Majesty 2 Collection

When I first picked up Majesty 2 (having played the original Majesty), I couldn't get used to it. The 3D environment was off-putting for me, and I quickly stopped playing and forgot about it. About 3 years later, one of my friends convinced me to pick it up again, and this is when I discovered the true premise of this sequel to one of the best strategy/sim games ever made (IMHO). The balance is made for multiplayer: competing for trading post spots, controlling river crossings, making more balanced parties than your opponent... the list goes on. I will go as far as to say that the campaign is really training for multiplayer. I understand the gripes mentioned in the negative reviews, I really do. But having also played the original Majesty in multiplayer (despite frequent desyncs), I can understand where the game design is coming from. Heroes don't wander off on their own or attack dens on their own, because in a multiplayer battle, they would get killed instantly. This new system really puts more control in the hands of the player, so that when heroes die, it's 75% your fault and 25% bad luck (as opposed to 50% your fault and 50% bad luck in the first Majesty - more or less). The economy is static so that, when one player has an advantage, it doesn't necessarily mean they will keep it (this is important for multiplayer). That said, I have to say that the campaign presents a challenging level of difficulty, and mastering the mechanics will take some time and actual effort to learn something new. In addition, the "Monster Kingdom" DLC (all DLCs included in the complete edition) is fantastic and basically expands the game two-fold. There are some slight balancing issues, e.g. randomized starting stats for your heroes (you can get stuck with heroes with subpar stats who JUST WON'T DIE), but I recommend this game to anyone who likes a good alternative RTS for multiplayer.

Really frustrating in some levels where you will get overrun in the first 2 minutes. This was not the case in the 1st game! I lost multiple levels where I could not get a single unit or building finished because too many enemies spawned right away

In short, this game is a gem, but in most missions emenies spawn too early (before you finish your first building) which leads to a sslog fest in the early game.

I've played a lot of this game on Steam and I always had to put up with random crashes to the point where it got unplayable. The GOG version is much more stable, I haven't experienced crashes in my time playing the game. There's still the time manipulation problem though where you can get overwhelmed very quickly at the start of the game if you keep it in 5X because the building time doesn't scale equally with the spawning time of monsters. The easy solution (and kind of an exploit) is to play early game in 0.2X since the building is much faster then spawning rates but the game gets real boring real fast, I hope this is something that's going to be fixed in the future.

I really wanted to love this game. I adored the first one and still play it to this day. This game is majorly difficult, with no way to adjust it. You lay down your first buildings and before they are finished mobs of monsters destroy them. Every now and then you get lucky enough to get some things built, but they don't last long before they are taken down