Played as part of CONQUERING MY CHILDHOOD
Today marks the 23rd birthday of Majesty, a single drop in the flooded sea of the early RTS market; a sea that would eventually dry out for any game not named Age of Empires or StarCraft. This era of games is incredibly intriguing to me as someone who grew up playing RTSes, but these weird off-brand ones in particular. Those that come to mind include Battle Realms, Impossible Creatures, and, of course, Majesty.
Majesty departs from typical RTS mechanics, and in doing so ends up becoming part RTS, part city-builder, part god-game and part Peter Molyneux fever dream. In lieu of typical RTS mechanics, Majesty does not give you direct control over your units; instead, it tasks you with building a kingdom that functions fairly autonomously. Your only resource is gold, and building a strong economy involves balancing the creation of a kingdom that produces enough taxable income with building enough defenses to where your kingdom doesn't crumble to the slightest ratman invasion. Marketplaces and Trading Posts bring in passive income, but your heroes can provide a boost by spending their hard-plundered gold on gear and consumables, if you give them the means to do so.
These heroes replace the typical units you'd find in most other RTSes, and act more as DnD heroes than foot soldiers. Each type of hero not only has their own set of stats and skills, but their own behaviours as well. Rangers spend their free times exploring the map, Cultists run around charming beasts and planting poison mushrooms, Warriors of Discord slowly and aimlessly wander around the map, attacking pretty much everything they see. They also react differently to bounties - gold rewards you can put on the map or on enemies to actually get your heroes to do what you want. The most notable example is how Rogues will chase after much smaller bounties than any other heroes, but are also some of the first to run away if they see it as remotely dangerous. It's all really sophisticated!
The game doesn't have a straightforward structured campaign, instead it gives you a world map with a bunch of individual missions on it. Each mission gets to explore a different, weird idea. It's not all about making a strong band of heroes and going out and killing all the baddies. I've played tower defense missions, missions about earning enough money in a set time, even one where I had to gamble in order to beat it. Sometimes the weirdness can feel a little gimmicky, but that's much preferred to the alternative - falling into the RTS campaign curse where you're just doing the same thing over and over and it gets boring. Majesty manages to avoid that!
This is all backed by some of my favourite presentation of any game from around this time. From an audio-visual perspective it's very similar to Age of Empires 2, with these 2D isometric graphics that aged really well backed by a soundtrack that has no reason being as good as it is. Seriously, just listen to this! But it also has some of the best voice acting I've ever heard?? It's all incredibly hammy and over the top but not in a "so bad it's good" way that you might expect from a 2000s computer game. It's just good!
This game really surprised me with how sophisticated and engaging it is, especially considering its premise of "RTS but you can't actually control anything". A must-play for anyone into these weird old RTSes, or anyone interested in more strange and inspired games as a whole.
Today marks the 23rd birthday of Majesty, a single drop in the flooded sea of the early RTS market; a sea that would eventually dry out for any game not named Age of Empires or StarCraft. This era of games is incredibly intriguing to me as someone who grew up playing RTSes, but these weird off-brand ones in particular. Those that come to mind include Battle Realms, Impossible Creatures, and, of course, Majesty.
Majesty departs from typical RTS mechanics, and in doing so ends up becoming part RTS, part city-builder, part god-game and part Peter Molyneux fever dream. In lieu of typical RTS mechanics, Majesty does not give you direct control over your units; instead, it tasks you with building a kingdom that functions fairly autonomously. Your only resource is gold, and building a strong economy involves balancing the creation of a kingdom that produces enough taxable income with building enough defenses to where your kingdom doesn't crumble to the slightest ratman invasion. Marketplaces and Trading Posts bring in passive income, but your heroes can provide a boost by spending their hard-plundered gold on gear and consumables, if you give them the means to do so.
These heroes replace the typical units you'd find in most other RTSes, and act more as DnD heroes than foot soldiers. Each type of hero not only has their own set of stats and skills, but their own behaviours as well. Rangers spend their free times exploring the map, Cultists run around charming beasts and planting poison mushrooms, Warriors of Discord slowly and aimlessly wander around the map, attacking pretty much everything they see. They also react differently to bounties - gold rewards you can put on the map or on enemies to actually get your heroes to do what you want. The most notable example is how Rogues will chase after much smaller bounties than any other heroes, but are also some of the first to run away if they see it as remotely dangerous. It's all really sophisticated!
The game doesn't have a straightforward structured campaign, instead it gives you a world map with a bunch of individual missions on it. Each mission gets to explore a different, weird idea. It's not all about making a strong band of heroes and going out and killing all the baddies. I've played tower defense missions, missions about earning enough money in a set time, even one where I had to gamble in order to beat it. Sometimes the weirdness can feel a little gimmicky, but that's much preferred to the alternative - falling into the RTS campaign curse where you're just doing the same thing over and over and it gets boring. Majesty manages to avoid that!
This is all backed by some of my favourite presentation of any game from around this time. From an audio-visual perspective it's very similar to Age of Empires 2, with these 2D isometric graphics that aged really well backed by a soundtrack that has no reason being as good as it is. Seriously, just listen to this! But it also has some of the best voice acting I've ever heard?? It's all incredibly hammy and over the top but not in a "so bad it's good" way that you might expect from a 2000s computer game. It's just good!
This game really surprised me with how sophisticated and engaging it is, especially considering its premise of "RTS but you can't actually control anything". A must-play for anyone into these weird old RTSes, or anyone interested in more strange and inspired games as a whole.
Vee
1 year ago