Video Games : The Guild 2

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from: Aspyr Media

: The Guild 2
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List Price: $29.95
Price: $5.68
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Amazon Maximum Age: 20 years
Amazon Minimum Age: 144 months
Binding: CD-ROM
Brand: Aspyr
EAN: 0618870112213
ESRB Age Rating: Teen
Format: CD-ROM
Label: Aspyr Media
Legal Disclaimer: Warranty does not cover misuse of product.
Manufacturer: Aspyr Media
Model: 11221
Publisher: Aspyr Media
Release Date: October 16, 2006
Sales Rank: 10137
Studio: Aspyr Media

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Product Description:
The Guild 2 lets you experience the end of the Middle Ages like you never have before! Walk around the streets, witness the execution of a prisoner, or a rich merchant being robbed by one of your opponents. Become a successful merchant or a cunning thief -- and develop your dynasty. Make a new life for yourself and maybe even rise to nobility!



Customer Reviews
Average Rating: out of 5 stars

Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - Very buggy, and very addictive! Beware Vista users
I can only second what many reviewers here have already said.

The game is very buggy. The controls are less than intuative and controlling your characters can be an exercise in extreme frustration. It is not always clear when a unit is selected and it is never clear when to use a left click or a right click to move said unit on the mini-map or main playing screen.

Vista users beware, the game does not install on your system well. The official forum is full of reports of people never getting it to even install, the rest having problems running the game under Vista. I was only ever able to install this game on my older computer which still runs XP. I never did get it to install on Vista even using all the "stand on one foot and use magic pixie dust" tricks the forums are full of.

On the other hand, once you get past the bugs and clunky interface, the game is very addictive. It has a mission mode which is fun and a 'sandbox' mode where you can build literally forever.

This is one of those games that you want to try when you see it on the bargain table/rack. If you have no patience for less than straightforward gameplay or run Vista, you'll want to stay away.


Rating: 3 out of 5 stars - original and innovative concept, but impractical gameplay
I've been playing this game for about 3 weeks now, and have spent the better two trying to figure out how to play it as the tutorial covers naught but the basics. I enjoy the game immensely as you can go from a lowly serf to a powerful titleholder using whatever method you choose. I also enjoy the variety of talents you can choose for your character, the depth and uniqueness of each profession. You can be a crafstman, a patron, a scholar, and a rogue.



As a craftsman you get to be carpenter, a blacksmith, a tailor, and open your own shops making armor and specially carved items. You can also mines and wood-cutters huts to provide raw materials such as iron, silver, good, pine and oak for your businesses, then sell the surplus. As a patron, you open bakeries and inns, pubs and taverns making meat pies, serving your guests the brews and the freshest artisan breads. You can also open farms to provide raw materials. As a scholar, you have the unique privilege of owning a church, writing religious articles and creating magic or blessed items. You can open up alchemist shops, whizzing up magic potions, create cursed items for your competitors at the sacrificial altar, or you can open magician shops and create enchanted mechanical items. As a rogue, you can rob your competitors carts and steal their goods with a robber camp, or you can set up a thieves guild and kidnap noble family members demanding lofty ransoms for their safe return. Best thing to use a rogue for is finding the dirt on your competitors so you can find evidence of their crimes. You can also hire mercenaries to do this dirty work for you. I haven't explored much of the rogue profession, but it comes with many options.



Each of the shops may be entered and you can watch how the shop progresses and how the workers interact with you. You can pay your workers a bonus or you can use the "goad workers" function to get them to work faster (I don't like to use that feature, it feels mean) but if you have high rhetoric it works really well.



In addition, regardless of your profession you can be a politician, bribing and brown-nosing your way to being even the mayor of your fine medieval european city. Titles grant you privileges as you rise in rank and status.



Your character faces competition from other families. As a result, you can use any number of things you have against them. Prosecute them in court with evidence your rogues collect on them, threaten to charge them in court, and even blackmail them (rogues are good for this).



Ok, so that was the good part. Now for the bad part.



Gameplay has a number of issues, starting with the most irritating one which is that, in the Guild 2, you can only control 3 of your family members at a time. In addition, once you remove one family member from your control, you never get to add them back to the control tab again. It seems really pointless, afterall it is a dynasty you are trying to build, right? For the first and second generation or so, this isn't too much of a problem. When it gets complicated is once you hit that third and fourth generation and you're children grow up before your last generation has accomplished enough. It also creates problems for your spouses, who I find rarely get any development as they almost always start out with 0 points. Another related issue is you cannot have a family member other than the owner work in a business. So if you have two patrons of the same experience level in your control tab, you can only have one of them working in a patron business. The best you can do is have your child apprentice at one of your businesses, but they don't do anything productive and you pay the same price to apprentice them to your own business as you do to others (which is silly).



