RPGnet : The Inside Scoop on Gaming

Background.

I really hate computer games for the most part. I may occasionally fish out my Playstation and do a quick round of, say, Crash Team Racing, but typically I'll go for months without ever seeing a computer game at all. That's why I was very surprised when Cyberlore's Jay Adan dropped me a line and asked if I'd mind reviewing his company's product for RPGNet.

In the spirit of full disclosure, I think it only right to mention that Jay and I have been on good terms for a long time. Jay was one of my fans back in the days when I had dozens upon dozens of comprehensive game and supplement reviews on my web site. (These days I just host and contribute to Haiku Movie Reviews.) He and I have exchanged (mostly) polite words in Usenet's rec.games.frp.misc forum and we've participated in several mailing lists together. Jay's about as close to what I'd consider a friend as I can possibly imagine on the net. Also -- in the same spirit of full disclosure -- I was sort of paid for this review. I got a copy of Majesty (along with a strategy guide I've yet to read) for free under the proviso that I review the game. Please keep these potential influences in mind while reading this review.

With that all out of the way...

...I'll proceed with the review. As I said, I'm not an avid computer gamer, so some of you will probably find me hopelessly naive while I describe things in this game.

The first thing to dispel in this review is the myth that Majesty is a game at all. I don't think it really is and, indeed, think that this is the only reason I've found the game so addictive. Majesty isn't a game -- it's a toy. Admittedly it's a very colourful, interactive, ornate and complex toy, but it still remains a toy. Like many of the best toys it can be used to play games, but it also shares with the best toys the trait that it can be just, well, toyed with, without the usual goals and competition that are the hallmarks of games. This is why my usual disdain of computer games didn't kick in while I evaluated (OK, obsessed over!) Majesty.

So now you know that Majesty is a toy, not a game. This isn't the most helpful description, of course. So here's a bit more meat to the description.

Majesty is what is apparently termed a "real time simulator". This is along the lines of the venerable Sim City and its ilk, as well as several more modern games out there. In this game you are the lord of a fantasy kingdom who has to keep his kingdom alive in the face of several external threats. Majesty does have, however, some very distinct differences to the style of real time simulators I've encountered before.

So what does Majesty bring to the table?

One of the first things Majesty adds to the mix is the concept of quests. A quest is a single-player adventure. Not only do you have to keep your kingdom running smoothly, you have to accomplish certain specific tasks while you're doing it. For example, in the first beginner's quest -- "The Bell, the Book and the Candle" -- you have to recover three important items stolen from your treasury. The game ends when you accomplish the goals of the quest. Some of the quests can be accomplished readily. Others are fiendishly difficult. All of them (so far) have been oodles of fun. Of course you don't always have to play quests. You can play free-form games (this is where Majesty most resembles a toy) and you can even set up free-form games for multi-player gaming over the network. (I haven't tried out network gaming yet, though, so that won't be part of my review.)

The next thing that I found very innovative in Majesty is the fact that the pieces you use to perform the tasks you set are not under your direct control! You don't point to a figure on the screen and give it orders. You set tasks like "build this building" or "destroy this site" or "explore this area" and watch the playing pieces move to do it. Or not. Because, you see, you need to provide incentives for your playing pieces to do anything. Some pieces -- peasants and tax collectors for example -- do their jobs without inducement. Peasants build and maintain buildings. (Don't build too many at once or the peasants will work much slower!) Tax collectors go from building to building and get money. (Don't forget to provide protection for them or your kingdom will rapidly go bankrupt!)

Most other playing pieces (called heroes), however, work of their own "free will". You have to provide incentives for them to do what you want them to do. The most common incentives are "flags" -- monetary reward indicators in two flavours (attack and explore) which are used to pay for the services of your heroes. Sadly, however, flags alone won't get heroes to do your bidding. You have to do many other things to keep your costs down -- things like providing your heroes with protection (weapons shops, marketplaces, healers, etc.) or with recognition for their great deeds (statues, etc.).

It is this perverse feeling of free will which makes Majesty such a hoot to play with. I've caught myself several times shouting at the screen with frustration. "NO!!!!", I'd shout at some paladins. "Don't attack the [bad word] sewer rats! Attack the [bad word] dragon that's destroying my [bad word] palace! You stupid pieces of worthless [bad word]!!!! I hate all of you!!!! [many bad words]!!!!!" Any toy which can cause this kind of emotional reaction and *STILL* be fun to play is a great one in my books.

And now for some meat.

