Majesty 2 review

Majesty 2, from Paradox Interactive, combines the familiar elements of RTS games with interesting town and economy management into a compelling, satisfying strategy game.

As the sole heir of a king that basically hosed his kingdom with demons in the pursuit of his own greatness, your task is to expel the demons and restore the land. To that end, you play through a series of semi-linear missions with varying goals, though they generally boil down to successfully managing your town’s economy, building up your town, and hiring heroes to stamp out your enemies.

You can place, build and upgrade your town’s buildings, but the catch is that you don’t get to control any of your heroes directly. Majesty 2 plays more like DungeonKeeper and similar games in this respect. You can decide what to build and where to build it, such as defensive towers, guild halls necessary for creating your heroes (Rogues, Rangers, Warriors, Clerics, and Wizards), the other buildings that provide the economic and research support necessary to fuel your battlefield efforts.

As your heroes kill monsters (which continually plague your town from the beginning of a mission), they will gain experience levels and become stronger. In addition, you can upgrade their equipment by researching improved arms and armor through the blacksmith, as well as researching upgrades for each class of hero at their appropriate guild hall. You can also research magical items to sell them at the Marketplace and the Magic Bazaar.

Heroes are greedy

Heroes are a disorganized, greedy lot. The only way to get them to do what you want them to do is to bribe them. This is done by setting down command flags and then putting a ‘bounty’ (gold value) on the flag. For example, if you want your heroes to take out that pesky demon-producing Hell portal, you can plant an Attack Flag on it, then put a sizable bounty on the flag. The more money you put on the flag, the more heroes it will attract. There are also flags for Defend (for defending buildings or characters) and Explore (to motivate those lazy Rangers).

This mechanic makes economy management very important and much trickier than your standard RTS. You not only have to manage, grow, and upgrade your town, but you have to make sure you actually have enough money to get your heroes to do your bidding when and where you need it done. Left to their own devices, they’ll wander around, fight monsters, and defend the town if need be – but ultimately, heroes are disorganized, unreliable, greedy mercenaries.

Fantasy kingdom economy 101: Money talks

If you ever wondered why merchants in your fantasy RPGs were bilking you for health potions -- despite the fact that you’re trying to save their sorry asses and their kingdom -- Majesty 2’s economic system will explain it to you.

Economy management in Majesty 2 is very different from typical RTS games. Your basic vehicle of revenue is tax collection -- your tax collectors collect taxes from the peasants. As your town and population grow, so does your tax revenue.

But to get any real money flowing, in you need to build a market place and a trading post, and then research items that can be sold to your heroes – like health potions, for example.

To build a trading post, however, you need to explore the map, clear out monsters, and locate suitable places to build them, because trading posts can only be built in specifically marked locations. Once you have a trading post and a market place, a horse and cart carrying a bunch of gold will travel from the trading post to your market place – much like resource gathering in RTS games.

Last (but not least), because you have to bribe all your heroes to do all your dirty work, you’ll want to make some of that money back by building an Inn, and a magic shop, and then research various items and upgrades to sell to your heroes.

You’re not the boss of me

Although you can’t directly tell your heroes where to go and what to do, you can research various magical spells and cast them in battle – for a cost in gold, anyway. You can, for example, cast healing spells, spells that freeze opponents, hurl lightning bolts, and use other powers all researched through each guild hall’s tech tree.

Combat and exploration are basically all handled through the flag-and-bribe system. Set an exploration flag and put a ‘bounty’ of 500 gold on it, for example, and eventually one of your Rangers will probably go after it. This is pretty much how you handle all actions with your heroes, and after a while you’ll probably be cursing those damn greedy mercenary adventurers under your breath – especially when your kingdom is falling down around your ears and they’re off getting tanked at the town Inn.

Heroes that fall in battle can be resurrected at the graveyard, for a price. The higher the level of the hero, the more expensive they are. In addition, at the end of every level you can choose a hero to make a Lord. During later missions, if you can afford it, you can build a Hall of Lords, which allows you to hire any Lords you’ve created – complete at whatever level they were promoted to Lord, and with all their magical items and goodies. Lords are expensive but worthwhile.

It takes grit

If you manage to weather the nearly relentless attacks that plague you in the beginning of the game, you’ll eventually have enough heroes at your command to begin taking out the various “monster generators” such as Wolf dens, Bear dens, Minotaur ziggurats, and others that continually pump out critters to come and plague your town. The attacks are nearly relentless and come from all sides.

Eventually, you’ll want to clear out the “monster generators” to make life easier, but you’ll need to tough out the early attacks for a while. Once you’ve managed your economy well enough to upgrade your town and build a swarthy group of adventurers, you can set an attack flag on a monster’s lair and put a big, fat bounty of gold on it. This should attract nearly every hero in your kingdom to the lair to destroy it (and gain experience and levels in the process).

It’s very satisfying and highly vindicating. After enduring countless attacks at the hands/paws/hooves/fiery demon claws of your oppressors, it feels good to finally send them packing.

To a large degree, this is the basic formula for most missions: survive the early game, get your economy in order, manage your town’s growth and upgrades, and build up a group of adventurers to start laying some smack down. Once you’ve established your base of power, you can usually turn your attention to the mission’s primary objectives.

While it may sound repetitive, the mission objectives are reasonably varied, and as the game gets more challenging and difficult to figure out, it just gets that much more fun – and that much more satisfying when your plans come together and you emerge victorious to dance on your enemies’ graves.

Not your typical RTS and full of win

Although Majesty 2 looks and feels like an RTS game, Majesty 2 is a different breed of RTS – one that has more in common with the likes of DungeonKeeper.

This may throw off typical RTS gamers a bit, but fortunately Majesty 2 uses an almost immediately familiar user interface to any RTS gamer. This makes learning it much easier than Paradox’s other games,Hearts of Iron III and East India Company.

Unfortunately, also like Paradox’s other games, the tutorial in Majesty 2 is far too short and doesn’t adequately explain many of the game’s finer details. This can make the early game frustrating, because your town falls under siege from wolves and other beasts almost immediately. You’ll just start building a guard tower and the peasant next door is already getting eaten by wolves. If you don’t mind playing around a bit to figure out the game’s nuances and strategies, Majesty 2 is a very rewarding game.

The best advice I can give is to stick with it. As I said earlier, you pretty much have to learn not to sweat the early attacks. Get your early economy going with a market place and some guard towers in place to help you buy the time you need to build guild halls and some heroes.

Ultimately, despite its early frustrations, Majesty 2 is well worth price of admission. The extra layer of economic strategy and town management – which gives the game an almost puzzle-like element -- makes for a compelling time suck of a game. And the vindication of surviving the early stages to lay some major smack down as your plans come to fruition is highly gratifying.

The game’s writing and humor are the icing on the cake, and make Majesty 2 a more light-hearted affair than Paradox’s other hard core strategy titles. It’s also by far the most colorful and visually appealing of their games to date.