Russian publisher/developer 1C (who’s been particularly prolific in recent years) has typically defied conventional genre classification and called Majesty 2 a ‘fantasy kingdom sim’, though it treads a fine line between sim games and real-time strategy, such as Settlers. US-based Cyberlore coined that phrase with the development of the original Majesty in 2000, before pulling out of the games market altogether and focusing on business training software after its publisher, Hip Games, went bust in 2005. So 1C has the IP and the assets, but none of the original staff. Not that Majesty 2 seems to have suffered for it though. To its credit, it’s intuitive to the point that despite playing early preview code (it looks almost like an Alpha build) on a fairly strategic game, it took us less than two minutes of poking around the HUD to figure out the basics.

Majesty 2 puts you on the throne of a fantasy kingdom, managing it as you see fit. You start with a castle – a construction yard of sorts – which at a low level allows you to build recruitment structures, a marketplace for income and guard posts for defense. You’ll get a small contingent of guards to protect your castle initially from the wolves and giant rats that threaten your town in the early missions, but it’s worth building the warrior and ranger’s guild as soon as you can to start recruiting hardier units.

The defining feature of Majesty 2 is that you have no direct control over any of your citizens. Each of your basic recruits has a tendency towards certain tasks. They all lean towards combat, but if they’re left unchecked warriors will mill around your castle and help the guards keep the local fauna at bay, rangers like to explore and will gradually open up the fog of war, rogues will employ their slippery fingers in favour of your treasury and clerics will heal your troops. If you want them to do anything specific however, you have to give them an incentive in the form of gold. If a nearby den of wolves is bothering you and you want to stop this creature generator spouting an endless stream of rabid canines, then pick an attack flag from the left-hand menu and assign a gold reward to it. Similarly, if you want a specific region explored, just stick an explore flag in the middle of the fog of war and chuck some more gold at it. The size of the reward is entirely up to you, but the more you offer the more interested parties you’ll get, shown on the HUD. Simple exploring missions through a tame land needn’t require any more than one hero, but to get enough people to defend a specific location, or attack a tough creature generator or enemy castle, you’ll need to offer a tempting bounty. Gold is your only resource and, apart from the trickle that comes in from your marketplace, you’ll only get substantial sums from treasure caches dotted around the terrain, or from completing certain scenario goals.

There are limits to the number of recruits each of your guilds can sustain at one time, but each one can gain experience by killing baddies and eventually level up, gaining power and randomly generated titles to their name. Construct a tavern and heroes will meet up within and form parties (presumably over a beverage or two), ideal for taking on tough assignments and monstrous foes like dragons.

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