Customer Reviews

The Guild 2: Venice

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I've played the Guild series since it was The Guild 1400. It's always had its quirks (German developers have had a bad reputation for years for putting out half-baked, buggy games and rarely supporting them). But, the games are pretty deep and they offer a great premise where you get to guide a family (not just one character) through history.

You can be just about anybody (farmer, craftsman, politician, priest) and each path gives you something interesting to do, though some are harder than others to make ends meet if you want to get somewhere politically. A big part of the game, which you don't have to play if you don't want to, is politics since you can achieve levels of office and get abilities like the ability to banish someone.

All in all, the series is great. This expansion (it's really a standalone game in the end) brings Venice into the catalog of cities/regions you can play. There's also a bit of additional game play options (you can decide if you want to marry in a church, give your beloved an engagement ring, etc.) added into the mix to sweeten the deal. The Venice environments are actually pretty compared to the original game and the Pirates expansions' Northern European environments. Two new professions which include glassmaker (a high value item producer which is good) and mercenary (which I haven't tried yet) bring even more to the mix.

All this combined with the enhancements from the previous games make the gameplay great...then there's the reason for the lower overall rating. That's because the game, though it doesn't crash for me, writes corrupted savegames. That's why I say, as long as you have days of time to play the game continuously, you're golden. If you're like the rest of the world, you'll play through the beginnings of your clan very, very often.

Worst still, JoWooD (the publisher) released a patch recently that did...nothing. Now, not everyone's reporting this problem but I think it's because the problem requires you to do something specific and seems to be tied to the politics are of the game. Even so, the forums are filled with people complaining about this issue, amongst others. And, JoWooD, true to form, is barely responding if at all.

Will they fix the issue? Hard to say...I usually write these games off if they're bugged like that (something that affects your abiilty to proceed) but I guess I want to believe that they'll figure out a solution sometime. Until they do, I would steer clear of this game for now.

To start with there is absolutely no improvement in the characters, voices, gameplay etc... Your in Venice but the voices are the same as if you were in Nottingham.

Also there is no story mode that I saw at all which the previous games had.

Oh and crashes. It crashes constantly after about ten minutes of gameplay. Im a big fan of The Guild 2 but this is one I wish I had skipped.

The Guild 2: Venice

This is a smaller sandbox, less to do than orevious guild 2, no boats, the changes are that the buildings are simply more symetrical. I found it to be boring with in a few hours play. graphics are even less apealing than original predisessor Europa 1400. The use of Venice was a waiste here.

This game is buggy and a complete waste of money. If you just want the Venice maps then its great but if you want options and a good game experience buy The Guild 2 Gold Edition or The Guild 2 Renaissance which have more maps and a few more options. It would have been a good game if it could be linked to the original Guild 2 but it is actually a stand alone game with the same setting and gameplay but only a handful of maps. I don't recommend it and it seems neither would a legion of others who have said as much on the forums, though sadly I did not learn about this until I had already bought it and had started looking for a fix for some of its many, many problems. I recommend any of the other Guild 2 titles especially Renaissance, but certainly not this one.