Customer Reviews

The Guild 2 Gold Edition

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I think many people may find this game to be a bit too slow (in terms of game-play), but both my girlfriend and I enjoy it thoroughly. It's a little buggy (especially in multiplayer mode, where things break if too much is happening at once).

The dialogs are really cheesy, but some interesting social dynamics can develop as people love or hate you for your actions in the game. It's neat to be able to judge court cases or be the town mayor, especially. It really is like a little medieval micro cosmos.

I downloaded and installed a player-made mod called "BttR" and it added two new professions (Necromancer/Banker) and many items, while fixing some of the bugs in the original scripts. This, I think, improved the game significantly.

Definitely not a polished game, and not for everyone, but I love it and would buy it again.

I was surprised to find that this game was the successor to Europa 1400. I thought it was the predecessor. There were things about this game that weren't in Europa, improvements in my opinion, and I just assumed those were changes that had been made to make Europa a better overall game.

For example, you actually have a playable character in Guild 2. Meaning, you have a character you have to move around to every building for every activity. In Europa, its more of an omnipotent point of view, meaning you can enter each shop and give your employees a bonus, and immediately go to the other shop and do the same thing. In the Guild 2, you have to physically move your character there. I understand that might be more realistic, but it ate up a lot of time. And, if you chose to be a woman, if you are pregnant, you can't leave the house. I found I always played men so I would not lose that time as well. Come on, this is a game that allows women to be mayor in a time when they weren't really, and yet a woman has to stay house bound when pregnant? Another thing I thought odd, was the fact that you could not compliment someone of the opposite sex. Why is that? So, trying to get into politics, my female character could not compliment the other women in the higher ranking offices, and they were ALL women, so I was left with "bribe" and gifts as my only options for smoozing. I find it strange that women can't compliment other women or men other men. Why close that avenue? Sometimes, someone would not like me, for no apparent reason, and no matter how much money I bribed them with or gifts I gave them, they continued to hate me. I could not get elected to office for three generations, because this woman hated my family. that was why I had no money, I guess, I spent tons trying to get her to like me.

Also, courting in Guild 2 was much harder. In Europa, you click on a button to look at prospective mates. You can choose from a variety of ages, classes, education, positions and wealth. In Guild 2, the only perspective mates were all uneducated with a zero dollar worth. I sent a daughter through school, apprenticeship and even to college. she graduated with a PhD, and yet she too only had uneducated men with no money to choose from. By this time, I was into my 3rd generation. My family has wealth, position and education. Is a ignorant man with no money all she had to choose from? In some ways this game is portrayed as realistic, but in others, it falls short. A women with a wealthy family of position would have higher status men to choose from. And, the actual courting itself was troublesome. If the man walked off when I was buying him a gift, I could not find him again! I would have to wait for the little message popped up that he was feeling neglected so I could click on his picture and find him. Perhaps there was some way of tracking him down that I could not find.

Which brings me to another gripe, the tutorial is worthless. I played three different games because of mistakes I had made. I expect to play one learning game to work all the kinks out, but after three? There were things that greatly effected game play that if I had known about, i would have made different choices. The thing about being house bound when pregnant was one of them. The fact that once you add someone to your dynasty, if you remove them, you can't put them back. I could not get the "follow me" command to work, so when I got married, the only way to get the spouse to go into the house was to add them to the dynasty and tell them to go there. So, after going through all that trouble and money to educate my daughter, I have to take her off to add her husband to get him into the house, and then I can't add her again. So, I'm left with aging parents, and an uneducated man who does me far less good than than the daughter. I also did not know how to farm. Perhaps other people picked up on this faster than I did. I bought a farm, and then spent 10 minutes trying to figure out how to sow it. I had to ask Google to find out that I had to add garden patches and animal pens for this to work. I thought those were extra. I also could not seem to make money very fast. Even on easy mode, I could hardly keep up. I guess that too is more realistic, but I could not get into politics or up grade my house or business enough to do the really cool things. I eventually had to resort to cheating, giving myself more money, just to upgrade my house and business. Perhaps I'm not savvy enough with commerce, but after I was on my third game and into my 3rd generation, I was feeling frustrated that I was not further.

Things I did like that weren't in Europa, were that there were other town to trade with and choose from to live in. I also like that the tavern. You can go there, sit and eat, drink and talk. You can take baths, alone or with someone else, and dance.

