MAJESTY:THE FANTASY KINGDOM SIM
               Developed by Cyberlore Studios
              Published by Hasbro Interactive
                Reviewed by Bev Truter on PC

Recommended Specifications:
P2-300
64MB RAM
320MB hard drive space

I discovered this little gem of a game while wandering about one
of the last remaining PC games shops in our local shopping mall
about three weeks ago, and I haven't stopped playing it since
forking out the equivalent of a fiver ($15) for this last-but-one
copy of Majesty languishing on the 'Drastically Reduced' shelf.
Majesty is apparently classified as a real-time strategy game
(RTS), and although not exactly my usual taste in games (or so I
thought), the picture on the front of the box grabbed my attention
(a small mediaeval city held in the palms of two outstretched
hands), the price attracted me, and the blurb on the reverse of
the box clinched it - 'Rule a kingdom crawling with monsters,
heroes and devious characters. Start with a fledgling town, a
small palace and many dangerous quests...' Since the original RRP
was a staggering $89 or thereabouts (30 pounds) it didn't much
matter if Majesty proved a total disaster or not, but this was
obviously my lucky day as Majesty turned out to be a lovely,
addictive, easy-to-learn game in the old AD&D tradition, inspired
by Settlers 2, Warcraft 2 and the Might & Magic series, according
to a FAQ sheet from the Net.

You play the role of sovereign of the mythical land of Ardania.
Starting only with a palace and a varying sum of gold, you have to
spend it wisely by building various guilds to recruit heroes,
temples for another range of heroes, and a few guard-towers to
protect your fledgling city.  After choosing each building from
the building menu, a team of peasants ambles out from your palace
clutching saws and hammers, and sets to work. No discrimination
here on grounds of sex, either - female peasants work quite
happily alongside the males.

One of the first buildings you'll need after constructing a guild
or two is a blacksmith to supply your heroes with the usual
paraphernalia of combat - shields and armour; a market-place to
sell healing potions and rings of protection, and a library to
research magic so that your temples and Wizards' guilds can
upgrade to higher levels where better spells become available.
Underpinning all this activity and building is gold, which is
automatically collected from most buildings by a rotund little
taxman resembling a cartoonish Henry VIII. You can improve your
palace from a lowly level 1 jobbie up to a luxurious level 3
affair, each upgrade supporting an extra taxman for extracting
money from your locals. All this takes time, money and effort; and
in the 5 'beginner' missions neither temples nor wizards' guilds
are available, which means that you have to rely on the sheer
brute force of warriors, rogues and rangers.  Other races (elves,
dwarves or gnomes) can be recruited in the 'advanced' missions by
building the relevant guilds to attract them, but as they don't
co-exist happily, you can only choose one non-human race per
mission.

Your kingdom is continually under attack from wandering monsters
such as skeletons, ogres, trolls, vampires and a host of other
creatures, so each of the 19 quests available in the campaign mode
involves defending your city and its inhabitants from attack ,
while also ensuring that you have enough spare heroes to send out
into the wide blue yonder to explore the blacked-out regions of
your map and fulfill the aims of each quest. The aims of each
quest are usually pretty simple, such as rescue kidnapped prince,
find stolen crown, etc. The real fun bit of Majesty though is the
LACK of direct control you have over your heroes. You can't
directly choose to send them off to explore, or attack a certain
monster; the only way to influence your trusty bands of heroes (4
per guild) is to place reward flags in areas you wish to be
explored, or attack flags on especially nasty creatures or
buildings you wish to be attacked.  The higher the amount of gold
you offer on each flag, the greater number of heroes will attempt
to carry out your wishes.

