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Polished, Innovative

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 35 / 36
Date: November 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

Majesty entered a world where RTSes had been solidly institutionalized for over five years (the four Xes, eXplore, eXploit, eXpand and eXterminate) and put a genuinely new twist on things.

In Majesty, you don't waste your time mining and directing minions to go hither and yon. You build your castle, your kingdom's amenities and, as you can afford themn, hero guilds. Each hero guild can support a certain number of heroes (usually 4), although you'll usually have to buy heroes.

But fret not, because each hero will pay you back many times over by visiting your marketplaces, blacksmiths, inns, and son on. In addition, each guild generates a bit of money on its own, and some provide extra services which can generate revenue.

Your tax collectors will walk from building to building collecting gold, ultimately returning it to your castle or nearby guard houses, while your heroes do whatever they do best. (Rangers explore, rogues steal, and so on.)

The more you build, the more support buildings (peasant huts) will pop up, themselves generating some revenue. Other side effects of urban life (like sewer drains) will appear, too.

The lands are always plagued with some menace or other, however, and its your job as king to make the world safe for--well, your taxpayers. Majesty, however, unlike most other RTSes, gives you no means to directly manipulate your subjects.

If you want a monster dead, then, you must place a bounty on it. If you're trying to destroy the evil crypt generating vampires, you must place a bounty on that. If you want to explore a dark area of the map, you can place an explore flag and try to draw heroes there--for a price.

All-in-all, this formula works, though it's not yet perfected. The balance between building facilities (like the marketplace) and building the guilds/generating heroes that you need to protect your kingdom is very well done. The heroes autonomy is good: Sometimes the destruction of a certain target will result in a greater evil being released, so you'll want to delay that--but your Paladins will have other ideas. On the other hand, your heroes can be so aggressive on their own that they win the game for you while you're not even aware of it.

If you've built a solid infrastructure for your city, you know you've won. The difference between a beginner's game and an expert's game becomes whether you can survive the opening minutes, and occasionally how well you prepare for the trigger event (the accomplishing of one goal that results in a rush of monsters).

So, if the game has a fault, it's that it's too easy. I don't mind; I enjoyed all the scenarios and liked that I could finish them.

Majesty Gold includes the Northern Expansion, an add-on of modest proportions with some tweaks to the rules to make the game harder. The add-on parts, with the tougher, winter-oriented monsters, are quite cool. The tweaks to the game rules, on the other hand, show the game's relative newness. They do make the game harder, but only by way of making it somewhat more frantic in those opening minutes: Even with the tweaks, it's an easy game.

But that's to be expected: The designers can't directly borrow from Starcraft (and clones) to get ideas. They have a new framework to figure out. Majesty 2 is not a shoo-in at this point, but let's hope the developers get a chance to do it. This is an interesting new direction that should be explored.

Meanwhile, we have this game, with solid gameplay, great artwork from industry stalwart Cyberlore, and remarkably few bugs.

Quite enjoyable!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 27 / 27
Date: October 12, 2002
Author: Amazon User

I bought this game on a whim and have been quite delighted with it. It's very simplistic, you're not getting a lot of strategy play or shoot 'em up stuff (like in CIV III, Warcraft or Empire Earth), but at the same time it's highly addictive.

Perhaps its simplicity is the key. That, and the delightful narrator who sounds suspiciously like Sean Connery. The premise is that you get an area map of the kingdom with all kinds of quests or challenges that you must complete -- from wiping out the monsters, to reclaiming your crown, seeking the holy chalice, to rescuing your son who's been kidnapped by evil elves. The beginner levels will get you into the game and understand how it works; it's fairly intuitive and a fast learn. The advanced levels offer some challenge; some more difficult than others, and will test your ability to logically figure out solutions. I've yet to get to the expert levels.

While there is fighting in this game, once you build your "army" (consisting of necromancers, wizards, warriors, rogues and explorers), they automatically fight any enemy that enters your domain. They will also go off and fight enemies at greater distances. You can set reward flags up to have your army target and destroy one enemy camp over another.

Another great aspect of this game is that you get to build up your little kingdom. You place your wizards' guild, your rogues' guild, your warriors' guild and then magically houses begin to sprout up and pad out your town. You also upgrade your levels with gold, research new attack methods with a library or through the guilds, and create marketplaces and blacksmith's shops. Upgrading will get you new types of buildings (like temples) and you can watch your castle grow along with your kingdom.

You get, in this package, not only the original game, but the second release add on of the game for further adventures and quests.

It's a fun, addictive game. The quests can be short or long, not requiring a high demand on time that some games do, and is fairly straight-forward to play. I could see both children and adults enjoying this game (there's no vulgarity, but there are some jokes and humor with dialogue).

Enjoy the game. I have.

A great, enjoyable game!

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 9 / 9
Date: March 05, 2002
Author: Amazon User

First of all, this version is a substantial improvement over the original, because the music actually works!

The game itself is a blast - easy to learn, but not so easy to master. You can learn the strategies, and you can be successful, yet the game isn't so easy that you can simply "win" it in an hour.

In otherwords, it's within almost everybody's capabilities. It won't leave you feeling stupid, and it's not a cakewalk either.

One gripe - why is the Northern expansion seperate from the regular edition, when the Northern expansion INCLUDES the regular edition? If you start playing games in the regular edition, then go to the Norhtern expansion, you lose all the games you won beforehand. Wierd.

Overall, very enjoyable. Get the gold edition.

