Arguably one of the greatest trading/business sims in videogame history, there are a huge amount of options for economic, social and political progression open to the player, the Medieval world it depicts feels detailed and atmospheric and it still looks beautiful.
Sneaking about and stealing stuff under the noses of the dumbest guards in gaming is still great fun
Several hours of gameplay in, and this looks like a great example of how to update a classic game (or, in this case, series of games) so that they're considerably more player-friendly without changing the fundamental way they play. This is recognisably the same Bards Tale as appeared all those decades ago, but it's now much more mouse-driven, things are much speedier generally, and best of all the thing most classic dungeon crawlers are crying out for - an auto-map. I just really, really hope someone updates the Gold Box games to a similar quality.
No nostalgia here - I never played the original on N64 or anything else back in the 90s and can confirm this Nightdive update is a terrific, very nippy shooter, a mixture of standard FPS and exploration with the need to scope out levels and find all those hidden nooks and crannies a crucial part of advancing. Imagine a turbo-charged Tomb Raider with more jumping around and gunplay.
I'd never even heard of Majesty until a couple of years ago, probably because like Darklands and a few other neglected classics its, frankly rubbish, name doesn't make it stand out. A shame, because this is a highly enjoyable mixture of RTS and "kingdom sim" with the unusual twist that you create a whole lot of characters, from heroes to peasants to the (very) humble gnomes who then go around living their own lives with the player's management largely restricted to buildings. Yes, your heroes will fight the monsters menacing your borders, but they might also want to take time out at an inn or even run away like Brave Sir Robin. It's up to the player to put cash incentives in place to encourage these independent characters to focus on the things that matter to you and, for this reason, it feels completely different to the micro-managing RTS titles it might resemble from screenshots. It's an unusual take on this type of game but it works and is enormous fun. My only real reservation is that the learning curve from the (rather too numerous) "Beginner" to "Advanced" missions is a bit too steep.
For many people, the best of the HOMM series and understandably so. It took everything that already worked in the brilliant HOMM2 and built on it - the graphics are better, the music is superb and there's even more variety in the gameplay.
