I just tried a couple of missions and man is it a very bad game. It completely misses what made the original Majesty great and stand out from the rest.
Graphics
The 3D transition is horrible, as it always seems to happen. Heroes no longer stand out from the scenery since they blend with the beige/green/brown terrain all too well (you know, team colors are used for a reason) and they all lost their distinctive look (gone is the orange-gowned Thief and awkward-hatted Paladins; Mages now look like generic explorers, even after upgraded; Warriors look like bandits instead of knights; and Clerics as if taken seriously from D&D). Buildings also tend to fall into the background along with random debris and neutral buildings, adding to the confusion. Games are supposed to provide visual information quickly: less time guessing, more time playing. It's quite ironic that the aesthetics fall prey to that which the first game parodies: generic fantasy. All the more proof that the developers failed to grasp the basic concepts behind Majesty.
I mean come on. Is it so difficult nowadays to create your own artistic style? Does every game have to be a carbon copy from another? This is getting beyond ridiculous.
Sounds
Hiring the same Advisor's voice-actor from Majesty gave the game as much soul as Ron Perlman gave to Fallout 3, but probably enough for most dumb fucks to claim the game has the "same feel" as the first one. Probably the same reason why they recycled a lot of sounds from the first one.
Of immediate note is the fact that Heroes can't be heard. Their voices are muffled because of zoom distance (LOL 3D), and furthermore their acting doesn't pack the same vibrance and personality as before:
"I'm melting!", "My power grows!", "Ooh tough fight!", "Brighter, brighter!", "Leave my gold alone!", "Hmm, what a delicious looking reward!", "You wont get MY gold!", "Ooh, pretty star!", "Pretty bright light...erggh". All those quotes were a treat to hear. They're now either gone or voiced uninspiredly.
As for the music, it's just your typical generic, epic fantasy fare. What happened to the good old playful tunes? Majesty at least had appropriately aloof and catchy music instead of this filler, bland crap.
Sound effects? Out of Skyway's three most popular catchwords, pick your favorite.
Interface
The HUD suffers from the same generic and bland polish treatment all games get nowadays. It looks like it came from King's Bounty: The Legend. Mind you, the original Majesty's HUD aesthetics were nothing to write home about, but the menu and main map were incredibly stylish, at least.
However, my biggest complaint is the lack of immediate on-screen information. In the previous Majesty with just clicking a hero or building you would immediately get all the important stuff in the main tab through numbers, but now you rather gave to click each goddamn tab to get all the relevant information, and what's worse is that weapons no longer offer a fast +1/+2/+3/etc. icon, but rather you have to deduce the weapon quality from the image (which as you have guessed is pretty non-descriptive).
Double clicking on the mini-map no longer creates an explore flag. Even if you click on the explore flag icon and then on the mini-map the game still drags your main screen to where you clicked, and you must put the flag on the main screen. HURR.
In fact, double-clicking no longer creates flags anywhere. You now have to right-click once, which brings me to the point that scrolling is way too slow and painful since sidescrolling is the only mainscreen method. Even then, if you click on the minimap scrolling is not instantaneous and rather imitates sidescrolling; is this supposed to make casual gamers feel better somehow? Talk about amateur stuff.
Gameplay
Holy fuck, can you say dumbed down?
● you can no longer remove houses, inns or markets from tax routes;
● there are now defense flags and fear flags which previously weren't needed (just Attack tag all nearby monsters for the former, or remove an Attack tag from a monster for the latter);
● you can now build only one market: escalating market costs was a crucial part of the first Majesty's economy;
● no market day in markets (...);
● heroes can be upgraded to a higher hero tier: they lose all their items but keep their most important asset, their experience (previously you would have to build another guild to allow room for special heroes enabled by temples, which costed a fuckton of money and gave room to various strategical dichotomies);
● no random map generator;
● you can now form hero squads - no comments on how stupid and unfaithful this is;
● no puzzles - the first game had some very interesting missions that could only be finished by solving them in a certain way, particularly the expansion pack;
● which brings me to the next point: no expansion pack stuff;
● the game is very slow, so slow they even had to add a speed slider as an interface feature because they actually managed to remove the thrill from a minotaur onslaught because everything happens and moves at a snail's pace;
● heroes can be revived without researching insanely-priced spells or building mausoleums which if destroyed released tons of undead - you're given a graveyard for free and there is no time window to do so;
● also, no trolls seem to spawn...
Worst of all, however, is that the game's heroes are devoid of personality and greed. Thieves now run away from foes with ransoms on them, even if you offer an exorbitant sum (I've lost countless of avaricious Rogues in the first Majesty to 100 GP explore flags), Warriors are no longer buy-a-holics, and Wizards carefully select their targets before casting their spells instead of blindly assaulting Medusas - which made hero management all the more, you know, FUN AND CHALLENGING.
