Majesty Gold 742725231160 Full Download Model: 742725231160 Competitors Price $12.49 Sale Price $9.99 You Save $2.50   Manufacturer: Oxygen Software Quantity % Savings Amount 1 0 $9.99 5 2.50 $9.74 10 5.00 $9.49

In Majesty, you don't waste your time mining and directing minions to go hither and yon. You build your castle, your kingdom's amenities and, as you can afford themn, hero guilds. Each hero guild can support a certain number of heroes (usually 4), although you'll usually have to buy heroes.

But fret not, because each hero will pay you back many times over by visiting your marketplaces, blacksmiths, inns, and son on. In addition, each guild generates a bit of money on its own, and some provide extra services which can generate revenue.

Your tax collectors will walk from building to building collecting gold, ultimately returning it to your castle or nearby guard houses, while your heroes do whatever they do best. (Rangers explore, rogues steal, and so on.)

The more you build, the more support buildings (peasant huts) will pop up, themselves generating some revenue. Other side effects of urban life (like sewer drains) will appear, too.

The lands are always plagued with some menace or other, however, and its your job as king to make the world safe for--well, your taxpayers. Majesty, however, unlike most other RTSes, gives you no means to directly manipulate your subjects.

If you want a monster dead, then, you must place a bounty on it. If you're trying to destroy the evil crypt generating vampires, you must place a bounty on that. If you want to explore a dark area of the map, you can place an explore flag and try to draw heroes there--for a price.

All-in-all, this formula works, though it's not yet perfected. The balance between building facilities (like the marketplace) and building the guilds/generating heroes that you need to protect your kingdom is very well done. The heroes autonomy is good: Sometimes the destruction of a certain target will result in a greater evil being released, so you'll want to delay that--but your Paladins will have other ideas. On the other hand, your heroes can be so aggressive on their own that they win the game for you while you're not even aware of it.

If you've built a solid infrastructure for your city, you know you've won. The difference between a beginner's game and an expert's game becomes whether you can survive the opening minutes, and occasionally how well you prepare for the trigger event (the accomplishing of one goal that results in a rush of monsters).

So, if the game has a fault, it's that it's too easy. I don't mind; I enjoyed all the scenarios and liked that I could finish them.

Majesty Gold includes the Northern Expansion, an add-on of modest proportions with some tweaks to the rules to make the game harder. The add-on parts, with the tougher, winter-oriented monsters, are quite cool. The tweaks to the game rules, on the other hand, show the game's relative newness. They do make the game harder, but only by way of making it somewhat more frantic in those opening minutes: Even with the tweaks, it's an easy game.

But that's to be expected: The designers can't directly borrow from Starcraft (and clones) to get ideas. They have a new framework to figure out. Majesty 2 is not a shoo-in at this point, but let's hope the developers get a chance to do it. This is an interesting new direction that should be explored.

Meanwhile, we have this game, with solid gameplay, great artwork from industry stalwart Cyberlore, and remarkably few bugs

Pentium 166 MHz CPU, Windows 95/98/Me/XP, 32 MB RAM, 4x speed CD-ROM drive, 300 MB free hard drive space, 2 MB Super VGA card capable of 800x600 resolution and 16 bit color (high color), DirectX compatible sound card, DirectX version 7.0 or higher (included on CD), mouse and keyboard (28.8K modem and Internet access required for Internet play).

Pentium 233 MHz CPU, Windows 95/98/Me/XP, 64MB RAM, 4x speed CD-ROM drive, 300 MB free hard drive space, 4 MB Super VGA card capable of 800 x 600 resolution, DirectX compatible sound card, DirectX version 7.0 or higher (included on CD), mouse and keyboard (56K modem and Internet access recommended for Internet play).

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1 Year Download (+$9.99) 1 Year Product Support (+$9.99) 90 Day Download (+$4.99) Backup FlashDrive Shipped (+$9.99)