> What was the inspiration in creating Majesty? > Settlers II, Heroes of Might & Magic II, Warcraft II. The devs of this game made the expansions to HoMM2 and Warcraft2! They know what they are talking about. The game also feels a lot like Dungeon Keeper, except the promise of simulation wasn't broken. You can't pick up all of your heroes at once and drop them on enemies, with confidence that they will stay and fight to the bitter end. You DO have to use reward flags (Call to Arms spell in DK). Rimworld is a bit like that, except in that game you can micromanage everything. Direct control in combat through "Draft" button and out of combat you can right click and make a colonist prioritize anything. So Majesty is more of a simulation. One of my favorite things in Majesty is the loose campaign. It's really a collection of single scenarios that you can mostly play in any order. Hardest ones are unlocked later. You basically get access to the entire tech tree in every scenario, but each of them puts a unique twist or restriction. For instance, you can't build some advanced structures but you can get them for free if you discover them on the map. And the kicker is that many strategies actually work! If you go to a wiki and look up scenarios(quests), different people recommend different approaches. And the scenarios are very replayable because positions are randomized each time. Dungeon Keeper feels stale and repetitive by comparison. Your more advanced things are locked for most of the campaign and you're forced into certain path by impassable rock, lava or water. Here, you are overwhelmed with options and technically you may have access to all but time is limited and you need to choose priorities. Sound design and voice acting is exceptional. One downside is that the game is a bit hard to get into and understand the mechanics. Reading the manual is worth your time. You also can't set permanent hotkeys for spells in menu, you have to redo each scenario.
Battles look terrible: units never stop moving. When you have several units meeting in the middle, it's a swirling, twitching, waving green&blue mess. Often, there are 2-3 enchantments on those units and every spell adds adds a passive animation to the unit. If it's a siege, you'll see burning stuff on the ground and Gladiator-style fireballs falling from the sky. There is NO setting to disable idle unit animations or idle passive spell animations. Normally games look *better* in motion than still. This game is the opposite. Don't let anyone gaslight you by saying "oh, you don't like pixel art". Pixel art is not inherently unreadable and messy. There's HoMM2, Crypt of the Necrodancer, Noita, Eternal Daughter, Shovel Knight, Spelunky(freeware), Eador:Genesis, Hero's Hour. Really old games like Master of Magic had crude sprites and blocky look, but they had only a few colors available so everything was vibrant and clear. I'm substracting *two* stars for how the game looks in practice, especially on battlefields. Lots of audio noise too. Every time mouse goes over something interactive, you hear a slight tick. It's a strategy game, but it doesn't display the tech tree for buildings anywhere! There's no graph. Imagine you're choosing a building to construct and you select Castle. It doesn't say you'll need Quarry to upgrade it. You select Lumber Mill. It doesn't say it lets you upgrade Troubadours. You've paid for Castle for upgraded knights. They now cost extra resource and it wasn't mentioned anywhere. Campaign is heavily scripted. At least half of battles are interrupted by a cutscene. You gain access to a second town, so OF COURSE scripts make one of your heroes go away(would now be useful) and the gate of *your* town locks behind you to stop you from going back. Spell system makes your units generate 5 energy types and there are many multi-color spells. But the devs haven't heard about a 5-way Venn diagram to visualize the combinations. Mess in many ways.
It's quite enjoyable as far as mechanics and environments go, but it thinks it has a good story. Even mashing keys to skip it takes a long time. Most characters in the game are very talkative, very convinced about their ideology and determined to push it on everybody else. Several of them follow you. The people who like the story are probably those who enjoy Gardens of the Moon(Malazan book...) by Steven Erickson or Starcraft 2 story. After finishing Iconoclasts, I must say I enjoyed several other platformers more: - Trine is a better puzzle platformer, - Spelunky and Noita have much more fun mechanics, - Cave Story is overall a very good mix of story and solid gameplay, - Celeste is a very fun challenge with an interesting theme (see also: Knytt Stories).
The game is very good, but some reviews on GOG talk about a *MODDED* game (with New Horizons) without honestly stating it. Case in point: a review below talks about "Grand Ratt". There's no Grand Ratt in Eador, but it shows up in description of ratmen, which a feature of the mod. The mod however may not be to everyone's taste: it also contains Sean Connery, Jim Carey and other famous actors as hero portraits. It has artwork copied from other games - such as centaurs from Heroes of Might and Magic 1, gnolls from HOMM3, dragonfly from HOMM3, (ancient) Behemoth from HOMM3...
I replayed this game several times. You might think it's a Diablo 2 clone (the games came out within weeks of each other) but it's a skill-heavy game! You need to aim well, time your shield parries, dodge and jump. Quite difficult, but satisfying. No random generation; fun, varied and handcrafted levels instead(with secret areas). One of a kind vision system. No two spells are alike, and you can put them into traps or bombers! Great sound design, memorable music. Story is totally unsurprising, but the setting is well executed. Multiplayer focuses on modes like Capture The Flag and Free For All, but I don't think servers are up anymore. Classes from simplest to most complex: Warrior, Conjurer(bow+summoning), Wizard. They not only share little with each other in terms of mechanics. Opening (and some late game) levels are different depending on who you play as. The game has excellent pacing and keeps introducing new weapons, spells and enemies almost to the very end.
