Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim

Base-building is comparable to other real-time strategy games of the period, but units are autonomous—a feature usually associated with construction and management simulation games—and possess attributes borrowed from role-playing video games. The Sovereign's actions are limited to constructing and enhancing buildings, using building abilities and spells, hiring heroes, and offering rewards.

The basic building is the palace, and its loss means the loss of the game. Guilds and temples can be used to summon and house heroes (typically four per building), almost all other ones offer equipment or services (inns, royal gardens, etc.). Some guilds and temples may not co-exist, and some buildings require the presence of certain buildings before they are available for construction.

The system of heroes in Majesty is similar to most other sim games. These heroes are not under the direct control of the player, but they can be influenced by reward flags to perform certain tasks, such as slaying a particularly troublesome monster or exploring an unknown area of the map. However, their cooperation is not guaranteed even then. Heroes have free will, though some classes are more inclined to certain actions than other. (For example, a paladin is more likely to attack a dangerous monster than a rogue.)

Each hero has different favored behaviors as well. For example, paladins often choose to raid lairs, while rogues will steal, and elves will perform at inns. Furthermore, rewards influence heroes differently. Rogues will be the first to make an attempt at the rewards, followed soon after by elves or dwarves.

The powers and abilities of the heroes also move in a rock-paper-scissors format. Some monsters are especially weak against ranged attacks, while strong against melee or magic. Other monsters are especially strong against melee and ranged attacks, and magic makes killing them much easier. It is important to plan ahead and be able to defend your kingdom against different types of monsters, exploiting their weaknesses.

Individual heroes gain experience points and level up as they would if they were characters in a role-playing game. Other hero attributes borrowed from role-playing games include ability scores and inventories. Though all heroes in a class share the same in-game sprite and portrait, they all have individual names, have unique stats, and varied levels.

Majesty: The Northern Expansion is generally seen as a fine sequel to the critically acclaimed Majesty. It features new unit abilities, buildings, monsters, and twelve new single player scenarios (two of which are in a new "Master" level). Freestyle play is also available and includes new features including those present in the single player quests.

On March 21, 2012, Paradox Interactive (who had created Majesty 2) released Majesty Gold HD Edition. This version is identical to the standard Gold Edition containing both Majesty and Majesty: The Northern Expansion, but includes support for larger resolutions and native support for Windows 7. It also includes two downloadable quests that were compatible with the original Majesty, but not with the original release of The Northern Expansion.[14]

Cyberlore Studios planned a sequel, Majesty Legends, but it was never officially released.[15] The developer cited the lack of a publisher as the reason. In July 2007, Paradox Interactive acquired the intellectual property for Majesty [16] and released a sequel, Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim, on September 18, 2009.

Mobile "Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim" is developed and published by HeroCraft and released on January 20, 2011. The game is designed to run on BlackBerry Playbook, iOS, Android, Bada and high-end Nokia Symbian devices.[17] An iOS version is also available for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.[2] The game is also available on Microsoft's Windows Phone platform as of March 2012.[18]