Gameplay

Yes, My Liege

As mentioned before, Majesty is not about control, but influence. You don't build buildings. You designate construction sites, and wait for the peasants to get around to it. You don't order units into battle - normally, the adventurers do it themselves. You don't use your casters to cast spells. As you can see, there's a lot of things you don't do. You don't aim your defensive structures at specific units. So what can you do?

Yeah, ok, so I played a beginner map =(

Dem Rangers always off in da woods

Much like a medieval king, you influence. You can set bounties on areas to be explored, or creatures to be attacked. The higher the bounty, the more adventurers it attracts - and sooner. There are also some things you can cause directly. While a historical king couldn't say "research me better armor", you can. Of course, real-life kings influenced technological development, so in essence you're not doing something too far out of whack. Unlike those kings though, you also get some nifty magic to toss around. Tell your libraries, wizard's guilds and temples to start researching spells for you and your troops to cast. Call in a meteor swarm, or re-animate the dead. Those things you can do... to a certain extent. Your wizard spells, for example, have a radius of effect. If you stray too far from your wizard's towers, you can't cast the spell.

Bwuah! Me Warrior Bash!

Sir Mithron Sharpwit? A smart warrior???

As you can see, Majesty is very sim-like in these aspects. Influence, not command, is the way to go. In SimCity you designate the zones, not the buildings. Here, you designate targets, not give orders. It might seem a subtle difference when reading about it, but it is quite drastic in terms of play. But is it fun? Yeah, to an extent. People who like to be in the thick of it - competitive RTSers, for example, will most likely hate Majesty. Majesty isn't necessarily slow, it's just intent on doing things its way, not yours. Casual players are far more likely to enjoy the gameplay than the hardcore. That is - as long as it lasts. Majesty has a quite short campaign, though the random map generator (with your settings influencing the design of the map) can keep you busy for a while. The maps are pretty small, your city will likely cover at least a quarter of one by the end of some of the quicker games.

Characters have all sorts of features and stats. They get better weapons, armor, spells and so on. They loot gold then pay taxes - Majesty really offers a full kingdom.

Inter-kingdom Warfare!

The multiplayer in Majesty is - in short - awful. Even the most relaxed, slow-moving people who liked to play AoK as SimCity would hate Majesty. Fights will take hours - and no, we're not talking about a dynamic, evolving battle with locations changing every 10 minutes. No, we mean that it becomes a permanent stalemate. Two equally skilled players will never have a decisive moment. Why? Because your adventurers obey both of you. Both your bounties attract them, and both of you have adventurer-loyalty ensuring buildings. We never managed to finish a game of multiplayer Majesty.

Nice stats!

Ivanhoe!

Don't get us wrong - when playing better players, or complete newbies, you will finish a game. But eternal stalemates between equal players isn't our idea of fun.