MAJESTY 2, BABY!

[Saint_Proverbius]

Anyone play the first one? I thought it was one of the most interesting a replayable games I'd played in a while when I first got it. Combine that with the expansion, and it was pure gaming gold.

Anyway, there's some new screenshots of the sequel in progress over at Majesty Dragon:

http://www.strategyplanet.com/majesty/m ... 0424.shtml

Can't wait for this one. :D

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

hey

I've never even heard of the first one, is it still worth a buy?

 

[Rosh]

I rather liked how the units couldn't be directly controlled, but they could be influenced. You did play the role of king rather well, your heroes as the NPCs. They learned, trained, participated at jousts, and even went out a bit in patrons when their skill gets high enough and just lay waste to enemies. I kept having a few wizards just annhiliate everything they came across when they got enough power.

I have the original, but without the expansion. I'll look into getting that sometime. It's one of the better RTS games I've seen, mainly because you don't have direct control over your troops via some Mind-Control Ray.

I'm now looking into the sequel, if it offers the same kind of play.

 

[Mistress]

As I said when Saint told me about this on IRC. OMG! Whoo!

I loved Majesty - thoroughly enjoyed that game. :D

 

[DrattedTin]

There's only two things I hope they change:

1. The "rush" factor. In tough maps in the original Majesty, there was no real tactic beyond churning out heroes and hoping one or two survived long enough to become decent against the vanguard of invading hordes.

2. New graphics, please; I'm neutral on the 3D, it could be nice, but I sure hope they don't re-use half the general graphics (like the throne), ala Warlords IV.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I have to agree with Rosh. What I enjoyed about Majesty was that you didn't control your heroes directly, but you set rewards for them if they did something. You could put bounties on monsters and buildings, and the higher the bounty, the more heroes would go after that creature. You could also set explore bounties to get them to explore the reqion around your castle.

There's also a level of management, since you basically just build the buildings and collect taxes from them for money. You use that money to recruit low level heroes from guild halls. If you build shops like blacksmiths, heroes will occationally go to those shops to buy goods from them with the money they get from bounties and from the loot they get killing monsters. The money the shops make from the heroes are what's taxed.

It's also interesting that there's monster generators that are caused, in part, by you. For example, building a bigger city means you'll need more sewers. Those pop up sewer gratings which can spawn ratman and giant rats in your city. If a lot of heroes die, that spawns graveyards where undead come from.

It's a great little game, and it should be fairly cheap now. If you're getting it now, you should get the gold version, which has both the expansion and the full version. It's well worth it.

 

[headache]

I played the first one, and it was a great concept, but I agree with DrattedTin:

I hope they change:

1. The "rush" factor. In tough maps in the original Majesty, there was no real tactic beyond churning out heroes and hoping one or two survived long enough to become decent against the vanguard of invading hordes.

I remember that once I had the pattern down of what to build, I ended up completing all the missions, up to the highest difficulty, in about two days, and then I stopped playing. The influence you have starts to seem pretty indirect pretty quickly. It also was a ugly-looking game-- and I like 2d games and cartoony graphics just fine, but I think the main thing that made it ugly was that there were a grand total of two zoom levels, and I found the closer-in one too close, so I played it all on the farther-out one, where everyone just looked like chubby insects, distinguishable mostly by color. Frustrating, because it seems like this could easily have been tweaked.

But it was fun to check out my heroes leveling up and gaining fancy items, and the game should be very cheap now-- I'd suggest spending no more than $15 bucks for it at the very most, as you probably won't play it long.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

I just tried the demo and have to agree from what I saw. It was an extremely cool idea, it just turned out to be fairly boring in practice. I loved how the workers were automated; taking that level of micromanagement out of the picture was very nice. Not letting me have much control over troops kind of made things boring, though. All there was to do was build and upgrade, pretty much half of every RTS out there and the more boring half at that. The only real decisions I had to make were when to have market days and when to charge wizard towers and cast spells. I experimented with rewards, but since people had minds of their own, it was more useful for getting gold into the hands of my heroes than anything. Unless I put a very high bounty, they'd find trouble on their own pretty much just as quickly. I was better off just spending the money on more guardhouses.

 

[Rosh]

The AI in the demo isn't too good. In the full game, you should notice people responding to the rewards quite well.

