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Majesty -type of games?

Alienman

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Recently finished Gladiator Guild Manager Prologue and I found the violence combined with the off hands management approach incredible satisfying, so I'm wondering is there any other games like it out there?

I know of course of all the sports games, but I'm thinking more in the style of this and Majesty 1&2.
 

Alienman

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I heard Majesty 2 is major decline compared to the first. Is that actually the case?

Never actually played Majesty 1, started with 2 so I wouldn't really know. I liked Majesty 2 though, found it charming. The game gets really hard at the end, I got to the last mission but never managed to finish it. I do wish more games would take this approach to RTS, I have always enjoyed watching AI do their own thing with me nudging it in directions.
 

The Fish

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"What Did I Do to Deserve This, My Lord?" and "No Heroes Allowed!" are psp dungeon management games in the same series in which the monsters aren't directly controllable. They're very parsimonious with the controls, you can only destroy blocks and kill your own monsters so they might be more restrictive than what you're looking for. Some of the levels are quite difficult despite the simplicity and the tactics can be unintuitive, for instance you'll need to learn how to force famines and introduce predators in order to force your monsters to evolve and toughen up. They're not long so give them a try, they're underrated. The easier games in the series you might be able to fumble your way through without really utlising the mechanics so try a couple if you have the time.
 

J_C

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I heard Majesty 2 is major decline compared to the first. Is that actually the case?
Majesty 1 is one of my favourite games of all time (just look at my avatar), so I can confirm that the sequel is a major decline on every front (graphics, gameplay, atmosphere). I have never been so mad about a game when Majesty 2 came out.
 

Ismaul

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Yeah I played the first and liked it, that's why I was asking about the second. I remember not playing it because comments about it turned me off, but forgot why.
 

Kliwer

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I also think that Majesty is one of the best computer games of all time. It's like a single ray of light from another universe where really good games are made. Therefore, don't expect anything of the sort. Nothing as good and charming as the Majesty 1 exists.

As for me, the games most similar in structure or atmosphere are:
-Dungeon Keeper 2
-Stronghold (2001)
-Diggles [it's a shit game in general, but it has its charm]
 

Reality

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I desperately try to recapture Majesty every so often... but it just never works.
Usually if something is descriebed as Majesty-Like - I'll get excited, try it, and have less fun than if I had just played a reliable citybuilder - something about seeing badly shared DNA is worse than no shared DNA at all - The only exceptions that were still good games were the Dungeon Keepers, but I include them because of seeing them on other people's list - I like DK, but not because it's like Majesty.

Things I've seen called "Majesty-like" in half a dozen threds throughout the years

Dungeon Keeper - The campaign of DK 1 has a VERY slow start and kinda drip feeds you mechanics (the entire level to teach you one mechanic thing kinda hurts) has good missions toward the end and with Deeper Dungeons, but DK2 is mostly a better starting point.

Dungeon Keeper 2 - Still a good game to this day but it feels like its own thing rather than "like Majesty"

Driftland - Disapointment with too much RTS - can produce some fun and greatest sin is blandness rather than the things wrong with some of the later things I'll list.

Evil Genius - - this is a game I will give 5/5 stars for theme, but gameplay it just doesn't let you be creative - on the first 1/3rd of the game it might trick you into thinking you can play however you want, but once you get to the 2nd island the "endless siege" will basically begin - you either put up with it or you cheese it with an infinite trap loop. Has a sequel coming up that may or may not fix the originals mediocrity.

Stratos - abondoned Github prototype by one of the biggest members of the "old cyberlore forum" comminty - Lot of promise for whats there tbh

Majesty 2 - vsynch on - Every level even from early on campaign is an endless siege but game is till playable by stacking stun and pre-leveling heroes by putting first guild for the 1>5 to whack a monster lair before monsters come out.

Majesty 2 - vsynch off - The real prolem with Majesty 2 isn't vsynch bugging out the spawn rate -- It's that the heroes have a LOT less personality, especially in terms of "wanderlust" basically every heroe of every type "technically" has the freedom of Majesty 1 heroes, except they are heavily weighted toward staying near their own home when not going for a reward flag - compared to Majesty 1 it basically feels like EVERY HERO in the entire game is a rouge (in terms of personality).... Beyond this Majesty 2 uses a completely revamped and terrible combat system - Their is not longer "accuracy" in the game so every attack lands (so hey rangers can kill skeletons now) - The game also has savage numbers bloat - Strong monsters in Majesty 1 have 80 HP, and the final boss has 500.... The FIRST boss in Majesty 2 has 10,000 HP by comparison... Majesty 2 has a much more direct "tiering" of heros - the Temple heroes in Majesty 2 are now basically mandatory in every level after being availble due to literally getting 5X the HP and stats of a normal hero of the same level as them (again due to bloat)... Majesty 2 techincally has a base game + 3 expansions (the last being the monster expansion) the expansions are not fully translated from russian regardless (typically objectives = translated, flavor dialog = russian or broken text strings) crash on a dime, and other than easy-difficuly monster expansion, are ridiculously tedious even by Majesty 2's own standards.

