Majesty 2 Collection - 10/20 hours

I don't know what it means to have skill in this game. Granted, this may be because I'm so bad at it that skillful play is beyond my ability to imagine. That's an idea I have to entertain. But right now my working theory is that success or failure in Majesty 2 largely comes down to luck.

It all comes down to a certain campaign level, called "Mortal Foibles of Kings." In this level, you start off surrounded by 5 different sewers. Usually, sewers are a nuisance, but not terribly threatening. They are indestructible, but only spawn low-level creatures. You can keep them contained by building a guard tower nearby. However, it turns out that they are a much bigger threat when they don't spawn one at a time, as a consequence of your village's growth. If you start out with five, right next to your city, then rats can spawn quickly and tear down your construction before you even get the chance to get started. I've played the level about six times already, and only once did I survive long enough to even get my first hero on the field. Every other time, my building was destroyed before it finished construction.

I looked up a walkthrough online and as near as I can tell, success requires precisely the right build order done without any sort of hesitation or delay. It's likely just a poorly-designed mission, but I'd be distressed if it became the new norm. My least favorite part of any RTS game is when the enemy overwhelms your base and you have to watch helplessly as you are out of resources and your stuff is systematically destroyed without any hope of a counter-action. To experience that less than five minutes into a mission is total bullshit.

In an effort to bypass this terrible level, I went ahead and fired up the expansion campaigns. They were all right, though I'm not sure what the Kingmaker or Battle for Ardania expansion packs added, other than extra missions. The Monster Kingdom expansion was pretty neat, though, allowing you to play the game with goblins and liches and whatnot, instead of your usual heroes.

Going forward, my plan is to use up all of the easy missions from the various expansion packs until I run into a dead end at every turn, and then, after that . . . hope that my 20 hours are up. Or possibly complain about the unfairness of it all. I haven't decided yet. Let's play it by ear.