuring so they can get gold in order to buy new weapons and armor and other useful things they want. Or they might blow their money gambling or at the brothel. That's why the subtitle is The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. As Stg Granite said, you can influence your heroes to do things you want by offering bounties, but you don't control them directly.

When not adventuring wizards will sit in their tower studying. If you build a library, they'll go there to learn new spells. If you build a fairground you can hold a magic tournament, and the wizards will go there to compete for money and experience. Rangers, on the other hand, will explore all over the map. They get experience for revealing new areas. If you hold an archery tournament at your fairgrounds, they'll enter it.

It's really a nice game, extremely easy to play with a simple interface. Not everything works perfectly (in fact, it has a lot of flaws) but the whole time you're playing it you're thinking, "If only they fixed a few things, this would be a masterpiece." That's why reinventing the gameplay has an ominous sound. There was nothing wrong with it. Only the details needed attention.
 
Ok, so I'm playing a preview copy of this title. It's ok, but I'm just not seeing the major draw here...

Played the demo of Majesty as well...I dunno, RTS without control seems like a fairly inane concept to me, but I might just be missing the point.

Majesty 2 plays fairly smoothly, tho'. The 3D graphics are aight, and the interface is better than the first's. Can't say much about humour as the translations aren't very good, but the attempts are there.
 
Stg Granite said:
but in Majesty you "control" your units using "reward flags", which you can put on enemy units, buildings, items or unexplored areas. Whether your units will hunt the bounty or not, depends on the kind of enemy, your unit's level, and the amount of money promised. Of course, they act not only for money, and may want to kill or destroy something just for fun, greed or whatever.
Click to expand...
This sounds similar to Tropico, the Latin American small Republic/Dictatorship sim. I don't think you could move people, but you could finance the construction of various buildings, set wages, pass government edicts, and various political and government actions.
 
Brother None said:
Ok, so I'm playing a preview copy of this title. It's ok, but I'm just not seeing the major draw here...
Click to expand...
I can't speak to Majesty 2, but I'm not surprised you have this reaction. There was nothing instantly grabbing about the first one, either, which is possibly why it wasn't a bigger success. It took a simple concept did a good job in the execution. Over time I appreciated it's ease of play and what a refreshing change it was from Warcraft-type games where you constantly had to monitor and micromanage all your units. I think Majesty appealed to people who found that sort of thing tedious.

Still, there was plenty of room for improvement. I don't think any Majesty fan would deny that. It was one of those, "This would be a great game if only..." games.
 
I see they managed to add the protect and fear reward flags, this is quite good. In the original not being able to properly defend or guard certain structures or heroes was getting frustrating in some missions.

The most powerful mode of offense comes in grouping together heroes in adventuring parties, possible by bringing them together in a tavern. A high-level heroes group, directed correctly with reward flags, will easily clear out the map for you.
Click to expand...

This was the next logical step I suppose. In the first Majesty the only way of making heroes acting as a party was to create barbarian heroes. Every other hero liked to follow the barbarians, I don't know if this was really intended but made some maps incredibly easy. So, I hope they would balance well this. One of the things I enjoyed about the original was the frigging difficulty.
These additions are very good and from the preview Majesty 2 sounded similar with the original, the gameplay basically seems the same, however this is only a preview copy, it would be perfect if it goes along this line....except the graphics, they are really ugly.
 
Bulderbak said:
In the first Majesty the only way of making heroes acting as a party was to create barbarian heroes. Every other hero liked to follow the barbarians, I don't know if this was really intended but made some maps incredibly easy.
Click to expand...
I believe the original Majesty lore indicated that the Rangers had some sort of historical allegiance to the Barbarians, and would follow them around. And of course, Healers would follow everyone around, so there's your party.

In M1 I used to edit the quest files to give me illegal building combinations. The most unbeatable one I ever came up with was Temples of Krypta and Temples of Agrela together. The Priestesses would create armies of skeletons, and the Healers would follow them around making sure they never died. Er...stopped working.

BN, the only thing in your preview that worries me is the part about how they're trying to replicate the humor in M1. I wouldn't call it great comedy, but it had a consistent light-heartedness that worked. I hope they don't botch that.

I've gone from optimistic when Paradox bought the rights, to pessimistic when reading the M2 PR, to neutral because some of the changes that have been made are clearly good ones.
 
UniversalWolf said:
I believe the original Majesty lore indicated that the Rangers had some sort of historical allegiance to the Barbarians, and would follow them around. And of course, Healers would follow everyone around, so there's your party.
Click to expand...

So this is the explanation, interesting but warriors were eventually getting in the "crowd" too. It looked more like a crowd than a party and with rage of krolm it was pretty hilarious.

UniversalWolf said:
The Priestesses would create armies of skeletons, and the Healers would follow them around making sure they never died.
Click to expand...

Wicked. Dragons falling like flies.
 
I've been playing Majesty 1 a bit today. It's good, but it's definitely lacking something.
 
After watching the video clips (the teaser and the Fighting is Good clip), one thing that bothers me is the fighting animations. It doesn't look like there is actual contact when a blow connects, only when the person/monster dies. Yes, I see that the person sometimes staggers back and sometimes there is a spray of blood, but there isn't anything to suggest or pretend that real physics are involved. Especially when a big monster hits a normal sized human. Maybe I am just being too picky, but it just makes the fighting less impacting and more like a spreadsheet is working in the background (World of Warcraft style - yuck).
 
Nice preview, BN! I see some real improvements over there.

You should upload the demo to the Files section, so that we could put our hands on it! Please? I swear I won't tell anyone...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top