Did I get a good deal?

[WarLocke]

I was out buying groceries earlier (man, you can't beat 2-liter sodas for $0.75) when I decided to swing by the local Wal-Mart and see what games they had cheap, since I'm nearly done with Deus Ex and don't really want to spend alot of cash on other games with KOTOR around the corner.

And yes, I would have gone to a "real" comp shop if the nearest one wasn't 30 miles away and across state lines. <_<

It amused me how many MMORPGs Wally World stocked (EVE, Planetside, SWG, Sims Online, Shadowbane), but I will never again fall into that trap. I also passed up GTA3, Vice City, Hitman 2, and a Half-Life collector's edition thingy (had HL, Opposing Force, Team Fortress Classic, Counter-Strike, and something else) because they were still big-ticket items and I wasn't going to spend that much dough.

That left me with four $10 options: Hitman (might as well get #2 instead), Gladiators of Rome (which I've seen reviewed on Extended Play, looked very bad), Seige of Avalon (never heard of it, looked like a bad Diablo clone), and Majesty Gold (Majesty & Northern Expansion).

So here I am with Majesty Gold; I haven't even installed it yet. Wal-Mart has the crappy "only accepts returns for another copy of the same item" policy for computer programs now, but if all the good buzz on RBD is any indication, I won't be dissapointed. And even if I am, it was only $10 -- that's a movie ticket & drink.

[Doc]

Majesty ROCKS.

No seriously. I have had the game now for a long time, not sure how long, and I still fire up games on a regular basis. I have plain old Majesty, no expansion.

Majesty defies any catagory really. It combines RTS and a simulation. Sort of like War Craft meets Sim City. You have very little control over your troops actually. You can't just say, "Go here! And hurry!" You have to put out rewards and entice them, but you still have to worry about lazy warriors and the absent minded wizards who might forget what they were doing.

There is plenty of Monty Python humour, as well as other stereotypical inserts that one could expect.

You will have a great deal of fun for ten bucks.

[Roland]

But the game is good. :) More "funny" than anything else. ;) It's a good overall game. RTS-ish, although you don't control units directly, so it adds some nice new elements to it. And, it has lots of "pathways" to choose, with no linearity, so it's got good enough replay value. A solid game, if often overlooked. Nothing mind-blowing, but a good, clean, fun game, nonetheless. :)

[Doc]

I think that's actually the key to Majesty's staying power. It's nothing mind blowing. For RTS, there is Starcraft and Warcraft. For sims, there is Sim City or Sim Coaster or whatever. There are tons of games that are better. Groundbreaking. But those games get boring. You can only build so many coasters. You can only do so many Zergling rushes.

Majesty is like a comfortable brown lazyboy. You know, the kind that sits in the corner and is mostly ignored by company, who preferes the 4000 dollar leather couch. But the lazyboy is something you can settle in to, and be comfortable, and it never really ages.

Majesty is excellent when you want to play, but don't want to think. It's GREAT for insomniacs!

[Roland]

Couldn't have said it better myself. Not by a longshot. ;)

[WarLocke]

I've played the game a bit. It's definitely different ("cool" different, not "ugh") and entertaining. I still need to get used to it, though; I'm too used to turn-based or realtime-with-pause games.

The different heros are cool, my first rogue was Mease the Miserly, heh. Although it seems like heros (or low-level ones at least) die really fast.

I'm also getting weird lockups. Everything but the mouse freezes, and I can't even alt-tab out (the display bar shows, but the new window doesn't "open" properly). I have to ctrl-alt-del and stop the Majesty process (which shows as Not Responding). I guess I can get "around" it by saving frequently (doesn't seem to corrupt savegames), but relaunching the game every 10 minutes will get old fast. :angry:

[Doc]

Yes, heroes can die. And will. There are no "Gods" in this game. No matter how powerful, your hero can die. I still play multiplayer on occasion and have level 20 or so heroes get taken down. You can however, pay to have those heroes brought back to life.


Some tips. Ranged characters are supremely powerful. Ranged characters with poisoned weapons are even better. Wizards, backed by a well stocked library, and a few towers, are insanely powerful. However, all it takes is a pea shooter to get them killed. Build several marketplaces. Cash makes your world go around. Tax collectors can use guardhouses to deposit taxes. Build guardhouses!! If your tax collector dies with 3 or 4 thousand gold, there goes your upgrades. Keep a warriors guild right next to your castle. And summon them as needed. There is nothing like a few dozen dragons firebombing your castle to reduce it to cinders in seconds. Or, um, a rock golem invasion or two. Anyhow, always keep your castle well defended, or else. Have fun.

