Chris InglisLessaria is the long-awaited spiritual successor to the classic Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim. Developed by Rockbee Team and published by Polden Publishing, Lessaria offers a refreshing challenge to the established RTS formula. While the game features the familiar pillars of deep base building, resource collection, and extensive upgrade paths, Lessaria distinguishes itself by redefining the player’s relationship with their most valuable asset: the hero fighting units.
At its core, Lessaria requires you to manage lumber and gold, upgrade your buildings to unlock upgraded items, and fortify your castle. However the central focus of the game comes into play when you recruit your heroic units: fighters, rangers, thieves, and mages. Managing these units is not about clicking every knight or archer into position but more about becoming a sovereign, issuing grand, costly decrees from the safety of your village.
The critical twist here is that you cannot click to move these units individually, rather, they are left to their own devices, intelligently scouting the immediate vicinity, pooling their strength to defend the castle walls, and generally act in the best interest of the settlement. The player’s power, therefore, shifts from absolute control to calculated influence and issuing commands.
If you want a unit group to perform a specific task—a targeted attack on an enemy encampment, a deep scout into dangerous territory, or a rapid defense of a vulnerable outpost—you must pay a cost. Troops don’t work for free after all. This cost forces you to view every command not as a reflexive action, but as a strategic investment. The developers at Rockbee Team have successfully turned the traditional flaw of RTS, clumsy and untrustworthy AI, into the central component. You are not fighting against your unit’s inefficiency; you are calculating and overriding their default behaviour. As the threats escalate and the maps grow, successful play requires your mastery of gold and housing, knowing when to save resources and when to spend them for a crucial tactical scout and pushing the enemy.
The challenge is no longer “can I move my mages fast enough to avoid that ambush?” It shifts the strategic focus from APM (actions per minute) to logistics and financial planning. The cost-for-control system means every battle is a calculation. Do you trust your rangers to handle the threat autonomously, or do you spend valuable resources to ensure a successful targeted outcome? This is where the game excels and becomes increasingly addictive with each passing level.
Lessaria’s initial, simple premise gives way to surprising strategic depth as the campaign progresses. New building options and advanced gameplay elements are slowly introduced, continually evolving the landscape. Some missions have you contending with varied threats like orcs, barbarians, and other rival factions, demanding careful balance between securing the home base and aggressive exploration out afield. Objectives also become more intricate; dismantling powerful evil lairs requires strategic scouting to uncover and sever their hidden “strange connections” or sources of power, reinforcing the value of the costly Scout command.
While the initial learning curve involves trusting your units innate defensive instincts, the true intrigue of Lessaria lies in mastering command of them through orders. It’s a bold experiment that pays off handsomely, proving that in strategy, sometimes the best command is simply a well-spent gold coin. Lessaria is a must-play for RTS veterans looking for a different take on the genre’s familiar demands, especially fans of Majesty games.
This review utilised a key provided by Sandbox Strategies and Lessaria launches on October 21, 2025 on Steam.
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