As soon as his hit-points get dangerously low a hero will flee
back home to his guild to rest and regain hit-points, or to the
nearest guardhouse, inn or royal gardens. Heroes will
automatically rush to the defence of your city if they are in the
vicinity, so you don't have to tag every wandering monster with a
flag, only the really threatening ones. The more you expect of
your heroes, the larger the amount has to be on each flag to
attract their efforts - they're a decidedly mercenary bunch!
However, all classes of heroes wander off to explore new territory
when bored, and they tend to find magic potions lying around, or
gold in creatures' dens they opt to attack. All money thus earned
or found by your heroes is spent in your marketplace, blacksmith,
inns or royal gardens, and a large portion of it will eventually
find its way into your palace vaults via your all- important
taxman / taxmen.

Magic plays a large part in the advanced and expert quests, and at
some stage it is essential to be able to cast the sovereign-spells
(i.e., those cast directly by you) of invisibility (to protect
your wandering taxmen, chiefly) and lightning-storm (an expensive
spell, but necessary to whack several monsters at once if there's
a bunch of them attacking one important building). All the
religions (7 different types of temple available) produce their
own followers capable of using magic to help your rangers, rogues
and warriors. However, only certain mixes of religion are
permitted - you can either choose the wimpy way with temples to
Agrela and Dauros recruiting healers and monks; or go the
bloodthirsty way with temples to Krypta and Fervus to recruit
priestesses and cultists. The cultists are my personal favourite -
the manual (73 pages, on the CD) warns of their at times 'erratic'
behaviour, and they will often stand dead still for a while, then
whizz off at a tangent muttering "ni-ni-ni-ni" in a shrill voice,
then unexpectedly turn into a bear...very disconcerting!

The graphics in Majesty are excellent, from the opening screen
where you can choose to play, load, look at the credits, check
your high scores or exit; through to the stupendous way your
wizards' towers are magically created in a pulsating haze of
purple smoke. Characters move about and fight realistically, the
game runs smoothly with no snags or hiccups even on my lowly P2,
and although there is no PAUSE button, it's easy to slow the game
down through the 'options' menu to a snail's pace when you need
time to plot and plan. Normal view mode is 800x600 resolution, but
when your kingdom expands to a hefty size it's easier to keep
track of things with the slightly fuzzier but still adequate
zoomed-out view.

The music is tolerable - a reasonably realistic rendition of
simple mediaeval-sounding tunes; but then, no matter how good the
music, you inevitably tire of it after hearing the same 6 ditties
for the 28th time.  The various sound-effects, including
characters' speech and voice-over notifications of important
events are very good too - my favourite was the
grave-but-delighted tone of the message "....Sire! A band of elves
wishes to join your kingdom...." Yay! Yes, please!! The great
opening cinematic has a realistic Sean Connery sound-alike doing
the narration....hmmm - perhaps it WAS Sean Connery? (memo: check
out the credits for the cinematic).

The various game menus, options and controls are very easy to
learn (even for me!), and it's easy to keep track of what is
happening, and where throughout your realm. Each mission in the
single-player mode is quite short - even the first 'expert'
mission I attempted took me well under 2 hours to complete. The
only complaint I've heard about Majesty is that the beginner
missions are way too easy, and the expert missions far too hard;
but given that this was my very first attempt at playing this type
of game, I found the beginner missions just right, with a bit more
to get my teeth into in the advanced missions. There were 2
advanced missions that I found impossible to complete without
cheats - and yes, I've got the cheats from SynTax, but no, I
haven't resorted to using any of them yet.  The beginner missions
take about 9-16 game-days to complete (i.e., about an hour, or
less), and the advanced missions 25-40 game-days. I spent a
frustrating 62 game-days on one of the expert missions before
admitting defeat, but that was just me, novice that I am.

Overall, I happily recommend this game to anyone who enjoys any
type of computer game. It won't take you months to complete (a
week should see you through the 12 beginner and advanced games),
and when you finish the 19 quests, there is a random section where
you can choose games from a seemingly unlimited number of
randomly-generated maps and games; and there's also a multi-player
section where you can pit yourself against other players on-line.
A bit of something for everyone in Majesty, I think.
















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