And beware of the Black Spectres. **Shudders**

[DaveO]

My brother got the game from a friend and he enjoyed it and the expansion I got for him. From the times I saw him playing, it seemed pretty "tongue in cheek". :lol: But I think it's important for any game to not be TOO serious.

As far as your lockup problem, perhaps a patch will fix the issue. Or if that does not work, you can always get the free OS updates from the www.windowsupdate.com site.

[Baajikiil]

I recently bought the Majesty gold + expansion in a collector's set of games on ebay. I think it went for $10.50($3 shipping), and included 2 other games as well. Well worth the $10.

I've always liked the game. It seems to me that after playing it for a few days(couple hours a day), I get tired of it and move on to other games. But it's still fun to go back to after I've had a break. Definitely a good game. Unique and interesting gameplay.

EDIT:
Oh yeah, as for lockup issues, there is a patch at their website; it might help. There are also a few(2 IIRC) official new quests that can be downloaded for the expansion.

[WarLocke]

Update: I played through the "beginner" level the game suggested, "The Bell, the Book, and the Candle". Surprisingly, I didn't lock up over the course of 1.5 or 2 hours. Yeah, I still suck, I turned the game speed down and still took 23 in-game days to finish the quest.

Early on my heroes died in droves, but once I scraped enough infrastructure and cash together to upgrade my Palace, things looked up. With a Ranger guild, Rogue guild, 4 Gnome Hovels (don't ask me how I got that many, I only built one) and Temples to Aglenta and Duar (? I probably got the names wrong -- they recruited Healers and Monks), I reached a sort of "critical mass" were I had so many heroes, rogues/gnomes (who don't seem to count as "heroes"?) and guards that I just slaughtered everything that attacked my settlement.

Oh, except for the Beholder-type thing. I had to resort to Healing my best Ranger (level 8 at the time) 4 or 5 times while he chipped away at it. No one else would stay on the same screen as it. :ph34r:

I think once I figure out how to get a strong economy/cash inflow going fast, things will be much smoother.

[roguebanshee]

Gnomes breed like rabbits with the ingame effect of automatically building/spawning new hovels, they can be used as extra peasants (quite nicely too) and they gain experience while repairing or building stuff. They do however make it impossible to get the other two non-human races, unless you cheat or the mission allows it, and they increase the amount of sewers that appear. Due to their automatically spawning hovels they can be really hard to get rid of.

Rogues will attack almost anything with a 500+ bounty on it, even your own buildings, and most heroes will go anywhere and attempt to kill anything with a 2k+ bounty, expensive but heroes do tend to spend gold on anything they can buy thus eventually returning the gold to you.

To get your economy going you need a level 3 marketplace, preferably more at some point, and a blacksmith with at least level 2 armor & weapons. The marketplace generates gold even without heroes around based on it's level but heroes add more to that since the healing potions are quite popular. A further boost can come from inviting elves into your kingdom (see manual for excact prereqs.) and you should be able to easily rid yourself of the gambling hall and elven lounge by removing them from the repair queue and tagging them with a modest reward, your rogues should be plinking away at the buildings within a few seconds.

Also setting your tax collectors to pick up at least a certain amount and return immedately can help minimizing the time they spend wandering around, minimizing the risk of lost gold, and speed up your income.

[Drasca]

Its all about what you got out of it. For me, Doc, and a lot of others-- we got a great deal. I'm pretty proud to have personally recommended the game to Doc myself--not knowing just how much enjoyment he got out of it.

About game locking up: That's a video card problem. I've had that happen before to me with a nonstandard (cruddly built-in laptop) video chipset. Go to Display properties, there should be a slider from full to no hardware acceleration from the video card. Turn off hardware acceleration. It'll require a restart to work. If this doesn't solve the problem, you can always turn hardware acceleration (video card) back on.




Comments/Tips:

-- Rogues may kill your own buildings (and take bribes--enemy reward flags) for 500+, but they'll go anywhere or do anything for much lower. 200-300 gold reward. Dwarves accept low rewards too, they're quite misers.

