The Guild 2

by Aspyr

Product Features

• Compete against up to 8 human opponents in a unique online mode
• Control the fate of a powerful dynasty in medieval Europe
• Build a dynasty utilizing a wide variety of career paths
• Explore a beautifully crafted and immersive living world in real-time
• Overthrow adversaries using bribery, assassination, and treachery

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000HCQJYC
• Item Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: October 16, 2006
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #22,126 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)

Product Description

From the Manufacturer

The time is 1400 A.D. The end of the last crusade has left the countries of Europe and the powerful Roman Catholic Church defeated and in a state of great upheaval. As church authorities and noblemen across the continent scramble to defend their interests, you must rise through the ranks of society to build a rich and powerful family dynasty that will last through the ages. Become a crafty merchant, politician, or even a renowned crime lord and outwit shrewd human or AI opponents to achieve the upper echelon of nobility. Every decision you make determines the course of history.

Features:

• Control the fate of a powerful dynasty in medieval Europe
• Compete against up to eight human opponents in a unique online mode
• Build your dynasty utilizing a wide variety of career paths, including merchant, priest, politician, or thief
• Marry, raise children, and develop lasting relationships that will help your dynasty flourish
• Explore a beautifully crafted and immersive living world in real-time
• Overthrow your adversaries using bribery, assassination, and treachery

Product Description

As the successor to the highly rated medieval life simulation Europa 1400, The Guild 2 offers players the opportunity to control the fate of a large dynasty during the Middle Ages. Players can match wits with other human opponents via a truly unparalleled online multiplayer mode that has been completely redesigned for this sequel. In addition, The Guild 2 introduces the franchise’s first story-driven single-player campaign.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Perfect execution of a fantastic medieval simulation!, November 4, 2006

By 

Cano2 "Cano2" (Nowhere, Important) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Guild 2 (CD-ROM)

I enjoyed the first in this series, but this one just takes it all to a whole new level. It should be noted that I only played this after 1.2 patch came out that addressed all of the bugs everyone complained about. So I feel there is no point in harping on ancient history - the game is fixed - and it is fabulous.

The possibilities in this game are near endless, you can do virtually anything you want, when you want it. Think Sims + Oblivion + Settlers all rolled into one game, in perfect harmony.

Replayability is huge, with plenty of maps, a lot of professions and classes. Nothing is scripted, everything happens like it would in the real world. The learning curve in this game is fairly large, and many people new to the series will require 2-3 manual reads and the tutorials done at least twice. But you are rewarded with a fantastic game, realistic gameplay, and a world you'll come to love.

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Easy Fix, January 13, 2007

By 

Ettish (Currently in Baghdad, Iraq) - See all my reviews

= Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars 

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Guild 2 (CD-ROM)

Don't let other reviews fool you. This is a damn good game, good for wasting countless hours. I'm in Iraq so theres not a whole lot to be done during down time, and most games get real old, real fast. The Guild 2 has helped me through it all, and has run a few weeks of this deployment. It is however a little buggy, but most of which got fixed in the most recent patch. The internet is horrible over here, but the patch version 1.2 only took a few minutes to download, and after that I was good to go. Easy. Don't let people saying this game has has a lot of bugs skew your decision. Once you patch it you'll be pleased.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Do whatever you want, if you can figure out how, April 7, 2007

By 

M. Boutaugh - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

= Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars 

This review is from: The Guild 2 (CD-ROM)

Let me start by saying this game was one of the funnest I've ever played, partly because of the enormous depth, replayability, and variety in the game itself, and also because, as another reviewer stated, it combines aspects from the Sims, eldar scrolls games, and the settlers. This keen observation is very true, as in the course of any given game you will be courting lovers, cementing relationships, insulting people, and having babies (The Sims),you will also be stealing, upgrading weapons, and commanding a character to do wahtever it wants (Eldar Scrolls), all the while, you can manage a business, or multiple ones, a farm, mines, buy a home, get in politics, spy on people, charge someone of a crime, its almost as if you are one of the inhabitents living in The Settlers. It seems like the producers went far to make it an open ended game in which the player can do almost anything they want. In addition to the possibilities in playing, the game has the graphics to back it up. It looks quite real, the faces are not all similar(older people even have wrinkles, but don't fret, your character will get them as well when they age),and you can even see inside your businesses, homes, and public buildings which, surprisingly,add rooms as you upgrade them. The buildings are also impressive, not because there is a whole lot but instead because you can upgrade them constantly. The game is also in real time, so you must manage activities and hire more employees to get things done in time, but the game isn't always so hectic, because you can have the computer automanage a business to your specifications. Personally, the game is excatly what I was looking for, and just about everything I could have wanted.
Now for the bad stuff: Despite the game's enormous opportunities and replayability, it is very difficult to learn. This is the downside of its openendedness, that you don't know how to do most of the stuff. Many things are not in the manual and must simply be picked up as you go. THe rogue campaign was especially difficult for me to inderstand. The tutorials provide some basic backing to understanding, but most most of the tutorial is common sense stuff, like "to attack a person, click the attack button on them", or "to move the screen, move the mouse to the edge of the screen". The manual is quite useless and it will be talking about how to do something, and then say that you can do something else, without explaining what the other thing is or how to do it. This is a major turnoff to most people, who might give up on the game when they can't get it, or some who don't know they can do some stuff, so they think the game is simple with few options and they get bored quickly. Overall, it will take patience. Another complaint is that the game has just enough diologue to make you wanting more. For instance, plaintiffs in court trials do speak, but they say the same things, and whether or not it helps their case only depends on their rhetoric skill. Other diologue problems make it less realistic, for instance, a female complimented my male character on his "good hair", whilst my male character complimented her for being "well-built". It seemed like the roles were reversed. Moreover relationship issues come into play at a certain point. You need babies to keep your line going, but marriage hardly ties 2 people together and the only real interaction they recieve is during the "courting" time, which incidintally was extremely tiresome because you have to keep leaving your job/political obligations to see her, and since you may only reuse your intertaction buttons after several hours, their is very few times you may actually see her. This becomes less of a problem in advanced cities where taverns and other places allow to court without using interaction buttons. Nevertheless, relationship issues leads to stupid things like a courting period lasting 16 years. My biggest and most important complaint however, is the game glitches. Occasionally it will take a long time to load something simple, like a description of bread, but this can be worked around, the only problem affected gameplay is crashes on my computer. My computer is upgraded and can play Medieval 2 Total War with relative ease without doing too much, but on THe GUild 2, the computer will systematically crash, and I have the patch installed. The crashes only started a week after I had started playing, and they increased in number until now I can't even play it. I'm still waiting to hear from the support team. This problem is likely isolated, and only on my computer, but it helps reveal some game problems that many people might have, especially considering I meet all the requirements.
Overall the fun outwieghs the bad sides, and most of my complaints were over expressed because they were the only real things I saw that I didn't like.