Best Buy

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 8
Date: July 12, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This is by far the best strategy game out. With tons of quests, and expansion, dozens of different characters, different maps, different items... It is easy to pick up and understand.

The graphics are good, I would say 4 out of 5 on that. The game is multiplayer, both online and through a network connection. With the expansion, single player has a few dozen levels.

This is the best buy for your money. It will entertain you for hours. If this game were selling for around $40 bucks, I would pay it. I highly recommend this.

my reveiw!!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 11 / 14
Date: March 28, 2005
Author: Amazon User

majesty is fun because it's one of the most realistic fantasy games i've played. no, that sounds stupid. it's intersting finding out what the different guilds and temples do for you while you fight goblins, trolls, werewolves and dragons and manage your overall gold.

A neglected classic

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 8 / 9
Date: November 21, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I've always been attracted to sim games, but I inevitably get bored with them -- as neat as "SimCity" is, there's really no POINT. It's like a digital aquarium, really: Get the system stable and thriving and then ... watch it.

"Majesty," though, solves that problem. Sure, it's a sim, a medieval fantasy version of "SimCity" by way of "Dungeons & Dragons." In addition to creating rogues guilds, dwarven settlements, blacksmithies and the like, "Majesty" is based around "epic quest" scenarios wherein you're challenged to defeat some evil facing the land, send your heroes on a quest for some fabled artifact, rescue a hostage taken by villains and so on.

Just as in "SimCity," you don't control your wizards, warriors, rogues, elves, dwarves, gnomes, thieves and so on. Instead, you have to do what any good monarch does in a fantasy game: Put prices on monsters' heads and offer rewards for heroes willing to explore unknown (and almost certainly hostile) territory.

"Majesty" is a hoot, and a massive timesink: You'll lose whole nights and weekends to it without realizing it, and love every minute of trying to squeeze a bit more service out of heroes who'd rather laze about the inn than go study new spells or visit an elven hut-of-ill-repute than go fight the troll heading for the kingdom's market.

The epic quests included with on the original disk are fun, and an additional one is available from on the official Web site. But while there's a large jump from the beginner to advanced quests and then another more moderate jump from advanced to expert quests, they ultimately don't prove too challenging overall. Expect to finish most of the quests with a week or two of nightly play (less if you've got more time to devote to the game).

The good news is that this edition includes "The Northern Expansion," and suddenly, the game jumps up a fair bit in difficulty -- although not beyond that which most players can handle, if they've played through the original missions -- and the difficulty scales up nicely from there. The expansion otherwise adds new buildings and monsters, but while these are nice, the real value of it is in having more (and more difficult) adventures.

An excellent game for sim fans who, like me, want a bit more direction and focus to their gaming experience. While it's worth the price -- it really is a unique and entertaining game -- it's not one you're likely to spend playing for months and months to come. Even now, years after having purchased the original game, I still pull this game out periodically, something only Sid Meier's "Pirates" is otherwise able to do.

A true classic and a great addition to the library of any RPG or RTS or Sim player.

Revolutionary Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: January 28, 2006
Author: Amazon User

This game is fun because you don't have direct control over your heroes. The only thing you can do is persuad them to do things as a regent. The game has so many different angles and if you like the fantasy background I can't imagine you not liking this game.

Buy it, now!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 6
Date: December 22, 2002
Author: Amazon User

This is a game is a real treat, especially for this price. Compared to other RTS games, such as Warcraft, where the micromanagement of units and resources can be a drag, this game really does add a finely-balanced way of simulating your kingdom and improving repeated gameplay. The plot and story are rich, although without the multi-million dollar cinematics like in Blizzard games, and the building and game units are well developed and balanced (certain temples, for example, cannot be built alongside rival ones, making the building choices intriguing). As always, you should download the demo to get a feel for the game (on the official site), but the full version itself (this includes an expansion) is much more intricate.

The greatest PC game ever

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 7 / 8
Date: December 22, 2004
Author: Amazon User

This is a game you must give a chance when you first start playing. I constantly find myself going back and replaying Majesty, trying to improve on the time for quests, or simply trying another method to win. The options in the game are great, each quest can be won using different methods for economy, defense, or production. The graphics are excellent, the sounds and voices are a delight. I am not lying when I say this is the best PC game I have ever played.

"My prowess is unmatched!"

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 5
Date: December 20, 2006
Author: Amazon User

Majesty is super-fun. I love it. And I don't know if there's another game like it.

Like many other games, you build a bunch of buildings that produce fighting units. But unlike WarCraft or Command and Conquer, you have little control over what these units do. You can place reward flags on enemy buildings or units, to encourage your own units to attack. Or you can place reward flags on the map to encourage your units to go there. But they all have their own AI, and make their own decisions. So you can influence them, but not command them. As I said, there's nothing like it.

My favorite part may be the voice acting. The game is worth it just to hear the heroes talk, as they level up, fight, flee, etc. When Barbarians decide to attack an enemy unit, they growl, "Here comes trouble!" When Gnomes shuffle off this mortal coil, they let out a pitiful wail: "But I'm just a gnome!" Fun stuff.

The game is highly replayable. This CD includes both the original and the expansion pack, so it has a couple of dozen different scenarios to play through. But you can also build your own scenarios, or generate a random map with one click. You can get dozens, or even hundreds of hours of entertainment out of this game.

It's a great game, and still well worth the original price. And since you can buy it now for the cost of shipping, there is no reason not to buy this. It's super-fun, and just a little bit different.

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