Medieval Conquest(2004) - Avoid like the Plauge - It's kind of like the negative approach to indirect unit control - rather than not having it (ala majesty's decision tree/hero personality system) you DO have unit control, except, it's "bastard" unit control - you right click something and your group of units will all vageuly saunter at it, and will then generate their dozen or so own errands along the way - you can gradually get them across the map by force.

Hearthlands(2017) - Caesar cClone, not a Majetsy clone.

Tzar:Burden of the Crown - BAD Age of Empires RTS - Good music - Unique among other BAD Age of Empires RTS in that the reason it is bad is that this game just decides that production timers aren't neccesary for the genre - Things are obviously very wrong with click to place building at full health and being able to spawn as many units from a barracks in a single second as you have money for.

Rise to Ruins - Rimworld clone, not a majesty clone.

Globulation 2 - This is more an experiment than a game - It's also an intelligent RTS foremost above all else - the worker behavoir and the auto retreat to hospital, etc behaviour is entertaining, but you are mostly directing things as normal.
 

Zboj Lamignat

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DK is not Majesty-like, it's the other way round. Also, play it. And if I understand your posts correctly and you didn't play Majesty 1 yet then go do it ffs.

There are quite a few clones of this kind of "quirky rts with no direct control", most of them obviously inspired by DK (or rather DK 2 in most if not all cases), but pretty much all of them drop some major clangers and aren't really amazing so DK and Majesty it is.

Oh, Ghost Master was fun, I guess. But comparing it to Majesty would be a huge stretch.
 
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I heard Majesty 2 is major decline compared to the first. Is that actually the case?
Major decline, no. Minor to moderate decline, sure. Doesn't have the same personality and character of Majesty 1 and the gameplay's worse, but if you play through Majesty 1 and you're still in the mood for more it's not all that bad. Majesty 1 was one of my most heavily replayed games for a while (Yearly would reinstall that and Missionforce Cyberstorm for some reason) so it's disappointing that 2 was just a single semi-grudging playthrough but I've seen worse.

Never actually played Majesty 1, started with 2 so I wouldn't really know.
Good lord, man. Play that shit. They even updated it to run at higher resolutions. If you liked 2 at all then you'll likely enjoy 1 more in every way. Also note that you have a dwarf and an elf in here singing the praises of Majesty, but you know the real non-human you want around? THE GNOMES.
Except the elves can be good for cheesing money. And on occasion the dwarf towers are useful. MAJORITY OF THE TIME THOUGH, GNOME
 

Alienman

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Damn, thanks for the suggestions. Not too many games like this then if you go away from the sport simulation games. Luckily the Gladiator game I mentioned in the OP is coming out this month apparently, at least according to Steam forums.
 

Dr Skeleton

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And on occasion the dwarf towers are useful.
Dwarfs are great for cheesing the siege mission in the expansion. Build a forward dwarf guild and a couple of ballista towers, the enemy ruler will put a bounty on the guild and most likely get all his heroes killed attacking it over and over again. Then you build ballista towers on the edges of the map and all his supply caravans die.

As for Majesty itself, there isn't really another game like it except Majesty 2, and after playing Majesty 1, 2 feels like a worse version without the charm of the first game, so I couldn't get into it at all. The closest games are probably Dungeon Keeper and city builders where you don't have direct control over units, but they're a different thing. I don't think there has been a modern game yet that tried to do a "spiritual successor"/ripoff of Majesty either.
 

Zboj Lamignat

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Dwarves are generally great if only for their main guild building.

Regarding DK versus Majesty, these games obviously have more similarities than just lack of direct control over units so I'm not sure why people often act like it's some outrageous comparison.
 

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Never actually played Majesty 1, started with 2 so I wouldn't really know.
Good lord, man. Play that shit. They even updated it to run at higher resolutions. If you liked 2 at all then you'll likely enjoy 1 more in every way. Also note that you have a dwarf and an elf in here singing the praises of Majesty, but you know the real non-human you want around? THE GNOMES.
Except the elves can be good for cheesing money. And on occasion the dwarf towers are useful. MAJORITY OF THE TIME THOUGH, GNOME

GNOMES? I don't think I've played as much as you, but I felt the gnomes were shit compared to the other nonhuman options
 
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GNOMES? I don't think I've played as much as you, but I felt the gnomes were shit compared to the other nonhuman options
GOTTA GO FAST. The speed offered by the gnomes for building/repairing is fantastic. There are missions where being able to gamble with the elves is useful (Arguably even necessary) and like Dr Skeleton said, missions where turtling up with the dwarves is great, but I've always felt like the vast majority of the missions you're better served by just having a fuck ton of super fast builders running around. Not only for getting your buildings up quicker but having an easier time protecting against random-ass skaven or trolls popping out of your sewers and slapping your shit. Gnomes also make forward-building easier since even if you aren't making something as quality as a dwarf tower, building shit with gnomes is a lot easier than with slow peasants at long range. The gnomes themselves are shit as adventurers but the elves and dwarves aren't dramatically better than rogues/rangers/fighters anyway.
 

