Majesty 2

Video Games | Majesty 2 | GC 09: Overview Trailer

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

I've played the demo (pretty good demo) of Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. Russia's 1C:Ino-Co has taken this unique sim game and improved on a few core concepts. This game is pretty much the same as the first one. The game features upgraded graphics from 2d to 3d. Considering the game is almost 10 years old, this is a definitely good upgrade. The buildings and units have been tweaked.

Well about the game, it's more of Sim City meets Warcraft. You get to build guilds which is where you train your units. You build marketplaces for money (80% of your income comes from this building) and guard towers for defense. You don't control your heroes but you can put up reward flags to influence them. Putting an attack flag over a monster with a 5,000 gold bounty will make a lot of heroes rush out and try to slay the beast. You can also cast spells such as lightning bolts and healing spells at the cost of gold. As your city grows, peasants will put up houses on their own which allows you to have more workers and more income (as they can be taxed).

Your heroes get to level up which is good since monsters get progressively stronger during the game. There are large ogres who can send your heroes flying with a swing of the club. Vampires that suck the life of your heroes. Missions usually require you to survive a specific amount of days in the game or destroy all monster lairs.

I have one gripe with Majesty 2. There isn't anything too different from the first game. There are new flags - defend and fear which add more control but besides that, there isn't anything big. Also, there are some things like being able to cancel building or research / upgrades isn't in the game. The unit voices are pretty much the same. You have the tax collector go 'tax collector' when visiting the houses with the same voice.

What I wanted for Majesty 2 are more races. Maybe you could be the elven king who builds elven houses, elven archers and mages but don't have say tough warriors. You could probably be the evil Orc warboss who in addition to reward flags, have punishment flags for failing to follow orders. I don't know, much of the gameplay in Majesty 2 has already been done by Majesty gold.

Majesty 2 is a great game for those who are new to the series. Though I wouldn't recommend paying the full retail price as you can play the Majesty gold (if you're fine with the 2d graphics) for $10 over at Steam or at GamersGate. Try out the demo over at gamershell if you want to get a feel of what I've been writting here.