Since a few of us attribute liking the original majesty and NE to nostalgia, I went through and played Majesty 1. Here are the list of features I preferred in each game. this list is by no means objective - but shows a few things M2 could have done better.
M2 - Features that are improved / awesome
- Graphics: Marked improvement, in spite of being less stylish. The fleeing animations are outright hilarious, just watch a cleric running for her life.
- The combat system: M2's combat is a lot more dynamic with special abilities of each class. It's much more fun to watch as well. Some high level abilities (hammer of faith, firestorm, blade storm, ice falls) are truly spectacular affair.
- Clerics: Only having access to healing to one of the 3 branches of the tech tree was a bummer.
- Parties: These are very useful, and watching them in action is a blast.
- Graveyards: Not having to fuss about permanently dead hero is a big help. To be honest there is just no way to reasonably keep every one of your two dozen heroes in one living piece.
- Blacksmith research: splitting up different type of research made sense, and the cosmetic changes are awesome.
- Sovereign artifacts: These are a blast to use. Hope there were more of them.
- Hall of Lords: Genuinely fun to have your most awesome heroes follow you around during the campaign.
- Actual terrain: Terrain features are not just buildings that vanish if you build anything near them. There are actual lakes and mountains and.
- Balance: I heard there is multiplayer balance in this one, but since I don't give a rat's behind about competitive multiplayer (Personally I'd play RUSE for that), it doesn't matter. but It's fair to throw it in there.
M2 - Features that I'd rather not see
- Ridiculously difficult missions: some missions are practically impossible to beat on the first try, you have to specifically prepare for what will be happening. They can seem easy once they are figured out, but the trial and error can be frustrating.
- Stressful/Micro intensive boss fights: Some boss with millions of health requires the players to constantly top out the raid because the healers actually run out of Mana Potions. Shouldn't players win when they can assemble a raid of that size ? This is largely a matter of taste.
- Paper buildings: buildings are destroyed ridiculously quickly. This is made worse because most M2 missions are essentially survival game against successive waves of monsters.
M1 - Features that were better
- Freestyle: sometimes I am surprised this isn't in M2.
- Hero initiative: Paladins automatically seek out enemies, Ranger explore automatically, and Solarii seek out monster lairs, healers seek out injured characters to heal these behaves saves player a lot of busy work.
- Monster awareness: Heroes are always aware if a monsters enters their range. they will always make a fight or flight decision whoever a monster closes in. Heroes in M2 does not do this unless they are attacked.
- Building defense value: guardhouse and wizard towers were pretty tough and can hold off a gentle breeze and maybe a few goblins. The same can't be said about buildings in majesty where a mage can blow up for guardhouses in ten seconds.
- Varity Sovereign spells: There were a lot more choices between sovereign spells, and some of them, such as winged fleet and illusion, had very interesting effects.
- Bazaar potion Varity: Bazaar sold potions that had interesting effects, rather than just buffing offense/defenses.
- Library: heroes like priestess and monk with power shock was a blast. Especial when they don't happen all that often.
- Embassy: being able to hire heroes that you could not hire normally is fun.
- Fairgrounds: It's fun to watch heroes compete and level up like crazy.
- Call to arms: Indispensable tool to keep the blockheaded, armor plated idiots out of danger.
- Kingdom decorations: Fountain, Gazebo, gambling hall, lounge, Gardens, statues make the kingdom look more like a fantasy town and less like a frontline military base. To be fair these things get in your way if you just want a front line military base.
M1 - Feature I don't miss
- Ratman stealing ability: It doesn't matter how much town patrol I have, rats will somehow get past all of it and steal 10K from my market consistently. A sovereign shouldn't have to worry about that.
- Trolls: leaving any trading post undefended for a day and it'd be razed to the ground, again this is busy work.
- Runaway economy: It's possible to build half a dozen market / TP, a few dozen inns, elf, and 2 fairgrounds and roll in gold faster than you can possibly spend it.
- Ridiculously designed missions: Legendary Heroes / wizard tower building tournament was a prime example. Spires of death / Ballista tower building tournament was another.
- Expert Random Freestyle games: Impossible shit, anyone who play that more then occasionally have a problem.
In conclusion
I'd like to say that M1 had a lot of things that weren't essential, but were fun. Majesty II dropped a lot of these nonessential features to make the core game work. It works, but lost a lot of flavor in the process.
