The bad: Advanced and Expert scenarios may be overwhelmingly difficult to the point of frustration.
The tally: 8 / 10
About the Game
“…many have tried to pry the legendary scepter from the dead king’s hands. None have succeeded. And now, it’s our turn!”
– The Advisor
Released in 2009, Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim is the sequel to (you guessed it) Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim, published in 2000. In both games, you play a king who can build structures for recruiting heroes, supplying their gear, researching spells, and defending the realm. Majesty and Majesty 2 are unique takes on real-time strategy gaming in that you cannot directly control the heroes that you produce. Instead, you set bounties for exploring areas, defending your structures, and attacking enemy units or buildings. You can also set a bounty for keeping heroes from entering an area, although you probably won't be using this type of bounty often, if at all. Having an indirect level of control makes sense in the context of the game. You are supposed to be a king after all, not a micro-manager.Each guild that you construct allows you to recruit specific types of heroes; namely, clerics, elves, dwarves, rangers, rogues, warriors, and wizards. You can also build temples that allow you to recruit archers of Helia, beastmasters, blademasters, paladins, priestesses of Krypta, and priestesses of Agrela. These heroes have minds of their own and will go looking for adventure or picking fights with monsters as they please. As mentioned previously, you can direct their efforts by offering monetary rewards for various tasks, although you cannot choose who will respond to your bounties. Heroes will earn experience points each time they attack an enemy creature or structure, and they can gain gold that they may spend at your commercial establishments. They may also die if they are not careful, but you may resurrect them from the local graveyard for a fee that rises in proportion to their level.
Everything that you do – from constructing buildings to casting spells – is fueled by the taxes that you collect from the local populace. Some buildings, such as the marketplace, can generate more revenues than others. You can increase taxes from the marketplace by building trading posts at specially designated spots. Defending these trading posts and the gold-laden caravans that they spawn is going to cost you by way of spells, protection bounties, or defensive towers.
Despite being unable to control heroes directly, you'll be busy setting up your structures, issuing bounties, and casting spells throughout the game. You will also need to scan the realm for developments that may warrant your attention. It is tempting to occasionally watch a fight in one area, but if you spend too much time watching, you may lose track of another battle elsewhere, and before you know it, down goes one of your buildings, along with all the research and upgrades that you had invested in it.
Anyone who has ever played Dungeons & Dragons knows that having a balanced mix of heroes in any party is crucial for survival. In Majesty 2, however, heroes will tend to gallivant by default without regard for teamwork. To rectify this situation, you can construct a pub and initiate research on party formation. When done, you can use the pub to gather heroes and form four-person parties with them. The members of a party will then travel together until death does them part (or until you disband them, whichever comes first).
Come to think of it, having the king dictate when parties should be formed and who should comprise them seems odd. This design decision is not consistent with the rest of the game, where directing the populace is one step removed from immediate control. Party formation is a new feature that was not present in the first Majesty game. It is a welcome feature to be sure, but one that seems out of place with the rest of the game.
At the start of each scenario, the entire land is shrouded in a fog of war, except for a small area surrounding your initial buildings. The land is dotted with enemy structures that periodically spawn hostile units, so it is generally a good idea to encourage your heroes to explore the land so you can set attack bounties over these structures.
The campaign scenarios range in difficulty from Novice to Expert. The more difficult scenarios are sufficiently varied to require different strategies and build orders to succeed. Herein lies the rub. The later scenarios are so punishing that you are bound to fail in your first few attempts while you try to discern the pattern in the enemies’ attacks. Exploring the land early makes for good policy, but in some scenarios, early exploration will trigger an immediate assault from powerful enemies. Building defensive towers around your town is usually a good idea but not in one scenario, where the boss can huff and puff and blow your towers down. If you make a mistake somewhere along the line, your enemies will accumulate and overwhelm you with sheer numbers. The only way to gather sufficient intelligence for victory (short of reading a walkthrough) is to try different strategies and fail often until you find one that works.
On the shallower side, the 3D graphics are attractive if not spectacular, and the music and sound effects are pretty good. The actor who plays your royal advisor sounds a lot like Sean Connery and does an excellent job of narrating events. The voice acting for the bosses, however, leaves something to be desired.
The setting of the game is generic fantasy, albeit with a dash of humor that adds to the game’s entertainment value. Two of the bosses are clearly inspired by Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, particularly the movies by Peter Jackson. Seeing them made me smile with recognition.
