Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim Preview
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Technical Aspects
With a Q2 2009 release, this preview code was understandably rough, but it's possible to see the direction they're taking the game into. The 3D graphics are pretty good, certainly a lot smoother than the 2D graphics of the original. They're not very highly detailed nor up to par with current graphic standards, but for a 3rd person RTS they're functional enough, as you can fairly easily tell troop types and even individual heroes apart.
Not a lot of sounds were implemented, and the preview was at too early a stage to offer solid translations of written text. The spoken comments of the original are not (yet) present, but the intention to replicate the original's humor can easily be spotted. The music is a bit intrusive but not bad.
Buildings
This aspect of Majesty 2 feels closer to an RTS than any other part. You start with a castle and a handful of farms, and can build a wide variety of buildings with supportive functions. Examples are different guilds to create heroes, marketplaces and trading posts to make money and smithies to create items for your heroes to buy.
The sim aspect reaches even into town building. In most RTSs you can command your peons to build or repair whichever building you want, in Majesty 2 you only give the command to build and then have to wait until a farmer is not busy with anything else and can pick up the job. Equally, farmers will always attempt to repair damaged buildings (at no gold cost), but if they're busy you can't command anyone to do it.
The other NPCs that are a (part of town) are guards and tax collectors. Guards are fairly weak and do not level up or adventure; instead, they just wander about town and attack enemies if they get close. Tax collectors wander from building to building to collect gold earned, which is then brought back to you. Each of these town NPCs are autonomous and do not respond to reward flags. The number of town NPCs you have is determined by the level of your castle, and will auto-replenish for free.
Buildings have levels, which they gain when you invest the appropriate amount of money. The building is inactive until a farmer shows up to work on the upgrade. Upgrades are absolutely essential a level 2 guard tower is a lot tougher than a level 1 guard tower, a smith can't produce strong weapons until his building is improved, and leveling up guilds unlocks a number of abilities and spells for your heroes. Majesty 2 focuses the player on small, high-level towns, as buildings become more expensive when you have multiple of the same type.
Heroes
The heroes are any type of NPC that come from one of the guild building. For purposes of this demo, the available heroes were warriors, rogues, rangers, clerics, wizards, dwarfs, elves and a variety of priests. Each hero class has its own set of unique skills: warriors are better against monsters and tend to lure creatures to them, while rangers are better against animals.
Heroes act autonomously; once created, they start wandering about, looking for adventure, and they decide when to attack and flee by themselves. Left to their own devices, they will never attack enemy buildings, nor effectively work together to defeat powerful foes. The essential gameplay elements of Majesty are the reward flags used to influence their behavior: if a powerful foe is approaching your town, set an attack flag on him and put a hefty reward on the flag, and soon half a dozen heroes will gang up on the monster in hopes of killing it and thus claiming the reward.
Majesty 2 features four types of rewards you can offer the heroes: explore, attack, protect, and fear. Explore and attack familiar from Majesty entices a hero to go to an (unexplored) area or attack a certain unit. Protect is used to protect helpless friendly units (like caravans), while fear flags create an area to ward off friendly heroes, if you wish to keep them away from somewhere (as they do tend to wander off). Different hero classes respond differently to the flags - rangers are more apt to explore, while warriors will be glad to attack.
Compared to the original Majesty, the hero AI seems to be fairly improved in complexity. Heroes will flee or refuse to engage in a fight if they deem the opponent too strong, while lower level heroes are more likely to pick up low reward quests than higher level ones.
All heroes you create start at level 1. They will level up by fighting enemies or destroying enemy buildings. They also gather money from slain foes, exploring the map, or other (rogues can even earn coin by stealing), which they partially return to you as tribute but mostly spend on themselves by buying better equipment at the smithy, or health and mana potions at the market. The difference between a well-equipped level 10 warrior or an ill-equipped level 1 warrior is massive. To add some flavor, each hero has a unique name, and they also look slightly different and change appearance as they level up.
Heroes gain special abilities or spells as you upgrade their guilds. They will use these automatically, so you'll often see your warrior open up combat with a special powerful sword-swing, or a ranger use his ice arrow to finish off an opponent. Spells are available to clerics and wizards, and once bought they too will use it automatically, whether it is hurling fireballs at the enemy or using a healing spell on another hero.
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.
Conclusion
This preview version of Majesty 2 was a bit too rough around the edges for me to really be able to tell how well it will please Majesty fans, though that might also be because I haven't played a whole lot of the original Majesty. Like Majesty, Majesty 2 really doesn't feel like the usual RTS, and there's both joy and frustration to be found in its fairly passive reward system. Assuming they implement the balance of genres well, and from the preview version this does look likely, this will be an enjoyable title.
