From the PC Gameplay mag (Dutch, NL and Belgium):
Since it's in a mag, and in Dutch, I translated. So if there are any errors in translation, blame me.
"After the heroes, now also the developers call show me the money"
Majesty 2 was one of those games where the opinions where widely diverse at rease. One praised the refreshing approach and the mood, others loathed the game due to repetitiveness or too high difficulty. Also on the redaction reviewing the game wasn't easy. However the game got a decent score, we let know that the qualities of the game would only hold if enough patches and additional content would be produced. We are now 6 months and a few patches further, and Ino-co found it about time to release a first green and sneaky expansion upon us.
Majesty 2: Kingmaker returns us to the magical land of Ardania, where the head of the defeated demon has been showcased on your wall for quite some time. Your harnas and sword made place for a scepter and growing belly, and you pointlessly try to fight boredom with bankets and poetry. But then, a cry for help! From the borders of your kingdom more and more rumours arise about the green danger beyond threatens you once again. Once your advisor made clear it's not about ecologists but hordes of bloodthirsty monsters you mount your horse, determined to rid your domain of all that ain't human or pro-king.
Evil is stirring, but the King has awoken
Kingmaker got the soft price of $15 (15 euro, but I have no idea how to do the euro-sign. All $ following are euro!). Good, we thought, but what do we get in return for that? The new features can be counted on one-hand: A new campaign with 8 missions that takes about 10 hours, a few new monsters, one hero and a map editor. Not that impressive, and it soon appears why. But first look at the content provided. The new campaign is very decent; de missions are more varied, the difficulty is better spread and your advisor gives you one great line after the other. The goblins fit due to their sneaky appearance perfect in the Majesty-universe and form relative though opponents. Sadly enough the new enemies stick to half-a-dozen green monsters. For the rest you get attacked by the same old dragons, werewolves and vampiers. Because the concept of Majesty isn't rather deep, it definitely needs variation by graphical design. Due, the lack of this is painful, because the fascination for the environment dissapears quickly. This impression gets confirmed because the amount of new heroes is just one. Atop of that, this "Ice Mage" may look cool, his impact on the game is minimal making the strategical difference of his addition zero. The biggest pro is the userfriendly 'Kingmaker editor', where the community no doubt could spend it's creative skills upon. It's yet unsure what that could be, but this should increase the longitity of the game by a lot.
One for the price of two
A small expansion for a small price, it could be worse should be the conclusion. That's what we thought, until we say the button with the words "Ingame shop". Apparently together with the expansion there came a truckload with DLC. DLC is what it is, not everyone is a fan but it's doubful it will leave us. The way Majesty 2 is set up however reeks strongly of milking. It's like they split a full expansion into two to make the user pay double. And they are not just extra's for the hardcore fans because you can buy a new herotype (the assassin), new weapons for your heroes and new maps. If you want to get it all you have to pay an addition $20. Suddenly it appears you have to pay $35 for something that still doesn't include a whole lot of content. It's almost as bad as the additional units you could buy on release day for Hearts of Iron III (not surprisingly from the same publisher).
From hero to zero?
Evoluting the evolution of Majesty 2 is a nasty business. On one side, the developer showed it's best side the last months by publishing several patches increasing the replayability. Recently they even added a "randomness" mode, that spread monsters and lairs randomly over the map (which brings us a step closer to the replayability of the first incarnation). On the other side we now have an expansion that gives us more of the same, improves little and tries to make non-suspecting gamers pay twice. The game can fortunately proceed on the qualities of the original, which makes it impossible to qualify this addition as worthless. Some hardcore fans might even be happy with the lacking amount of new features in Kingmaker. For the avarage gamer this expansion is just a plate of avarageness with a dessert of extortion. It's too early to raise the alarm, but the next addition can better blow us away, otherwise it doesn't look good for Aradania...
Pro's:
Fun campaign
Humorous
Con's
More of the same
Paying twice
Final words and score
This is going the wrong way. Still fun for the fans, but otherwise severly avarage.
