Lessaria: Fantasy Kingdom Sim Review

Have you ever wanted to build a village, but without having the option to really control the people within it? Have you always found it more fun to roleplay a kind in Dungeons &Dragons, rather than being anyone else? Do you like telling people what to do, only to have them constantly ignore you? In that case, developer Rockbee’s latest title, Lessaria: Fantasy Kingdom Sim, might be the game for you.

At its core, Lessaria: Fantasy Kingdom Sim is an RTS that centres around indirect control. You take the role of a prince, charged with forging alliances while protecting the land. You have two gameplay modes to focus on: a campaign and a sandbox mode. The campaign sees you travel across the country, building villages, making friends… plus killing a bunch of things.

The actual plot is fine, but it’s nothing to really write home about. Thankfully, this is saved by some of the writing, which can be pretty funny. However, it’s a bit meta at times, and usually very on the nose. This includes your Knight saying something like “what would Aragorn do,” or knowingly stealing a line from Marvel movies. Although with how often lines get repeated, this gets old really fast. 

Be honest, though, you don’t play a title like this to see the plot; you do it to build and fight. As I said before, Lessaria: Fantasy Kingdom Sim sells itself as a spiritual successor to Majesty. I’ve never played Majesty 2, so I can’t really comment on the similarity there, but there's some reminiscence to games like Age of Empires. Each mission sees you start on a large map where you will need to build an economy, hire heroes, and deal with threats to your kingdom.

One of the most important things to note here is that you don’t need to worry about numerous different resources. Instead, your only focus needs to be on gold, so when you construct mines or lumber yards, it’s to gather the taxes from the profits of those buildings. If that sounds complicated, don’t worry, as it really isn’t. There are no fluctuations you really need to worry about, as the money will constantly rise over time.

This gold is used to buy new items for your shops, construct new buildings, and hire heroes. You won’t have a huge army in that game, at least not in the same vein as titles like Total War: Rome II. Instead, you hire people from different guilds who all level up as they work. This is where the “hands-off” style comes into play, as you can’t actually tell them what to do. Instead, you set quests that offer a reward for completing them, with heroes responding if they think the payout is worth it. They will then use this money in the shops to upgrade their equipment or at the tavern.

It's an interesting system, but at the same time, it’s also somewhat limited. While setting the quests is fun at first, you soon realise that there aren’t many options for what you want them to do. It’s just a more complicated version of clicking a unit and then right-clicking what you want them to attack. With that being said, it is quite fun building a tavern to set them into teams (each with their own “humorous” name). However, there’s no real benefit to doing so beyond making it easier to send a group of people to do a quest. 

Honestly, the campaign was fun, but I got really bored in the sandbox, as you soon realise just how little you actually have to do. Once you have the buildings levelled up, you just sit there and wait until you’ve killed everything. The options for your town are also pretty simple, as there’s no real benefit to where you place things.

One interesting mechanic to note is the timer that will spawn a horde of enemies that attack your base. The horde gets bigger with each attack, and the only way to shrink it is to destroy monster lairs. It’s a nice system that gives you a good reason to get your heroes out earning money.

Therein lies the main problem with Lessaria: Fantasy Kingdom Sim: you don’t really do anything beyond a certain point. You can’t make the heroes perform certain moves, you can’t come up with interesting tactics, you just sit and watch them move around the map. You can cast the odd spell, but it’s… meh. 

Graphically, the game is fine, and the character models all look great, although they’re not exactly inspired. The Orcs look exactly like Warcraft Orcs, the barbarians look like something out of Tangled, etc. It’s not bad, but it’s not exactly got me casting fireball over here..

Everything in Lessaria: Fantasy Kingdom Sim works perfectly fine, and if you’re looking for a game you can play in the background while you watch The Lord of the Rings, then it’s a pretty good choice. Alternatively, if you’re a long-time fan of Majesty looking for your next fix, then it might be ideal. However, if you like a little more depth, then it might not be for you. Also, if you hate referential humour, then walk away, walk away fast.