Well, supposedly you can choose different towns to live in. That feature would not work for me either. Perhaps its because I have Vista. That is my last section. Things that didn't work that might or might not have had to do with Vista. I could not always pick my home town. I would select it, but I would end up in some other town - with no house. For some reason, I didn't always start with a house. I would then have to buy a house and a business. Sometimes I would click on "compliment" but would get "insult" or something else. Other times, a note would appear that my child was eligible for school or an apprenticeship, but the option would never appear. I had to have 3 kids in one game to finally get one that made it into school. I have no idea why the option would not appear. Sometimes it would appear but it would be a long time after the notice. I thought you were perhaps only allowed to have one child at a time, but in one game, I had two kids go through school at the same time, so that wasn't it.

Overall, I liked Europa better. I lost my Europa disk, and am online today to by TWO so I have a replacement. Guild 2 is ok, and in the interim, it passed the time. If it had not been as buggy as it was and with better instructions, I would have liked it more.

This game was a small gem as it's original Europa 1400 ad back in it's time, not as much any more. It is a sandbox game play where you manufacture goods for a small mid evil township marlet place and make gain with money while progress is achieved by building better & more plus more money. The second of the series now The Guild was still a sandbox, the install is very quirky to my USA system, it fights the every day protective systems we use a bit and tends to be trying if it does not want to work and this is true of all the series games new and older ones. The next Guild 2 Pirates of high Seas or European Seas as its known has a 4 level Campaign ( also only one with boats) which is a quaint and inviting look into the middle ages setting, its fairly fun but the series releaes right afterward has no campaign, yes back to sandbox and the one coming up has a plan to stay that way also. The Pirates one is the only one that has this in it, it is a short campaign, with out this the game tends to after some time lack challenge for you, it lacks imagination for a game were the developers keep to stating they need time to develope new ideas for the sandbox features and have no room then for a structured challenge like even the mini campaign. Unfortunately the experience is all in its atmosphere and what you do with it and not the roles that the weak ai acts out at all. The Venice add unfortunatley in my opion was a flop and very small compared to other game disc contenet, I think Renaissance is also going to have the same weak apeal, they changed msotly the looks of the building, they are more symetrical and thats about all and the game was a bor compared to the prior ones. This may be the only worthwhile copy if you are willing to spend the time on it.The Guild 2 Gold Edition

Game arrived on time, excellent condition as promised, as it was a new game out of the package. Overall gameplay is as expected, but some issues with Win 7 as it was designed for previous versions of the Windows O/S, so thats no big deal, because while glitchy, it still runs as it should. Ctrl+Tabing out and back in causes some graphical glitches, but again thats because it was designed for previous versions of the Windows O/S. Still learning how this game works as far as the market and shipping goes in game.

Overall good game play and a easy way to enjoy your time if you have nothing else to do.

This game would be great but there are just too many bugs. Like playing for a hour only to have it crash then you have to start all over again. I was able to patch the newest one Venice but was not able to patch this one. After downloading the patch it gave me an error when I selected the folder the game was in. Even with the patch in Venice though the game was still a bit buggy. My computer isn't the best but with all the settings to min the game should have ran really smoothly. Honestly I loved the game and if one of the larger gaming companies were to come out with this game and back it with patches to fix the errors this game would be perfect. Overall the game was good and I still had hours of fun playing it. Even if the ships are useless when they decide to attack a tower and won't leave the fight when you tell them too.

I checked out reviews and game play movies for this game and I liked what I read and saw. I played the demo from the company which was not very long and this game seemed like fun. I ordered this game and waited the few weeks for it to arrive. The game installed just fine and I started to play. After about 10 minutes of play I started to feel that the game overall was very slow. Not in terms of speed because my computer could not handle it but in terms of game play. I usually had the game speed set to fast or faster to keep my interest. So I played the game for a few days to a week and I did not find enough of a difference overall to continue to play the game. It felt like the same thing over and over again to the point that I was bored and would leave the game running and go do other things. I removed the game from my machine after only about 3 weeks and have not missed it at all. That was about 2 months ago now. I would not recommend this game at all even for people like me that typically enjoy this type of game. Save your money for something else.

After installing the game I found many many graphical bugs and glitches that made the game annoying to play. I went to their webpage to download a patch but they made that extremely difficult. They only have patch 1.2, but other sites have 1.4. After downloading 1.4 and trying to install I was told I need a different version of the 1.4 patch. After installing that, it changed my language to German - I was very careful to install the English patch.
In addition to all this, the game has multiple startup screens and videos, none of which show up on my screen, and it seems to take forever to just load - I think it's contacting its main server to check for piracy- after already checking the DVD drive and having had installed DRM 'drivers' which clash with my antivirus. Overall, this game has been a headache, and the not worth the investment in time.

Its one of my favirite games but their seems to be a certain odd feeling,like its uncompleted,but overall it was a great game!