--If you don't want your heroes to die as often. be a generous host subsidize their equipment outfitting. Plant explore flags near the desired hero and build shopping structures (blacksmiths/wizard guilds/rogue's guilds/marketplace, etc) near their homes. Better yet, watch over them and aid their conquests. Baby-sit them. The oldest trick in my book is keeping the wizard under constant invisibility when under attack by trolls, dragons, golems, and whatnot.

--Oh, don't invest too heavily in low tier heroes the first time around. People do that for challenge, not serious gameplay. Warriors are grunts, foot soldiers, expendable. They die. A lot. So do rogues and rangers if you let them defend homes by themselves. There are some really cool nearly self-sufficient Temple and warriors guild + temple heroes, but everything needs some babying to be readily effective.





BTW--For all you Majesty Fans, there's a Majesty 2 in development. No guarantee on release date or that'll finish, but here's to hope and teasers:

http://www.strategyplanet.com/majesty/m2sc...s20030424.shtml
http://www.insidemacgames.com/news/story.p...?ArticleID=7530

[WarLocke]

About game locking up: That's a video card problem.

I figured as much. For some reason it rarely does that anymore, so unless I get another 6-lockups-per-hour day I'll probably not mess with anything.

If you don't want your heroes to die as often. be a generous host subsidize their equipment outfitting.

I hadn't thought of those. :blink: I guess planting 100-200 in rewards outside a guild just before a new recruit arrives would help them with outfitting, or allow them to buy healing potions immediately. Those are great ideas!

So far I've basically been building Agrela temples/guilds ASAP so I could use the Heal spell, and babysat my heroes (I rarely use more than 12 at once, and often have the game speed turned down, which makes this much easier).

Oh, don't invest too heavily in low tier heroes the first time around. People do that for challenge, not serious gameplay.

Idunno.

Rogues will brave incredible odds for a 100 gold flag. They'll do just about anything for gold, actually. That's mighty handy.

And Rangers have a tendency to explore the map, which is great because I'm a compulsive explorer. They're also relatively low-maintenance since they're good about keeping potions stocked and running away if they're in trouble.

Although, Paladins do seem to beat Warriors in every category (faster, stronger, tougher, spells...) even if they're horribly expensive.

My biggest problem right now is getting cash. I have a tendency to build a few guilds early on and fill out their rosters, so I can explore and defend my settlement (because guard towers get expensive fast), but by the time I do that and build a marketplace, blacksmith, research some things and upgrade the castle, I'm broke and don't have much of an income coming in. Blah. <_<

[roguebanshee]

So far I've basically been building Agrela temples/guilds ASAP so I could use the Heal spell, and babysat my heroes (I rarely use more than 12 at once, and often have the game speed turned down, which makes this much easier).

Fervus gives the healing spell too and it lets you recruit Warriors of Discord in your Warriors Guild and Cultists are quite good themselves too (then again it might just be me who likes to see a green, dagger-throwing bear called Luminous Puddle). The only heroes worthy of babysitting are imo the Wizards since they usually die in one hit from anything even at higher levels. Other heroes should usually only be healed if they are valuable, low on health, berserking and have run out of potions, otherwise it's either a waste of gold or they can handle themselves (at least for a bit more) imo.

And Rangers have a tendency to explore the map, which is great because I'm a compulsive explorer.&nbsp; They're also relatively low-maintenance since they're good about keeping potions stocked and running away if they're in trouble.

It's not always smart to explore every part of the map too fast as some of the buildings you discover will force you down a path you don't want to take. But usually it's a smart enough choice.

Although, Paladins do seem to beat Warriors in every category (faster, stronger, tougher, spells...) even if they're horribly expensive.

Paladins beat Warriors all over the board, except for leveling speed. Paladins are worth every single gold coin you spend to recruit them. Still, I've yet to see either a Warrior or a Paladin kill a rock golem in one hit.

My biggest problem right now is getting cash.&nbsp; I have a tendency to build a few guilds early on and fill out their rosters, so I can explore and defend my settlement (because guard towers get expensive fast), but by the time I do that and build a marketplace, blacksmith, research some things and upgrade the castle, I'm broke and don't have much of an income coming in.&nbsp; Blah.

Build a marketplace as soon as you can, preferably your first hero should be able to buy a healing potion as soon as he is recruited. Usually an almost fully upgraded marketplace (teleportation amulets can wait) and a level 1 blacksmith should be up before you start pushing out heroes in ernest. Even so you shouldn't expect to have much gold left after you've gotten most of what you want, but if you don't throw out spells at every opportunity it shouldn't be bad.