Secondly, the personal relations feature is very limited. Often you are left with bribery, compliments, and beguiling. You can throw a lavish party at your own place (which leaves little favor), but you can't buy people a round of drinks at the tavern or pub. You rarely get to marry into wealthy families, even if they are your friends. It is incredibly hard to make friends, then you don't even get to keep them unless you spend the rest of the game kissing up to people. If you have a high charisma rating, it makes little difference unless the person already likes you. Your favor decreases with time, even if you haven't done anything wrong to that person. Giving gifts is also a feature that rarely ever works to your favor (unless you have the patch, which improves that issue a little bit). Throw some perfume on, go to church, that only goes so far. More features need to be added so you can win favor with people.



Thirdly the game is really buggy and slow. The graphics are excellent, but the game can slow down and annoy you. Sometimes it takes a lot of clicks before it recognizes a command. They should have a short-cut menu so you can execute some of the same commands using a keyboard. I highly recommend getting the patch for this, even if you think you've bought the latest version as I did. It resolves a lot of issues, including the ability to auto-manage the farms, mines, and woodcutters huts so you can distribute your raw materials across your businesses and the market.



Even so, the patch won't fix the ability to control more than 3 characters at a time, or grant you the ability to add them back later. By far, that has got to be the biggest fluke of the game. All in all it can still be enjoyable due to the depth and originality, but the software designers need to do more to make gameplay more practical and efficient.








Rating: 5 out of 5 stars - Ambitious Game
The Guild 2 is a very ambitious game. It attempts to simulate not the life of a single person but the life of an entire medieval/renaissance merchant dynasty like that of the Fuggers or the Medici. Beginning with a single family member, trainined in the basics of an art of your choosing, your goal is to climb, claw, assassinate, steal, bribe and otherwise fight your way to the top of the 15th century pecking order.

Starting characters can start plying any number of trades such as alchemist, blacksmith, priest, innkeeper, bandit and many more. Beginning with a single, basic shop and a couple of employees you found a dynasty that will allow you to experience many of the other trades in the game either by purchasing them outright or by living vicariously through carefully trained descendents.

Marriage is of the utmost importance - a good marriage can bring you businesses, expand the range of trades you can ply and allows you to expand your dynasty through your children. Once you have them it is possible to farm your children out for work as apprentices in yours, or someone elses', business or send them off to school for some of the more academic trades.

The day to day affairs of life are as simple as making sure you have enough raw materials to keep your workshops going to siccing arsonists on rival businesses, politicking at the city council or dragging your rivals (or yourself!) to court for offenses real or imagined. As you advance in the game more social actions, such as duels and banquets, become available for you to enact in the game.

There is some multiplayer capability to The Guild 2. You are required to create an account that is linked to your CD key. The long playing times of this game, however, make multiplayer somewhat difficult since there can be days of playing time possible in a single game - limits are the key to a successful multiplayer session.

There are numerous bugs that came with the original shipping of the game, including some that are a quick crash-to-desktop. The camera controls are somewhat buggy and difficult at times and the graphics are taxing on all but the most advanced of systesms. Since the initial release a number of patches have been released for the American version that correct many of the problems seen in the original shipping. Aside from the numerous bugs in the initial release the biggest limitation is the number of maps available - there are six maps total, two variations each on three different base maps, many fewer than the game's predecessor.


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Very fun but....
I am a proud owner of The Guild II and I feel the need to discuss it with the world. To begin, it is an RPG set in the middle ages after the crusades. You can choose lots of little details like your hometown, mission, and even your family crest. But first, here are some basics... First, you begin as a middle classman (or woman) in 1400 on the map of your choice. There are 4 main classes; Rogue, Scholar, Patron, and Craftsman. Craftsmen can do things such as mining, blacksmithing, lumberjacking, and other related activites. Scholars can brew potions, be a priest, and are best apt for politics. Patrons are in charge of the food supply, meaning they can be farmers, innkeepers, or bakers. Rogues finally live by crime and other nefarious activites such as highwaying, pickpocketing, burglary, even kidnapping. In the game, there isn't a campaign but some very fun missions and even a sandbox mode. You can go into politics, found a family, even destroy your competitors through clever court trials, duels, or by simply tasking your henchmen to kill them. Okay, now for the bad part. Though the game is recommended on normal detail, it usually doesn't run very fast or very reliably on a standard grade XP. I turned the general quality to low and the model quality to normal and it worked more reliably. However, on normal I experienced some problems that included the range of gameplay, loading, certain actions (such as sending your children to school) and other things.
All in all, a very fun game, but it needs a version 1.3 patch.


Rating: 4 out of 5 stars - Historical building
I love building games that are historical and give you other options about doing things that are political, etc. It isn't the most informative tutorial nor does the manual explain enough but you learn by trial and error fairly easily and that is how I play it. Not an exciting game for those who love to fight and love action games. It's more for the slow paced game lover who likes to build and loves historical references.

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