/edit: filled some gaps, unfinished trains of thought
/edit2: toned <s>shit</s> language down a bit
/edit3-*: minor corrections
Graphics
The 3D transition is horrible, as it always seems to happen. Heroes no longer stand out from the scenery since they blend with the beige/green/brown terrain all too well (you know, team colors are used for a reason) and they all lost their distinctive look (gone is the orange-gowned Thief and awkward-hatted Paladins; Mages now look like generic explorers, even after upgraded; Warriors look like bandits instead of knights; and Clerics as if taken seriously from D&D). Buildings also tend to fall into the background along with random debris and neutral buildings, adding to the confusion. Games are supposed to provide visual information quickly: less time guessing, more time playing. It's quite ironic that the aesthetics fall prey to that which the first game parodies: generic fantasy. All the more proof that the developers failed to grasp the basic concepts behind Majesty.
I mean come on. Is it so difficult nowadays to create your own artistic style? Does every game have to be a carbon copy from another? This is getting beyond ridiculous.
Sounds
Hiring the same Advisor's voice-actor from Majesty gave the game as much soul as Ron Perlman gave to Fallout 3, but probably enough for most dumb fucks to claim the game has the "same feel" as the first one. Probably the same reason why they recycled a lot of sounds from the first one.
Of immediate note is the fact that Heroes can't be heard. Their voices are muffled because of zoom distance (LOL 3D), and furthermore their acting doesn't pack the same vibrance and personality as before:
"I'm melting!", "My power grows!", "Ooh tough fight!", "Brighter, brighter!", "Leave my gold alone!", "Hmm, what a delicious looking reward!", "You wont get MY gold!", "Ooh, pretty star!", "Pretty bright light...erggh". All those quotes were a treat to hear. They're now either gone or voiced uninspiredly.
As for the music, it's just your typical generic, epic fantasy fare. What happened to the good old playful tunes? Majesty at least had appropriately aloof and catchy music instead of this filler, bland crap.
Sound effects? Out of Skyway's three most popular catchwords, pick your favorite.
Interface
The HUD suffers from the same generic and bland polish treatment all games get nowadays. It looks like it came from King's Bounty: The Legend. Mind you, the original Majesty's HUD aesthetics were nothing to write home about, but the menu and main map were incredibly stylish, at least.
However, my biggest complaint is the lack of immediate on-screen information. In the previous Majesty with just clicking a hero or building you would immediately get all the important stuff in the main tab through numbers, but now you rather gave to click each goddamn tab to get all the relevant information, and what's worse is that weapons no longer offer a fast +1/+2/+3/etc. icon, but rather you have to deduce the weapon quality from the image (which as you have guessed is pretty non-descriptive).
Double clicking on the mini-map no longer creates an explore flag. Even if you click on the explore flag icon and then on the mini-map the game still drags your main screen to where you clicked, and you must put the flag on the main screen. HURR.
In fact, double-clicking no longer creates flags anywhere. You now have to right-click once, which brings me to the point that scrolling is way too slow and painful since sidescrolling is the only mainscreen method. Even then, if you click on the minimap scrolling is not instantaneous and rather imitates sidescrolling; is this supposed to make casual gamers feel better somehow? Talk about amateur stuff.
Gameplay
Holy fuck, can you say dumbed down?
● you can no longer remove houses, inns or markets from tax routes;
● there are now defense flags and fear flags which previously weren't needed (just Attack tag all nearby monsters for the former, or remove an Attack tag from a monster for the latter);
● you can now build only one market: escalating market costs was a crucial part of the first Majesty's economy;
● no market day in markets (...);
● heroes can be upgraded to a higher hero tier: they lose all their items but keep their most important asset, their experience (previously you would have to build another guild to allow room for special heroes enabled by temples, which costed a fuckton of money and gave room to various strategical dichotomies);
● no random map generator;
● you can now form hero squads - no comments on how stupid and unfaithful this is;
● no puzzles - the first game had some very interesting missions that could only be finished by solving them in a certain way, particularly the expansion pack;
● which brings me to the next point: no expansion pack stuff;
● the game is very slow, so slow they even had to add a speed slider as an interface feature because they actually managed to remove the thrill from a minotaur onslaught because everything happens and moves at a snail's pace;
● heroes can be revived without researching insanely-priced spells or building mausoleums which if destroyed released tons of undead - you're given a graveyard for free and there is no time window to do so;
● also, no trolls seem to spawn...
Worst of all, however, is that the game's heroes are devoid of personality and greed. Thieves now run away from foes with ransoms on them, even if you offer an exorbitant sum (I've lost countless of avaricious Rogues in the first Majesty to 100 GP explore flags), Warriors are no longer buy-a-holics, and Wizards carefully select their targets before casting their spells instead of blindly assaulting Medusas - which made hero management all the more, you know, FUN AND CHALLENGING.
/edit: filled some gaps, unfinished trains of thought
/edit2: toned <s>shit</s> language down a bit
/edit3-*: minor corrections