[Korror]

My biggest problem right now is getting cash.&nbsp; I have a tendency to build a few guilds early on and fill out their rosters, so I can explore and defend my settlement (because guard towers get expensive fast), but by the time I do that and build a marketplace, blacksmith, research some things and upgrade the castle, I'm broke and don't have much of an income coming in.&nbsp; Blah.&nbsp;&nbsp; <_<

The secret to maintaining a good income flow in Majesty is not one level 3 marketplace but three of them. You can't build them too close together but you can build them in a sort of triangle with your palace being the center of the triangle and the marketplaces being in the three corners. If you have elves, you can get by with only two marketplaces but otherwise you need three. My strategy for any majesty map is to build enough defense to survive while upgrading and building marketplaces. Upgrading my palace to level 2 as soon as I have four heros. Once I have enough gold coming in, I build 2-3 warriors guilds and fill them with paladins, and watch as they rid the world of evil for me.

This works 3/4 of the time, for the other ¼ you are attacked too quickly to build so many marketplaces and must recruit what heroes you can to survive.

[Doc]

Elves double your income from market places, but this is useless, as the other Elven buildings will drain any and all excess income. Elves do more to damage your economy then build it. Also, Elves are both physically and magically fragile. A stiff breeze will blow them right over. Gazers will flatten them in seconds.

Gnomes not only build, add population, meaning more houses, meaning more taxes generated, but, they also add to the luck of all your heroes. Luck determines magic resistance, chance to dodge, hit, etc. Also, heroes can luck out at zero hit points. Lucking out means, at zero hit points, he might live. Might.

Dwarves will attack things nobody else will. For low amounts of gold. Dwarves, at higher levels, are nearly magic immune. They can safely assault dragons, even HUGE mobs of dragons, with little worry.

As for other units:

Monks are the supremely powerful unit. They can become physical and magical immune. They can learn wizard spells from libraries, power strike and flame shield. Also, Monks, right from level 1, can one shot kill anything in the game with Deadly Strike. It starts at 1% at level 1, and gains 1% with each level. They can evade arrows and even spells. In many online games, both Monks and Barbarians are outlawed, for many reasons.

Priestesses of Krypta are terribly fragile at first. They too, can learn power strike and flame shield. They can charm vampires, and other undead, and their life drain attack not only heals them, but also their undead summons. Once they learn a few spells, and get to be about level 10ish, they are fearsome. Skeletons, while seemingly weak, have damage resistance you would not believe, and are awesome at dodging all incoming attacks.

And, my fave unit. The Cultists. Cultists, at first glace, seem weak. They are however, the Powergamers Choice. They shapeshift, gaining big hit points, but still keeping amazing dodge and evade skills. When they learn to camo themselves, they seldom die, going into hiding the moment they are in trouble. They level quickly, gaining exp for planting poisonous flowers, exploring, stealing, looting gravestones, etc. They are the best combination of Rangers and Rogues, gaining the special abilities of both. They are also second only to monks for magic resistance (Not counting wizards) and they too, can learn power strike and flame shield. Plus, they are a hoot. Nothing gets a good laugh like seeing a cultist go into an elven lounge as a were bear, doing god knows what in the lounge while in bear form. Cultists are the Red Wizard of Majesty. 8 bit theatre fans take note.

[Drasca]

Would anyone else be interested in playing MP Majesty with each other?

[roguebanshee]

Elves double your income from market places, but this is useless, as the other Elven buildings will drain any and all excess income. Elves do more to damage your economy then build it. Also, Elves are both physically and magically fragile. A stiff breeze will blow them right over. Gazers will flatten them in seconds.

2x 500 gold attack reward flags + removal from repair queue + 4 rogues = No Gambling Hall or Elven Lounge and 4 rogues with boosted experience and gold.

Elves are good if you need money and they are superior to Rangers in combat.

[WarLocke]

Would anyone else be interested in playing MP Majesty with each other?

Game times permitting, I'd love to.

Can MP Majesty be played coop, or just as a free-for-all?

Fear Bupo Plik!

"But I'm just a gnome..."

[Brista]

I loved it but I have to say I didn't think it had good replay value. I beat all the missions fairly quickly, spotted one tactic that seemed to always win against almost any odds and that was it

It's a beautiful looking very funny game with a very original concept and good gameplay. You definitely got your money's worth :)