It is also a good mechanic to use, as it isn't something like every other RTS out there where you just mass select all the units and tell them to attack a target. You have to make it seem worth their while.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Different types of heroes respond to bounties differently. The thief is naturally greedy, so they'll go for nearly every bounty - which can often get them killed. Rangers are fairly weak in the beginning, and they won't go for anything they think can kill them. Paladins won't typically go for explore flags unless they're worth a lot, but will go after any creature with a bounty flag on it.

Also, you can adjust the things taxmen go for. I typically have one taxman on default, and the rest going for places with lots of money. This helps bring in the cash pretty quickly, since most only hit up places that return with the big rewards, while the other one gets everything.

The buildings like the blacksmith and stuff will make your heroes stronger. Building a Wizard Guild will also allow these heroes to enchant their items, making them more powerful. You could also build outposts and other things that sold potions, which the guys would buy that would augment them.

It's things like that which made me enjoy the game. You built the kingdom. and how you built it affected everything else.

 

[Spazmo]

If I remember correctly, Majesty was developed by a Russian outfit, which, if Saint and Rosh are right about the quality of the game, reinforces the fact that in coming years, it's increasingly likely that we will have to rely on East European companies for good, innovative PC games.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

hey

The Gold version which includes Majesty and the expansion are $10 at gamestop.com, seems like a good buy.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Hmm, I might have to give it a try then, for 10 bucks.

One thing I kind of hope they improve is to let heroes form adventuring parties. Just from what I saw in the demo, the heroes all went around solo and often got trashed, when they would have done better cooperating. They'd often do well when ganging up on a tough foe or mob of bad guys, but that was mostly random unless I set a reward and everyone got there at the same time. If you could just group heroes into parties or, better yet, if they'd do it themselves, I wouldn't have as much problem with the lack of control. It's mainly when I see AI controlled characters throwing their lives away stupidly that I want control, or at least a way to impart some kind of basic tactics to them. I'm a fan of new approaches and immersion, but when I see stupid AI and nothing can be done about it, it really isn't that much fun.

If I remember correctly, Majesty was developed by a Russian outfit, which, if Saint and Rosh are right about the quality of the game, reinforces the fact that in coming years, it's increasingly likely that we will have to rely on East European companies for good, innovative PC games.

I thought that for a while, but really most of the European games I've played seem to have a problem of being fun for a few hours and then I lose interest. Maybe that's just the problem with innovating, though, it's usually not the innovators who make the perfect anything, it's the people who take their ideas and refine them.

The main problem is RPG's just aren't big over here, so companies make other games instead. And they're big in Japan, but Japanese RPG's usually suck. They're usually linear, have tedious yet time-consuming character advancement, are terribly cliched, and are mostly identical to each other. I quit playing them a few years ago after rediscovering computer games. Don't really miss them, either.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Hmm, I might have to give it a try then, for 10 bucks.

One thing I kind of hope they improve is to let heroes form adventuring parties. Just from what I saw in the demo, the heroes all went around solo and often got trashed, when they would have done better cooperating.

Certain types of classes, like Healers, will follow others around and team up. A Paladin with a trailing Healer makes for a seriously potent team.

However, I would like to see this expanded, and I'd like to see the evil lairs actually have floor lay outs, like dungeons.

They'd often do well when ganging up on a tough foe or mob of bad guys, but that was mostly random unless I set a reward and everyone got there at the same time. If you could just group heroes into parties or, better yet, if they'd do it themselves, I wouldn't have as much problem with the lack of control.

I tend to agree. I'd be nice to have "camp flags" or something, where the payment was dependent on a certain number of people getting to the camp and grouping.

Even a friendship system, where a few heroes attacking a certain thing would gather bonding points making them want to travel together would be interesting.

It's mainly when I see AI controlled characters throwing their lives away stupidly that I want control, or at least a way to impart some kind of basic tactics to them. I'm a fan of new approaches and immersion, but when I see stupid AI and nothing can be done about it, it really isn't that much fun.

Certain classes will fight to the death. Warriors of Discord are berserkers, and do a lot of damage, but they aren't afriad of anything. They'll attack anything hostile, but they're fairly badass once they level a few times.