Majesty's user interface consists of four fixed windows. A large one contains your main map display, as well as a few icon bars, status bars and the like. In this window you get the detailed view of your kingdom. This is also where most of the animation action goes on. The visuals in this window are stunning. There are a lot of pseudo-3D objects working independently here, and the detail in which they are rendered is rather impressive to my probably naive eyes. Most of what you do in the game is done in this window. Through this window you will set construction sites, monitor characters and buildings, set reward flags, cast spells and so on. The user interface feels natural after only a few minutes of learning. (Indeed, I never did actually learn the keyboard shortcuts because I could do everything I needed to do while playing using just the mouse.)

The next window you'll likely be working with is the control window. From this window, the middle one on the left-hand spread, you will give orders to the active building, start new construction, adjust building traits, etc. You'll spend about 80% of your time split between this window and the main map window.

The third window, topmost of the spread of three on the left, is the mini map window. Unlike the main map window which only shows you a small portion of your kingdom and its surroundings, the mini map window shows everything -- only with almost no detail. You can use the mini map window to grossly track events in the setting and to quickly navigate through the entire kingdom.

The final window, bottom-most of the spread of three on the left, is the tracking window. You can use it to keep track of a given location or individual and it is essentially a view like the main map view which happens to track a site or person at your command.

Through these four windows, the "game" unfolds. You have to manage your kingdom. The general plan of most quests involves constructing buildings, recruiting heroes for your goals and setting attack or explore reward flags to prompt your heroes to do what you want them to. As the game progresses you will want to cast spells, upgrade buildings, outfit heroes, construct more buildings, recruit more heroes, build up your treasury, spend your treasury on buildings, heroes and spells, and generally try to keep your kingdom alive. This isn't always easy. Invariably you have too few resources to do everything you want to do, so you have to set priorities and make do with less.

Buildings.

Every building in Majesty provides some benefit to you. Your palace, for example, determines how many guards, tax collectors and peasants you can support. To be able to support a larger kingdom, you need to have a bigger palace. To get a bigger palace, you need to recruit heroes. To recruit heroes, you need other buildings. To build those buildings you need peasants. To get more peasants you need a bigger palace. You're right back where you started. :-)

Some of the buildings supported in the game, along with their abilities, are:

Fairgrounds -- can improve heroes.
Guard houses -- help defend against monsters and provide safe havens for your tax collectors.
Marketplaces -- interact with trading posts to generate large amounts of wealth for the kingdom.
Guild houses -- provide places to recruit assorted types of heroes. Each guild has its own style of house.

Adding some complexity to the mix are the temples and assorted races. There are, for example, good temples and evil temples. You cannot have both in your kingdom. Evil temples are great for killing things. Good temples are great for keeping your heroes alive. Both give you spells which you can use, as well as heroes who can go around and do things for you. Selecting one or the other is a matter of taste and strategy. Both have their strengths and their weaknesses.

There are also multiple races, again mutually exclusive. You can have Elves, Dwarves or Gnomes settle in your territory at times. Selecting one of them excludes the others. Dwarves are a good supply of warriors and of powerful technology. (Ballista towers kick butt!) Gnomes are a good supply of cheap, if useless, labour. (The "heroes" you recruit from the Gnomes don't fit the qualifications for some building upgrades....) Elves are bloody useless. (At least I've never found a use for them.) They're actually quite good as explorers, but for that they tend to throw your kingdom into disarray.

Heroes.

Heroes are the meat of the game. Without them, you don't win. (With them, you spend a lot of time frothing at the screen. You win some, you lose some.) Heroes can be wilderness specialists like the rangers, or they can be holy warriors like the paladins. Or they can be something else entirely. The strength of Majesty -- and the source of almost constant frustration while playing it -- is that heroes are like individuals. Different kinds of heroes are motivated by different things. Rangers are motivated by the urge to explore and will clean up on your explore flags (if they live). Paladins will destroy evil. (They're not particularly motivated by your reward flags, in fact.) Rogues are motivated by easy money (and exploration, to a degree). Every kind of hero has a different approach to its electronic life which you must discern if you wish to put it to its best use.

This isn't all, however. It seems that individual heroes within a given type can often have subtly different motivations. Some are cowards and will avoid all fights. Others will charge in blindly and get slaughtered. Some are self-starters. Others will sit in their home and watch it get destroyed around them until you provide a reward to kill whatever's attacking. This extreme variance among characters gives Majesty a unique feel that I've never encountered in another game.

The other shoe drops...

So far I've been doing a pretty good impression of a drooling fan-boy. Allow me to dissuade you. While I do have some very good things to say about Majesty, I also do have some criticism.

