Majesty is a classic. With casual charm, depth and a solid concept it comes highly recommended. By me :D
Cyberlore Studios released this gem of a game in 2000, calling it a fantasy kingdom sim.
But this is not a fantasy version of Sims suburbian hell, let that be said. There is no potty training, but dragon slaying and looting. And a lot of complaining about dying. And hours and hours of fun.
Below, I will outline the basics of the game.
Graphics are old school fantasy fare, and well done. The music is ok, but nothing special. The voice overs range from funny, through charming all the way to annoying. Technically, the game is solid.
That is not what makes Majesty such a good game. The gameplay is.
The concept is simple.
You are king, and you will be reminded of this fact constantly.
You have a castle. This castle serves as your base of operations. It contains guards, tax collectors and peasants.
Peasants build, repair, and die in droves. Tax collectors roam the land looking for taxable gold in buildings owing allegiance to you, and guards are simple fighters who protect your settlement.
Expanding on this, you may build guilds for the purpose of recruiting heroes, where each guild allow you to recruit a different hero type.
In addition there are a number of buildings which generate wealth and sell items for your heroes to buy.
For example, the smithy can be upgraded to sell better weapons and armour, and the market building can be upgraded to produce more cash, and sell healing potions and useful trinkets.
Before we look at heroes there is one important point that needs to be made. You have no direct control over the actions of heroes or any other character in the game. Once you recruit a hero, he or she will move about their business as they see fit.
You can support by casting spells, constructions buildings and offering rewards, but there is no way to actually make your heroes do anything directly. It is all done by abilites, incentives and strategic placement of buildings.
There are a number of hero types available. Availability often differ according to what scenario you are playing.
All hero types have different personalities which will determine their actions in the game, and you will certainly grow to like some better than others.
The thief will steal anything that isn't nailed down and provide poisonous weapons for other heroes to buy, while the ranger will roam the wilderness, boldly going, and often dying, where no one has gone before.
Warriors move relatively slowly, hit hard and can take quite a beating. They dutifully spend their loot on equipment and healing potions and will rarely run away from a fight.
Wizards become enormously powerful given a few levels and some trips to the library, but they will often die before achieving anything useful.
These four are the basic hero classes.
As you build your infrastructure you get to choose between different temples. These give you access to the more specialized hero types.
The priests of Agrela are superb healers who tend tag along with warriors as support. They have virtually no combat skills, but as they gain levels they become nearly immortal.
In addition there are the skeleton summoning death priestesses of Krypta, the mischevious and potentially very strong priests of Fervus, the barbarians of Krolm and several others.
The map is filled with monsters and lairs, which provides the main challenge, although victory conditions differ from scenario to scenario.
Building placement and what heroes to recruit are fundamental to victory. There is no cunning opponent AI, but the sheer number and power of some opponents means that timing and wise spending of money will be the key to success.
Players are bound to run into issues with balance and some frustration over difficulty, but I do not feel that this detracts much from the overall impression.
There is a lot more to discover, and I find it easy to recommend this game to anyone.