DESCRIPTION

The biggest difference between Majesty and most other real-time strategy games is that inhabitants of the Fantasy Kingdom Sim have wills of their own. Instead of taking the role of a godlike overseer who instantly controls soldiers and workers with a click of button, the Majesty 2 player becomes a worldly monarch who must use incentives — usually large sums of gold from the kingdom treasury — to persuade the autonomous heroes of the land to do his bidding. Most games begin with the player's castle and citizens confined to a small section of the map, surrounded by the darkness of the unknown. Players can construct other buildings and technologies to gain additional benefits, but they'll first need to explore the countryside and harvest its resources, to be able to afford such improvements.

In order to encourage the game's mercenary heroes to explore the land for them, players place flags in the areas they want investigated. Each flag has an amount of the kingdom's money assigned to it, which is claimed by the character that reaches the flag first. As the map is slowly revealed, players will discover resource-rich territories to overtake and gold-hoarding monsters to defeat. Different flags can be placed, to encourage the great heroes of the kingdom to defeat monsters and face other challenges. The farther away or more dangerous the location of the flag, the more gold it will take to encourage a hero character to attempt to claim it. Majesty 2 features nearly a dozen different classes of warriors, wizards, and workers, each with a special skill or ability to offer to the kingdom, and each willing to take on the most dangerous and deadly missions, if the price is right.

Although it features four complete, original, single-player campaigns of its own, the gameplay design of Majesty 2 is based directly on Cyberlore Studios' innovative cult-hit original, initially released nine years earlier in the autumn of 2000. The updated version features new art, a refined interface, and full 3D graphics. Multiplayer for up to four LAN- or Internet-connected gamers is supported, through included GameSpy matching and connection management software. Majesty 2 was created by Ino-Co, an affiliate of Russian software giant 1C, along with Paradox Interactive, publisher of internationally popular computer strategy including games in the Hearts of Iron, Supreme Leader, and Europa Universalis series. ~ T.J. Deci, All Game Guide