Posted on: March 27, 2017

Decept404

Games: 85 Reviews: 6

Barely works but works so good

What a shambling, charming wreck the Guild series is. I stumbled across this game when it first came out and I had no idea what I was in for: A mixture of satisfying economic simulation and oddly poignant dynasty building, wrapped in an absolutely shambolic mess of an engine. The sequel is possibly the high mark of the series in terms of features and implementation, but with its increased fidelity it lost some of the charm of the original. The Guild is a game in which small town politics and intrigue mingle with managing a (fairly modest) business empire. It is trees of upgrades and wondering if your kids will survive so you have a successor. It's a game where you choose your favorite out of your three kids to pick up the reins once you die (death winds up being quite poignant in this game somehow) and then follow the two you didn't choose as they try to build lives of their own: Did you give them a good enough inheritance to where they become respected citizens or do they become destitute? It's awful and great to see. It cannot be stated loudly enough how incredibly rough this game is technically. It sometimes feels tied together with shoelaces and gum, so a high tolerance for jank is important. But persist past that and you'll see a game that tries to do something unique and beautiful, giving you hints of genuine insight into a time when the values in life were dramatically different.

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Posted on: June 13, 2019

Debrutsid

Games: 139 Reviews: 1

Truly, a fun deep game

Bought this years ago at a dollar store. I have played games i paid 60 bucks for less than i played this game. will be def buying this now. i have the cd for it somewhere but it didnt run properly the last time i tried to run it. have started out as every single business available, church and bar are my favorites, aside from the thieves guild of course. blackmailing political opponets, smearing them in public, bribing the voting members of your political or clerical group. i mean there is just soo very much to do. i literally could sit here and write until i use all the characters, but i like to keep things short.

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Posted on: February 16, 2009

bitobah

Verified owner

Games: 132 Reviews: 1

Fun, but a micro-managers dream!

The Guild Gold (also known as Europa 1400 Gold) has an undeniable charm that hides the fact that it, like the Patrician and Port Royale series, is a spreadsheet trading and economic simulation. Set in a a slightly fantastic version of the middle ages (The Guild includes certain magical charms and alchemy that do not make it completely realistic) the Guild allows you to create your own medieval persona whose life you will direct and nurture. Setting your own goals, the Guild Gold allows you to chose from a large group of professions (set into a smaller number of archetypes) and pursue professional, political, and personal goals at your leisure. While doing this is often more cumbersome than it needs to be, due to large numbers of windows, selection screens, and buttons to push, the Guild offers such a wide variety of options that almost any fan of the economic/life simulations will be pleased. In many ways, the game plays like the X3 series, only set on the planet, rather than in space - allowing you to build a number of different shops in numerous cities, to run for political office, to carry out different types of skulduggery and defamation against your opponents, or to just settle down, get married, and have children to continue your dynasty. The learning curve for the guild can be very steep, and the manual is not overly helpful in overcoming this. A number of online fan-made guides exists, but most players will have to use trial and error to see what works. The gameplay can get repetitive, particularly watching and waiting for your goods to be produced, resources to restock, or your wagons to arrive at an assigned location, but this is often alleviated by the amount of stuff that you can chose to do. Most fans of the series, myself included, consider the Guild Gold to be superior to its sequel, The Guild 2, because it is more stable, less of a resource hog, and has more options available to the player (the Guild 2 reintroduced some of the options in the Guild with its expansion pack, but still was missing some major professions and political offices). So if you want to play a life simulation like Port Royale, X3, or Patrician, but finally want to get OFF that ship and live life - the Guild Gold is a perfect game for you!

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Posted on: April 3, 2018

DLCom

Games: 24 Reviews: 1

Great game with some technical issues

I really love this game, it's just brilliant. All the things you can do and the overall historical feeling is just great. I've got three problems with it though, which is the reason why I'm not giving this 5 Stars: 1. The compatibility is not good. When running under Win 10, the game has a lot of graphical bugs, with some hardware it is even reported to not run at all. It won't work with two screens attached to my graphics card, which is very unfortunate, and it crashes often. In the end, I decided to install it within a Win XP virtual machine, there it runs nearly flawlessly. 2. There are quite a few bugs. Nothing gamebreaking, but it annoys me quite a lot, when, for example, I can't buy a ressource which is clearly shown in the marketplace, or my loads don't arrive where they should. 3. The AI of the masters is horrificly bad. In most cases, they don't generate profit at all, therefore you have to manage all of your facilities yourself, which is nearly impossible in the late game. All of these are rather minor issues, which is the reason I'm still giving this 4 stars, as it's a darn good game overall. I'd love to see a remake without technical problems, though.

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Posted on: June 28, 2010

Ceana of the Crags

Games: 232 Reviews: 24

Excellent game based on the German Apprenticeship system

This game is out of Austria and is based on the apprenticeship system here in Germany. Too bad we don't adopt it there in the US. Anyhow, this is a truly excellent game! I've never played this in English, so I will have to sort of translate what I know from German into my mother tongue. You choose a town to start in and a task - or free play. You can also choose to have the news be historical or randomized, etc. Each town has more or less space to build new establishments, as well as various difficulty levels. You choose your first and last name, your gender and your religion. You may then choose your mother and father's profession and allot a few extra points to your 5 skills. There are 5 possible fathers and 4 mothers. The mothers are: thief, poet, craftswoman or trader. The fathers are the same, but include a soldier. The skills affect your bargaining skills, crafting of products, rhetoric, thieving/assassin abilities and fighting skills. Each of the classes available for your parents influences these various skills as well. You also get to choose the avatar that will represent you. Lastly, you choose your profession. There is a tutorial available from the main menu. I would recommend using it the first time you play. You will start with a business and a house. Which business you start with is determined by your profession. The list of professions is much more detailed here than in the Guild 2. You can buy better titles for your family (this will be conferred upon all family members). Your title dictates the level of house you can have. Each level of house and business adds additional advantages. Choose your partner with care. When your husband or wife dies, you inherit all of their properties and money IF they did not have children before they married you. Try to pick a partner from whom you can get children!! If they do not like you much, you will not get children. You can use a poem on your partner periodically if necessary to get them to like you better. The advent of children is not within your control in this game. Guild 2 has given you some control over this. If you die, you will be prompted to continue the game with one of your children. They must be at least 13 years old. Why? The old laws here in Germany allowed a person to take work as of 14 years old. You still only have to have 9 years of schooling here to get the lowest level high school diploma and start an apprenticeship - even with the recent changes to the school system. If you never have tried the challenge of marrying 5 times within one lifetime, I highly recommend it! It is great fun!!! :-) This is considered a very hard task when choosing your tasks in starting a new game.

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