Rangers on the other hand, they'll run away from most everything unless it's a sure win.

Thieves can croak because they get greedy. Getting that gold is more important than living to see another day to them, soit's not uncommon for them to run up to a high reward flag and die.

Normal warriors will fight to the death in town as well.

Basically, you just need to learn what classes do well at and what they don't.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

hey

Gamespot has a little Q&A with one of the developers of the sequel

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/maj ... 26166.html

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

In Majesty there was, at least early in the game, a sense that you had to protect your kingdom quickly or else the forces of evil were going to overwhelm you and destroy the kingdom. While it was sometimes exhilarating, it was also frustrating. Just when your kingdom had a feeling of stability and you had a chance to really play with it, the scenario would end. You could continue on from there if you chose to, but there wasn't much for you to do. It became a little like watching an ant farm (of course ants don't periodically launch a meteor storm at an offending rat man). In Majesty Legends we want to give players a chance to really get to know their kingdom and play it at their own pace. The addition of walls in your kingdom means that you can feel relatively secure from external threats while you build your kingdom, recruit heroes, and prepare them for forays into the wilds.

I agree with this. This was one of my main complaints about Majesty, but the Northern Expansion addressed this a bit with respawning generators and things like that. I once had a kingdom in Majesty with the expansion that divided up the land in to quadrants with Dwarven ballista towers to keep the respawners at bay. My kingdom was in the middle and it had multiple lairs of ballista towers to keep the heart of the city safe. I just wanted to see if I could make a kingdom that could survive while I was asleep.

However, that's pretty much the only route you could go for something like that. I'd love to see how they're planning on making it so once you get powerful, the game keeps going and remains a lot more interesting.

Let's say that a giant spider has taken up residence in a nearby forest. It periodically waylays travelers to your kingdom but isn't assaulting the walls of your kingdom. You could place a reward for its destruction, and your warriors would go out and attempt to destroy it, or you could place a reward for its capture, and your rangers will attempt to bring it back for display in your menagerie or to study it for other uses. We see a large variety to the number of rewards that you could place that would depend both on the target of the reward as well as what heroes that you have to encourage. This provides you, the sovereign, lots of options when it comes to dealing with your kingdom at large.

Okay, this sounds really, really slick as well. That's one thing I wanted in Majesty, and I think I mentioned this in this thread - more flags. Even a capture flag alone would go a long way to adding more gameplay options. Judging by what he's saying, you can use monsters as resources for things, which is a really slick idea.

 

[Astromarine]

Especially seeing as there is a native Linux version at www.tuxgames.com I think I'm gonna have to pick this up. Thanks for the tip guys

 

[Zed]

I played Majesty alot. This looks very nice.

 

[axel]

sounds cool, think I'll look into it

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Yeah, Majesty is pretty nice. The demo doesn't really do it justice. I just picked up the gold version for $9.99 at CompUSA. It's well worth it.

 

[Jed]

You guys have really piqued my interest on this title; I'll have to try to get my hands on a copy soon. Meanwhile, I checked out the Gamespot page for the sequel, and there's an update. Check out this Goodness:

...with the sequel, Cyberlore wishes to make the role of heroes more meaningful by giving them a wider range of quests to undertake, as well as a broader path of development so that you will, as Adan puts it, "form an emotional link to them." Just as in the previous game, heroes will have various physical attributes, such as strength, which they'll use in battle, but they'll also find an increased use for their charisma statistic, which they can use to negotiate alternate resolutions to conflict, as well as to negotiate with rival nations. This will be due in part to careful rebalancing to make sure that you and your heroes won't constantly be under attack in the sequel. However, Majesty II will also feature an improved diplomacy system that will let you negotiate with other nations and set up trade routes to barter goods. According to Adan, you'll have different ways to approach different situations, depending on what sort of heroes are in your employ--if you have a large group of warrior knights, they may attempt to resolve the situation with violence, while an order of monks may prefer to discuss the matter peacefully.

Sounds deeper than most C"R"PGs out there...

 

[Sharpei_Diem]

I liked the orignal, and it had some good ideas, but it really didn't have enough depth to have any staying power. I never bothered with the expansion because i didn't think it did enough to resolve the depth issue.

The new one sounds interesting, but i'll wait a bit and see what some people's impressions are first.