The biggest problem I had with Majesty was figuring out just what I was supposed to do with it. Cyberlore nearly lost a good review as a result. After spending quite a while on it and still not having my bearings, I was about to quit in disgust and indicate this in my review. Only my perverse sense of honour intervened and made me stick to it. Then something clicked. I "got it" and started to play. This is a problematical approach to making a game, however, since first impressions are very often also the last impressions when negative. Cyberlore should take this as a warning to improve... well, I don't know what. The documentation? A bit more expository text and a little less pointless detail? Perhaps a fully comprehensive on-line help system which can tell when players are stuck and provide a few clues? Maybe some chapters on general advice in the actual manual, not in a separately-purchased strategy guide? Something like that couldn't possibly hurt.

The next thing I had a problem with was the user interface. Yes, I know that I said it was intuitive above, but it was intuitive only after a learning curve. Again some better documentation, preferably on-line and right in front of my eyes while I'm working, would improve things. (You wouldn't believe how long it took me to figure out how to save a game....) There are also a few warts in the interface. For example, you can easily go deep in the control window's interface, click one step too far and find out that you can't take a single step back. This can sometimes have fatal consequences as you restart a longish procedure while your kingdom is destroyed. (Or maybe it's an indicator that I should get around to learning those keyboard shortcuts?:-)

One other thing that has to go is the Sean Connery wannabe doing most of the voice talent. The gentleman who acts as your royal advisor has a good voice overall, but the Connery impression often made me grit my teeth and wish for a mute button.

Hardware requirements.

I play-tested this game on a 700MHz/Athlon system with 256MB RAM, an SBLive sound card and a Diamond Viper II video card running Windows 98 Second Edition. The official hardware requirements are a 166MHz/Pentium with 32MB RAM and any 2MB SVGA card running Windows 95 or Windows 98.

Summary.