65
Since it's in a mag, and in Dutch, I translated. So if there are any errors in translation, blame me.
"After the heroes, now also the developers call show me the money"
Majesty 2 was one of those games where the opinions where widely diverse at rease. One praised the refreshing approach and the mood, others loathed the game due to repetitiveness or too high difficulty. Also on the redaction reviewing the game wasn't easy. However the game got a decent score, we let know that the qualities of the game would only hold if enough patches and additional content would be produced. We are now 6 months and a few patches further, and Ino-co found it about time to release a first green and sneaky expansion upon us.
Majesty 2: Kingmaker returns us to the magical land of Ardania, where the head of the defeated demon has been showcased on your wall for quite some time. Your harnas and sword made place for a scepter and growing belly, and you pointlessly try to fight boredom with bankets and poetry. But then, a cry for help! From the borders of your kingdom more and more rumours arise about the green danger beyond threatens you once again. Once your advisor made clear it's not about ecologists but hordes of bloodthirsty monsters you mount your horse, determined to rid your domain of all that ain't human or pro-king.
Evil is stirring, but the King has awoken
Kingmaker got the soft price of $15 (15 euro, but I have no idea how to do the euro-sign. All $ following are euro!). Good, we thought, but what do we get in return for that? The new features can be counted on one-hand: A new campaign with 8 missions that takes about 10 hours, a few new monsters, one hero and a map editor. Not that impressive, and it soon appears why. But first look at the content provided. The new campaign is very decent; de missions are more varied, the difficulty is better spread and your advisor gives you one great line after the other. The goblins fit due to their sneaky appearance perfect in the Majesty-universe and form relative though opponents. Sadly enough the new enemies stick to half-a-dozen green monsters. For the rest you get attacked by the same old dragons, werewolves and vampiers. Because the concept of Majesty isn't rather deep, it definitely needs variation by graphical design. Due, the lack of this is painful, because the fascination for the environment dissapears quickly. This impression gets confirmed because the amount of new heroes is just one. Atop of that, this "Ice Mage" may look cool, his impact on the game is minimal making the strategical difference of his addition zero. The biggest pro is the userfriendly 'Kingmaker editor', where the community no doubt could spend it's creative skills upon. It's yet unsure what that could be, but this should increase the longitity of the game by a lot.
One for the price of two
A small expansion for a small price, it could be worse should be the conclusion. That's what we thought, until we say the button with the words "Ingame shop". Apparently together with the expansion there came a truckload with DLC. DLC is what it is, not everyone is a fan but it's doubful it will leave us. The way Majesty 2 is set up however reeks strongly of milking. It's like they split a full expansion into two to make the user pay double. And they are not just extra's for the hardcore fans because you can buy a new herotype (the assassin), new weapons for your heroes and new maps. If you want to get it all you have to pay an addition $20. Suddenly it appears you have to pay $35 for something that still doesn't include a whole lot of content. It's almost as bad as the additional units you could buy on release day for Hearts of Iron III (not surprisingly from the same publisher).
From hero to zero?
Evoluting the evolution of Majesty 2 is a nasty business. On one side, the developer showed it's best side the last months by publishing several patches increasing the replayability. Recently they even added a "randomness" mode, that spread monsters and lairs randomly over the map (which brings us a step closer to the replayability of the first incarnation). On the other side we now have an expansion that gives us more of the same, improves little and tries to make non-suspecting gamers pay twice. The game can fortunately proceed on the qualities of the original, which makes it impossible to qualify this addition as worthless. Some hardcore fans might even be happy with the lacking amount of new features in Kingmaker. For the avarage gamer this expansion is just a plate of avarageness with a dessert of extortion. It's too early to raise the alarm, but the next addition can better blow us away, otherwise it doesn't look good for Aradania...
Pro's:
Fun campaign
Humorous
Con's
More of the same
Paying twice
Final words and score
This is going the wrong way. Still fun for the fans, but otherwise severly avarage.
65
