Monster Kingdom is a continuation of the Majesty 2 storyline, and all is not well. You would think it would be, considering the King and his posse of heroes single-handedly saved Ardania from daemons and other foul human-eating creatures. But as things go, no good deed goes unpunished, and now you must reclaim the throne, with some seriously questionable help. All in all, it’s more Majesty 2, but with one major difference in flavor, as you play the monsters this time around.
Monsters & creatures
Since all the nobles sided against you, you have no other choice than to recruit the monsters you genocided in the past. Surprisingly, they are mostly fine with you taking command. However, the deal is if you succeed in your quest to reclaim the title of King of Ardania, the creatures will gain acknowledgment and be recognized by law. So, equality for men and monsters alike. It is implied that you are playing the good guy, but recruiting necromancers to massacre humans to get your way rubs me the wrong way – just a tiny bit. That is not to say the missions and story isn’t fun, yet, I think I would have preferred playing an actual evil monster faction than to justify using monsters through a “good campaign”. Imagine making a powerful undead lich, a creature evil by nature your equal, making him protected under the same laws as you and your family share. That is set up to be a disaster in the future unlike any other – zombie lives matter!
Same, but different
The general gameplay and mechanics remain the same but with a few differences here and there. You do have the same classes, but the healer class isn’t unlocked until late in the campaign. This is balanced by making the monster factions really good, almost overpowered compared to the human faction. It actually makes you wonder how the humans even stood a chance against the monsters in the first place and became the dominant species of Ardania.
The lich for example has taken the role of wizard, and in a direct comparison, the human wizard is hilariously outmatched, both in damage output and survivability. The lich can tank, summon melee-based golems, and do massive area of effect damage. This increased usability goes for all the creatures in your ranks, and buildings too – like the defense tower (which can now be upgraded to fire cannon rounds). The monsters are better and do not need healing to survive, even so – you do get healers in the form of shamans around the middle of the campaign.
As you might have expected, this makes the Monster Kingdom campaign a lot easier than the original campaign. There are a few snags on the way, but it’s mostly because the more troublesome missions are time-based, requiring you to time your builds and attacks better to succeed. I didn’t meet anyone like the bosses from the main game – the bosses that could easily chew through your men with ease and then have tea and biscuits like it was a daily occurrence.
This does not mean much when it comes to the entertainment value. While the easy missions might drag down the intense gameplay from the original a bit, it still remains fun. The missions are all interconnected narrative-wise, and the missions themselves are varied and come with a lot of sidequests to put some extra spice into the medieval fantasy soup.
The monster look
Monster Kingdom still looks great, and the new faction comes with new animations and graphics. One of the big enjoyments with this game is watching your creatures evolve and get better equipment. The werewolf is my favorite. He was in Majesty 2, but this time around you control him, and you get to see him equip better equipment and weapons, changing visual appearance. I just love that top hat he adorns himself with. Sounds, voice acting and music are all splendid too, just like the main game.
All this sounds great and all, and I would gladly recommend Monster Kingdom if it weren’t for one HUGE issue. You see, Monster Kingdom is incredibly crash-prone. My game did crash once before hitting the final mission, however, one of two crashes I can tolerate, but the last mission is totally broken, unfortunately. The game will constantly crash here! One way around it is to save often, and that would be somewhat fine if the game didn’t randomly crash when you saved too. This meant I couldn’t finish the game in the end, and I had to look up the ending on YouTube to see how it concluded. Very disappointing. Searching the net for this issue tells me that I’m not alone, and there is apparently no solution to this problem. This means that Monster Kingdom is officially a broken game currently, which also means I can’t recommend it, even if I enjoyed it up to this point. Oh well, there isn’t much to add here, other than it’s a fine expansion left to die. So, take this as a warning, but who knows, maybe it get fixed in the future.
Thanks for reading.
/Thomas
| System: | PC (Steam) |
| Played with: | Mouse & keyboard |
| Mods/fixes: | None |
| Enjoyment rating: |  |
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