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Your Majesty has arrived!
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Release Date: Q2 2009
Paradox Interactive's Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim was one of the very first strategy games I found myself attached to, as a kid.
Majesty allows you to control the interworkings of a kingdom set in medieval times. You hire tax collectors to boost revenue, dispatch rogues to explore the land, and soon build your palace up to heights lusted after by surrounding fortresses. The very nature of this game intrigued me from the start. It takes skill, allotted free time and a little bit of imagination surround yourself with a kingdom that truly flourishes. Majesty is a little more involved than the average strategy game.
Control:
As throne bearer, you naturally want your palace to thrive and you must remain the center of power, at all costs. Heroes are what keep you in power, and this is your ultimate goal. You will find yourself recruiting heroes to defend your home, loot money for you, and attract others to the
kingdom as well. More than anything, you want your heroes to be the best, most loyal subjects of all. So you watch them. You strategically place them either in harm's way, or far from it; according to your plan of further domination of the realm. You want to ask yourself, in what way can this person benefit me? How can I make it seem as though their assigned task is bringing them to a personal advantage?
You must set the characters up in such a situation that they decide to fight the enemies sworn to take down your fortress, or they allow themselves to seek and destroy the opposing lair.
The sole rule of Majesty is the power of manipulation.
Flags:
In the first game, you could flag certain areas of the map or specific objects as a zone for your heroes to attack or a place to explore. Now, two new flags of Protection and Fear are being introduced to Majesty 2. You will now be able to an mark an ally or ally building as being worthy of the protection of your subjects. Once an item is flagged as needing protection, a circle of characters will flock to the scene in defense. This makes for a living, varying barrier that adjusts to your needs and makes reparations; as long as your staff is in supply.
The Fear flag sections off a neat little boundary, wherever you choose, to keep your heroes out of harm's way. If you feel that a certain level 5 paladin is wandering a little too close to an infested animal den and his attacking it is not in his best interest, you can now simply steer him clear of the lair altogether!
Behavior:
In the original game, characters seemed to jeer from one computer-generated path to another. They either fled from the first sign of danger or they became hell-bent on revealing the entire map; seeking out any monsters or treasure to behold. Their trajectories were almost completely random. However, Majesty 2 shows us that even figures in RTS can have their own personalities.
The characters of Majesty 2 have been designed with traits that reflect off of one another to weigh the probable scenarios that can result from their actions… theoretically. Each hired hero has a set level of cowardice, greed, courage, and motivation; allowing for entirely different interactive behavior between the heroes and monsters, as well as the heroes among heroes, themselves.
Singleplayer/Multiplayer:
Majesty 2 promises to bring something a little extra to the table, this time. Paradox is beefing up its original multiplayer mode by not only allowing one kingdom to pit itself against another, but up to four players can join in on the medieval action! Who among your friends would make the best ruler? One can only begin to see the horrific prospects, in playing this game.
Campaign mode is also a little more involved than previously experienced. Instead of calling individual groups of guards or warriors to arms, you can organize different races, classes, levels, of any kind of hero to band together for intense raids. You can formulate your own personal army to do with whatever you please. Be it raiding an opposing fortress, stealing a fellow kingdom's secret stash of gold, or maybe even trotting away to kill one another to see who gains the most experience in the end. Majesty 2 adds an interesting dynamic as characters interact in either single- or muti-player mode. It is up to the king, or queen, to decide the fate of the people.
Scheduled for release Q2 2009. (That's about April-June of this year.)
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