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| | Genre: Strategy & War | | | Min OS X: 10.6 |
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Requirements: Mac OS X: 10.6.3 | CPU: 2.16 GHz Intel Processor | RAM: 1 GB | HD Space: 1.5 GB Graphics: 128 MB GeForce 8600, Radeon X1600 or newer | Requires Majesty 2Review: With all the strategy games out these days, it's hard to settle on just one. It's even harder to settle on whether or not to buy an expansion vs. a new game. An expansion definitely needs to be outstanding to justify a purchase of around the same price as a full game, so it's very helpful that Majesty 2's first expansion is quite reasonably priced. It doesn't really bring much new to the table, but more of a good thing isn't really that bad.Kingmaker, brought to Macs by Virtual Programming, brings a straightforward plot to the table. The kingdom of Ardania needs your help, once again. A foul creature of unknown identity is organizing monsters to attack your cities! If you think this sounds quite like the plot in all Majesty 2 episodes, you'd be right. It's time again for you to build guilds, hire heroes, set reward flags, and watch your level 28 wizard slaughter everything in his path. The expansion does bring in a few additions, however, as there are new monsters, a new hero type (ice wizard), the obligatory new campaign, and the paragraphs of new dialogue from your adviser. In addition, it also brings in a level editor tool (if you haven't patched it in already), which can add a lot of time to your experience if you have the dedication to learn it. The new missions are quite a bit easier than their main-campaign counterparts, though. You won't have to deal with invulnerable dragons, restricted building options, or anything else along those lines. It really is just a straightforward collection of scenarios that allow you to continue playing beyond the original campaign. There's just enough new content to keep it interesting, but nothing that truly changes the experience. Unfortunately, there are a couple issues you'll need to be careful about while you're picking your expansion purchases. First, if you intend to play all the expansions, you have to start with Kingmaker. The reason for this is that the files seem to corrupt if you don't install the expansions in the order that they were made. There's nothing worse than playing through all of Battles of Ardania and then losing all your progress due to a corrupted installation. So, to avoid that, install Kingmaker, then Battles of Ardania, and then any other expansions as they come. You might notice a loss of data whenever you install the later expansions. You may end up installing Battles of Ardania just to find your entire Kingmaker mission list forgot your progress, for example. So, if you want the expansions, pick which ones you want, install them in order, and don't start playing until they're all installed. If you follow the above steps, you'll find the experience to be quite enjoyable. If not, you may easily find yourself rage quitting in frustration. Still, for $15, Kingmaker is easily worth your money. Just install everything in order, build your guilds and marketplace, and enjoy the new mission set. It's definitely on par with the original campaign in content, if not originality. If you have issues, just think back to the instructions above. If you keep everything in order, then this is an expansion any Majesty fan must have. Pros: • New level editor
• New campaign to conquerCons: • Installation issues can cause corruption of save files
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