J_C

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Never actually played Majesty 1, started with 2 so I wouldn't really know.
Good lord, man. Play that shit. They even updated it to run at higher resolutions. If you liked 2 at all then you'll likely enjoy 1 more in every way. Also note that you have a dwarf and an elf in here singing the praises of Majesty, but you know the real non-human you want around? THE GNOMES.
Except the elves can be good for cheesing money. And on occasion the dwarf towers are useful. MAJORITY OF THE TIME THOUGH, GNOME

GNOMES? I don't think I've played as much as you, but I felt the gnomes were shit compared to the other nonhuman options
A champion level Gnome taking the last hit at a dragon, killing it is a sight to behold.
 
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There is no game like Majesty. Anyone who suggests otherwise is bullshitting you and trying to get you to play something sorta like Majesty but not really.
 

baud

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GNOMES? I don't think I've played as much as you, but I felt the gnomes were shit compared to the other nonhuman options
GOTTA GO FAST. The speed offered by the gnomes for building/repairing is fantastic. There are missions where being able to gamble with the elves is useful (Arguably even necessary) and like Dr Skeleton said, missions where turtling up with the dwarves is great, but I've always felt like the vast majority of the missions you're better served by just having a fuck ton of super fast builders running around. Not only for getting your buildings up quicker but having an easier time protecting against random-ass skaven or trolls popping out of your sewers and slapping your shit. Gnomes also make forward-building easier since even if you aren't making something as quality as a dwarf tower, building shit with gnomes is a lot easier than with slow peasants at long range. The gnomes themselves are shit as adventurers but the elves and dwarves aren't dramatically better than rogues/rangers/fighters anyway.
thank you. I'll keep that in mind next time I install Majesty
 

Zboj Lamignat

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Never really felt like gnomes give that much of an edge tbh. Dwarven guild with its yuge range artillery covering like half of your city and truckload of hp always felt like the superior choice. With their weak fighting skills and additional hovels spawning, gnomes can also add to your trouble. Dwarves just don't have any downsides, even though they're not the greatest heroes you can have.
 
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Dwarves just don't have any downsides, even though they're not the greatest heroes you can have.
They're more expensive and arrive later in the game. A gnome in the hand is worth two dwarves in the bush, especially if you'll beat the map before dwarves would really come into play anyway due to superior gnome speed. You arguably might end up spending more on gnomes in total (Cranking out replacement gnomes for ones that get killed, dropping multiple guard towers to help hold back sewers, etc) but the flip side is gnomes also help your economy a tiny bit by simple virtue of the fact that they count as heroes, so having a ton of gnomes running around the place means less chance of rats/skaven/trolls being killed without anyone collecting the loot which means more money coming back to you in taxes. They aren't anywhere near the elves for building money but they do have one tiny advantage. And of course if you somehow end up with a gnome champion (Extremely rarely happens unless you're babysitting one to cast buffs, and that's not worth it at all) that's just gravy on top.
 

Kliwer

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In most scenarios elves (for money) or dwarves (for defense and magic resistance) work better. But gnomes can be useful (or at least fun to play). They allow you to quickly expand a large, cheap city and deploy a large, cheap army. To do this:
-we mainly use gnomes, rogues, rangers and barbarians. Thanks to this, we have a lot of cheap heroes which we can support by Rage of Krolm.
-to increase the effectiveness of this horde, we are expanding the Rogues' Guild to level 2 (thanks to this, our heroes will be able to poison weapons, which significantly increases the effectiveness of gnomes) and we are building the Magic Bazaar; Thanks to Fire Balm our ranged heroes (rogues, rangers) will be much more effective.

Overall, this is a good strategy if:
- we want to win the scenario quickly
- we need to defend ourselves very quickly against attacks from many sides.
 

JarlFrank

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.

I looked that up and read it was short as hell, good but short.

I played Domina. You play a Roman noblewoman who inherited a gladiator business, and you have to train gladiators to fight in the arena. They level up and you make money and can afford more and better gladiators etc.

It's not like Majesty at all.

It's got the tycoon layer of managing your gladiator stable, and it has the battle layer which allows you to either let gladiators act on their own or you can direct control them if you want. They're two different layers that happen in different screens with different interfaces.
 

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