I've picked this on Steam a month or so back and I didn't see a thread on it.
The Guild 2 is a strange hybrid of economic simulation, life simulation and RPG. Players first take command of a single member of a lower-middle-class dynasty and must expand their wealth by building various holdings and participating in trading. The dynasty can be expanded when your character gets married and you can set your spouse and offspring to work in your venues.
There are three expansions in the series with the final,
Renaissance, being a stand-alone title and contains all the features from the first three expansions sans
The Pirates campaign mode. The Guild 2 was originally published by JoWooD Entertainment and developed by 4HEAD Studios which to my knowledge no longer exists.
Renaissance was picked up by RuneForge who reported as having trouble adapting to 4HEAD's rather unorthodox coding style.
The game is by no means perfect and it has a great deal of flaws. The UI is particularly unfriendly and the Renaissance stand alone comes without a tutorial.
The game features a control system similar to "The Sims" series where individual characters of your dynasty/work-force can be commanded in real-time separably. Characters can be sent to owned venues to do a various collection of jobs like production of goods or serving drinks.
The game features a rather in-depth political system where you can move up the social rank by purchasing titles and even become the mayor. Interaction between other AI-controlled dynasty is extremely important to keep your dynasty in power and intrigue is a must for any power hungry player.
The game features RPG mechanics in the form of player stats and classes. Stats affect your ability to do everything in the game, from being a charismatic trader to a burly thug to a productive crafter. These are affected by your starting investment in stats as well as your star sign. Characters can level-up and add to these stats.
The game also has four "classes" or "professions" which will govern how you play the game and the areas the character will focus on. It includes:
The Patron: The patron manages public houses, can construct farms and bakeries. They supply the food and drink of the cities and are the one half of the backbone of society.
The Crafts(wo)man: They can construct mines, lumber yards and forges. They supply the cities with the resources it's needs and are largely self-sufficient. Mining iron and creating arms and armour is always a good option when there's constant war. Craftsman are the second half of society.
The Scholar: Scholars can construct churches, libraries and hospitals. They require very specialised resources and must have a great deal of training and investment. They can however usually advance through the social ranks extremely quickly.
The Rogue: The rogue is the game's parasite. It does not produce any resources and it only takes. The rogues lie in shadow on trading routes and plunder. Money comes easily for a rogue but as does death. Don't expect to have an easy time expanding your dynasty with a price on your head!
The game boosts a rather impressive economy where price is determined by supply and demand. For those of you that love gaming economics you'll find some fund to be have starving cities or your enemies of resources. Making and maintaining a long supply line of resources from your industries is paramount to success.
If you're anything like me and wanted to set up your own medieval tavern with wine and song this might also be the game for you.
With the basic game explanation out of the way we can talk about the negatives.
The UI as previously stated is dreadful and the leaning curve rather steep. It took me a long to figure out how to interact with buildings or how to set up a trading route. I still don't know how to check what's turning a profit and what's costing me money and maintaining some industries seem to require a lot of micromanagement.
It's recommend that you buy the stand-alone since it contains the most features but the lack of tutorial is pretty jarring. I've scoured google for a bit but couldn't find any really decent guide/tutorial so you're best bet is to watch the original game's tutorial on youtube, although the quality of the recordings are pretty bad.
If anyone knows or can write up a decent starting guide please feel free to post it, it would greatly help new players get into the game.
The game is a innovative title but it's also an extremely rough one. The premise alone might be enough to draw you in but the mechanics might (understandably) push you away.
Some screenshots courtesy Google Images.
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Topic: The Guild 2/ Guild II - The Renaissance (Read 18957 times)