Majesty 2 starts with the backstory that the events of the first game led to a dynasty of kings that kept the land of Ardania united for generations. However, a greedy and cowardly descendant found himself without a challenge, so summoned an imp to slay in combat. Instead, a demon prince was summoned, and the king was promptly murdered. The demon then sat on the throne, preventing all attempts to maintain order, and the formerly combined lands fell into chaos. You are one of the many descendants of the original king, and the advisor has come to you to try and bring Ardania back together.

Majesty 2's main focus is a campaign that offers up some challenges as well as introducing new players to the ins and outs of the game itself. These challenges are oriented in a map and labeled according to difficulty, from Beginner to Expert. Each mission is unlocked as you finish another mission, and this is noted in the mission description as to which missions unlock which new challenges. If you want to take a particular path through the game, this is something to pay attention to, but if you are simply going for an all-clear, it does not matter all that much.

Upon starting an actual game of Majesty 2, you will notice something about the interface if you have played the first game: it has been drastically improved. Buildings are now sorted according to category, heroes are displayed in an easy-to-read list at the top right, and information in general is much more open, which streamlines the gameplay experience greatly. There is also a time-accelleration feature added as well, in case you can't wait for those really long fights to end.

The graphics of Majesty 2 are vastly improved over the original, as is the sound fidelity. The game itself supports a much higher resolution than the original, and is rendered in full 3D, as opposed to pre-rendered 3D. A lot of the sounds from the original were remade with better effects and quality, which lends a sense of nostalgia to the overall gameplay. The buildings are not quite as distinctive, however, and the environments rarely differ from a generic fantasy template.

As mentioned before, Majesty 2 is a strategy game where you can't actually control your troops. In a sense, you play the mayor of whatever town is the home for the characters in any popular RPG. You can not do any actual tasks, but you can place bounties on the heads of certain enemies or to chart new areas. You can't control anyone, but you can exploit them to do your bidding through liberal use of money. It's an interesting system that is explored in more depth in Majesty 2 than in the original.

The key behind Majesty is the usage of reward flags. Reward flags are nothing more than placing a bounty on killing an enemy or protecting an area. There are four different kinds of flags in Majesty 2: attack, which rewards heroes for killing or destroying the target, explore, which rewards heroes for exploring the targeted and causes a massive line of sight boost when the tag is triggered; defend, which automatically gives money over time to heroes that make sure the structure or unit stays intact; fear, which causes heroes to avoid monsters, with a larger bounty causing heroes to avoid it more.

As the sovereign in Majesty 2, you can place buildings, which are then taxed to give you gold. Buildings fall into four categories, which boil down to unit creation, economic output, defense, and religion. You can count on structures in the economic tab to provide you with a large amount of gold each time they are taxed, especially marketplaces or inns, which are the most frequented locations by heroes. THe inn even adds a new (and much appreciated) feature of gathering heroes into parties that always stick together, greatly increasing overall hero survivability.

Majesty 2's multiplayer is a standard versus affair, with players taking on each other's kingdoms. It normally ends up in complete chaos as heroes go crazy murdering each other, however. There are a few major problems wiht the multiplayer, with the two biggest being the lack of a randomized map generator and the lack of a map editor for added variety. There are only a few maps in the initial release of the game, and while there will no doubt be continued updates, this lack of variation hurts Majesty 2 greatly.

The one thing that, for many people, was a make or break deal for Majesty 2 was no included. There is no single-player map generator, otherwise known as the sandbox or freeform mode from the earlier games. There are only scenarios and the campaign for single-player, and you can also create a LAN game without any players to fool around a little. The sandbox feature is, without a doubt, what the game needed most. As it doesn't have this, players may wish to wait for future updates before jumping in.


The AI in Majesty 2 is spotty at best, downright stupid at worst. Heroes will often forget to buy healing potions, forcing you to revive or heal them. You can count on your town constantly being under attacks, with heroes sticking so close by that it is almost impossible to go out and take out lairs without massive incentives. This complete disregard for any sort of logic (skeletons coming from this way? let's go there!) on the aprt of the heroes is very, very sad. They act less like NPCs and more like bees that fight off trespassers.

Majesty 2 is an ambitious re-imagining of the original, and at the end, it really does work. It combines new graphics, a much improved interface, and some new features to distinguish itself. The lack of a snadbox mode and the stupid AI drag it down, but those that are willing to look past the faults will find a surprisingly addicting strategy/RPG hybrid. After all, everyone loves watching heroes scurry to their deaths.