In retrospect, it wouldn't be all that hard to add all those little fun/decorative things back in.
M2 - Features that are improved / awesome
- Graphics: Marked improvement, in spite of being less stylish. The fleeing animations are outright hilarious, just watch a cleric running for her life.
- The combat system: M2's combat is a lot more dynamic with special abilities of each class. It's much more fun to watch as well. Some high level abilities (hammer of faith, firestorm, blade storm, ice falls) are truly spectacular affair.
- Clerics: Only having access to healing to one of the 3 branches of the tech tree was a bummer.
- Parties: These are very useful, and watching them in action is a blast.
- Graveyards: Not having to fuss about permanently dead hero is a big help. To be honest there is just no way to reasonably keep every one of your two dozen heroes in one living piece.
- Blacksmith research: splitting up different type of research made sense, and the cosmetic changes are awesome.
- Sovereign artifacts: These are a blast to use. Hope there were more of them.
- Hall of Lords: Genuinely fun to have your most awesome heroes follow you around during the campaign.
- Actual terrain: Terrain features are not just buildings that vanish if you build anything near them. There are actual lakes and mountains and.
- Balance: I heard there is multiplayer balance in this one, but since I don't give a rat's behind about competitive multiplayer (Personally I'd play RUSE for that), it doesn't matter. but It's fair to throw it in there.
M2 - Features that I'd rather not see
- Ridiculously difficult missions: some missions are practically impossible to beat on the first try, you have to specifically prepare for what will be happening. They can seem easy once they are figured out, but the trial and error can be frustrating.
- Stressful/Micro intensive boss fights: Some boss with millions of health requires the players to constantly top out the raid because the healers actually run out of Mana Potions. Shouldn't players win when they can assemble a raid of that size ? This is largely a matter of taste.
- Paper buildings: buildings are destroyed ridiculously quickly. This is made worse because most M2 missions are essentially survival game against successive waves of monsters.
M1 - Features that were better
- Freestyle: sometimes I am surprised this isn't in M2.
- Hero initiative: Paladins automatically seek out enemies, Ranger explore automatically, and Solarii seek out monster lairs, healers seek out injured characters to heal these behaves saves player a lot of busy work.
- Monster awareness: Heroes are always aware if a monsters enters their range. they will always make a fight or flight decision whoever a monster closes in. Heroes in M2 does not do this unless they are attacked.
- Building defense value: guardhouse and wizard towers were pretty tough and can hold off a gentle breeze and maybe a few goblins. The same can't be said about buildings in majesty where a mage can blow up for guardhouses in ten seconds.
- Varity Sovereign spells: There were a lot more choices between sovereign spells, and some of them, such as winged fleet and illusion, had very interesting effects.
- Bazaar potion Varity: Bazaar sold potions that had interesting effects, rather than just buffing offense/defenses.
- Library: heroes like priestess and monk with power shock was a blast. Especial when they don't happen all that often.
- Embassy: being able to hire heroes that you could not hire normally is fun.
- Fairgrounds: It's fun to watch heroes compete and level up like crazy.
- Call to arms: Indispensable tool to keep the blockheaded, armor plated idiots out of danger.
- Kingdom decorations: Fountain, Gazebo, gambling hall, lounge, Gardens, statues make the kingdom look more like a fantasy town and less like a frontline military base. To be fair these things get in your way if you just want a front line military base.
M1 - Feature I don't miss
- Ratman stealing ability: It doesn't matter how much town patrol I have, rats will somehow get past all of it and steal 10K from my market consistently. A sovereign shouldn't have to worry about that.
- Trolls: leaving any trading post undefended for a day and it'd be razed to the ground, again this is busy work.
- Runaway economy: It's possible to build half a dozen market / TP, a few dozen inns, elf, and 2 fairgrounds and roll in gold faster than you can possibly spend it.
- Ridiculously designed missions: Legendary Heroes / wizard tower building tournament was a prime example. Spires of death / Ballista tower building tournament was another.
- Expert Random Freestyle games: Impossible shit, anyone who play that more then occasionally have a problem.
In conclusion
I'd like to say that M1 had a lot of things that weren't essential, but were fun. Majesty II dropped a lot of these nonessential features to make the core game work. It works, but lost a lot of flavor in the process.
In retrospect, it wouldn't be all that hard to add all those little fun/decorative things back in.
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