I hate computer games, generally. I love Majesty. That should speak volumes about this computerized toy alone. Majesty is a near-endlessly configurable little toy which has already provided me with dozens of hours of fun, even in the face of an initial conceptual block and some warts in its user interface. I heartily recommend it to anybody who enjoys real time strategy computer games, and even to a few people like me who don't enjoy computer games very much at all.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim
Author: Too many to count. Category: Computer Game Company/Publisher: Cyberlore Studios / MicroProse / Hasbro Interactive Line: Majesty Cost: $39 Page count: n/a ISBN: n/a Playtest Review by Michael T. Richter on 06/21/00. Genre tags: Fantasy	Background. I really hate computer games for the most part. I may occasionally fish out my Playstation and do a quick round of, say, Crash Team Racing, but typically I'll go for months without ever seeing a computer game at all. That's why I was very surprised when Cyberlore's Jay Adan dropped me a line and asked if I'd mind reviewing his company's product for RPGNet. In the spirit of full disclosure, I think it only right to mention that Jay and I have been on good terms for a long time. Jay was one of my fans back in the days when I had dozens upon dozens of comprehensive game and supplement reviews on my web site. (These days I just host and contribute to Haiku Movie Reviews.) He and I have exchanged (mostly) polite words in Usenet's rec.games.frp.misc forum and we've participated in several mailing lists together. Jay's about as close to what I'd consider a friend as I can possibly imagine on the net. Also -- in the same spirit of full disclosure -- I was sort of paid for this review. I got a copy of Majesty (along with a strategy guide I've yet to read) for free under the proviso that I review the game. Please keep these potential influences in mind while reading this review. With that all out of the way... ...I'll proceed with the review. As I said, I'm not an avid computer gamer, so some of you will probably find me hopelessly naive while I describe things in this game. The first thing to dispel in this review is the myth that Majesty is a game at all. I don't think it really is and, indeed, think that this is the only reason I've found the game so addictive. Majesty isn't a game -- it's a toy. Admittedly it's a very colourful, interactive, ornate and complex toy, but it still remains a toy. Like many of the best toys it can be used to play games, but it also shares with the best toys the trait that it can be just, well, toyed with, without the usual goals and competition that are the hallmarks of games. This is why my usual disdain of computer games didn't kick in while I evaluated (OK, obsessed over!) Majesty. So now you know that Majesty is a toy, not a game. This isn't the most helpful description, of course. So here's a bit more meat to the description. Majesty is what is apparently termed a "real time simulator". This is along the lines of the venerable Sim City and its ilk, as well as several more modern games out there. In this game you are the lord of a fantasy kingdom who has to keep his kingdom alive in the face of several external threats. Majesty does have, however, some very distinct differences to the style of real time simulators I've encountered before. So what does Majesty bring to the table? One of the first things Majesty adds to the mix is the concept of quests. A quest is a single-player adventure. Not only do you have to keep your kingdom running smoothly, you have to accomplish certain specific tasks while you're doing it. For example, in the first beginner's quest -- "The Bell, the Book and the Candle" -- you have to recover three important items stolen from your treasury. The game ends when you accomplish the goals of the quest. Some of the quests can be accomplished readily. Others are fiendishly difficult. All of them (so far) have been oodles of fun. Of course you don't always have to play quests. You can play free-form games (this is where Majesty most resembles a toy) and you can even set up free-form games for multi-player gaming over the network. (I haven't tried out network gaming yet, though, so that won't be part of my review.) The next thing that I found very innovative in Majesty is the fact that the pieces you use to perform the tasks you set are not under your direct control! You don't point to a figure on the screen and give it orders. You set tasks like "build this building" or "destroy this site" or "explore this area" and watch the playing pieces move to do it. Or not. Because, you see, you need to provide incentives for your playing pieces to do anything. Some pieces -- peasants and tax collectors for example -- do their jobs without inducement. Peasants build and maintain buildings. (Don't build too many at once or the peasants will work much slower!) Tax collectors go from building to building and get money. (Don't forget to provide protection for them or your kingdom will rapidly go bankrupt!) Most other playing pieces (called heroes), however, work of their own "free will". You have to provide incentives for them to do what you want them to do. The most common incentives are "flags" -- monetary reward indicators in two flavours (attack and explore) which are used to pay for the services of your heroes. Sadly, however, flags alone won't get heroes to do your bidding. You have to do many other things to keep your costs down -- things like providing your heroes with protection (weapons shops, marketplaces, healers, etc.) or with recognition for their great deeds (statues, etc.). It is this perverse feeling of free will which makes Majesty such a hoot to play with. I've caught myself several times shouting at the screen with frustration. "NO!!!!", I'd shout at some paladins. "Don't attack the [bad word] sewer rats! Attack the [bad word] dragon that's destroying my [bad word] palace! You stupid pieces of worthless [bad word]!!!! I hate all of you!!!! [many bad words]!!!!!" Any toy which can cause this kind of emotional reaction and STILL be fun to play is a great one in my books. And now for some meat. Majesty's user interface consists of four fixed windows. A large one contains your main map display, as well as a few icon bars, status bars and the like. In this window you get the detailed view of your kingdom. This is also where most of the animation action goes on. The visuals in this window are stunning. There are a lot of pseudo-3D objects working independently here, and the detail in which they are rendered is rather impressive to my probably naive eyes. Most of what you do in the game is done in this window. Through this window you will set construction sites, monitor characters and buildings, set reward flags, cast spells and so on. The user interface feels natural after only a few minutes of learning. (Indeed, I never did actually learn the keyboard shortcuts because I could do everything I needed to do while playing using just the mouse.) The next window you'll likely be working with is the control window. From this window, the middle one on the left-hand spread, you will give orders to the active building, start new construction, adjust building traits, etc. You'll spend about 80% of your time split between this window and the main map window. The third window, topmost of the spread of three on the left, is the mini map window. Unlike the main map window which only shows you a small portion of your kingdom and its surroundings, the mini map window shows everything -- only with almost no detail. You can use the mini map window to grossly track events in the setting and to quickly navigate through the entire kingdom. The final window, bottom-most of the spread of three on the left, is the tracking window. You can use it to keep track of a given location or individual and it is essentially a view like the main map view which happens to track a site or person at your command. Through these four windows, the "game" unfolds. You have to manage your kingdom. The general plan of most quests involves constructing buildings, recruiting heroes for your goals and setting attack or explore reward flags to prompt your heroes to do what you want them to. As the game progresses you will want to cast spells, upgrade buildings, outfit heroes, construct more buildings, recruit more heroes, build up your treasury, spend your treasury on buildings, heroes and spells, and generally try to keep your kingdom alive. This isn't always easy. Invariably you have too few resources to do everything you want to do, so you have to set priorities and make do with less. Buildings. Every building in Majesty provides some benefit to you. Your palace, for example, determines how many guards, tax collectors and peasants you can support. To be able to support a larger kingdom, you need to have a bigger palace. To get a bigger palace, you need to recruit heroes. To recruit heroes, you need other buildings. To build those buildings you need peasants. To get more peasants you need a bigger palace. You're right back where you started. :-) Some of the buildings supported in the game, along with their abilities, are: Fairgrounds -- can improve heroes. Guard houses -- help defend against monsters and provide safe havens for your tax collectors. Marketplaces -- interact with trading posts to generate large amounts of wealth for the kingdom. Guild houses -- provide places to recruit assorted types of heroes. Each guild has its own style of house. Adding some complexity to the mix are the temples and assorted races. There are, for example, good temples and evil temples. You cannot have both in your kingdom. Evil temples are great for killing things. Good temples are great for keeping your heroes alive. Both give you spells which you can use, as well as heroes who can go around and do things for you. Selecting one or the other is a matter of taste and strategy. Both have their strengths and their weaknesses. There are also multiple races, again mutually exclusive. You can have Elves, Dwarves or Gnomes settle in your territory at times. Selecting one of them excludes the others. Dwarves are a good supply of warriors and of powerful technology. (Ballista towers kick butt!) Gnomes are a good supply of cheap, if useless, labour. (The "heroes" you recruit from the Gnomes don't fit the qualifications for some building upgrades....) Elves are bloody useless. (At least I've never found a use for them.) They're actually quite good as explorers, but for that they tend to throw your kingdom into disarray. Heroes. Heroes are the meat of the game. Without them, you don't win. (With them, you spend a lot of time frothing at the screen. You win some, you lose some.) Heroes can be wilderness specialists like the rangers, or they can be holy warriors like the paladins. Or they can be something else entirely. The strength of Majesty -- and the source of almost constant frustration while playing it -- is that heroes are like individuals. Different kinds of heroes are motivated by different things. Rangers are motivated by the urge to explore and will clean up on your explore flags (if they live). Paladins will destroy evil. (They're not particularly motivated by your reward flags, in fact.) Rogues are motivated by easy money (and exploration, to a degree). Every kind of hero has a different approach to its electronic life which you must discern if you wish to put it to its best use. This isn't all, however. It seems that individual heroes within a given type can often have subtly different motivations. Some are cowards and will avoid all fights. Others will charge in blindly and get slaughtered. Some are self-starters. Others will sit in their home and watch it get destroyed around them until you provide a reward to kill whatever's attacking. This extreme variance among characters gives Majesty a unique feel that I've never encountered in another game. The other shoe drops... So far I've been doing a pretty good impression of a drooling fan-boy. Allow me to dissuade you. While I do have some very good things to say about Majesty, I also do have some criticism. The biggest problem I had with Majesty was figuring out just what I was supposed to do with it. Cyberlore nearly lost a good review as a result. After spending quite a while on it and still not having my bearings, I was about to quit in disgust and indicate this in my review. Only my perverse sense of honour intervened and made me stick to it. Then something clicked. I "got it" and started to play. This is a problematical approach to making a game, however, since first impressions are very often also the last impressions when negative. Cyberlore should take this as a warning to improve... well, I don't know what. The documentation? A bit more expository text and a little less pointless detail? Perhaps a fully comprehensive on-line help system which can tell when players are stuck and provide a few clues? Maybe some chapters on general advice in the actual manual, not in a separately-purchased strategy guide? Something like that couldn't possibly hurt. The next thing I had a problem with was the user interface. Yes, I know that I said it was intuitive above, but it was intuitive only after a learning curve. Again some better documentation, preferably on-line and right in front of my eyes while I'm working, would improve things. (You wouldn't believe how long it took me to figure out how to save a game....) There are also a few warts in the interface. For example, you can easily go deep in the control window's interface, click one step too far and find out that you can't take a single step back. This can sometimes have fatal consequences as you restart a longish procedure while your kingdom is destroyed. (Or maybe it's an indicator that I should get around to learning those keyboard shortcuts?:-) One other thing that has to go is the Sean Connery wannabe doing most of the voice talent. The gentleman who acts as your royal advisor has a good voice overall, but the Connery impression often made me grit my teeth and wish for a mute button. Hardware requirements. I play-tested this game on a 700MHz/Athlon system with 256MB RAM, an SBLive sound card and a Diamond Viper II video card running Windows 98 Second Edition. The official hardware requirements are a 166MHz/Pentium with 32MB RAM and any 2MB SVGA card running Windows 95 or Windows 98. Summary. I hate computer games, generally. I love Majesty. That should speak volumes about this computerized toy alone. Majesty is a near-endlessly configurable little toy which has already provided me with dozens of hours of fun, even in the face of an initial conceptual block and some warts in its user interface. I heartily recommend it to anybody who enjoys real time strategy computer games, and even to a few people like me who don't enjoy computer games very much at all. Style: 4 (Classy and well done) Substance: 5 (Excellent!)

Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim