We got Mario, Link, some toadstools, a TriForce, oooh I think we found Sonic's corpse. Pick one, Roman5!
If you're not playing a Thief in The Guild you are doing it very, very wrong as that is the ONLY profession worth playing as :P

Tough question. The game's German to English translation is actually pretty bad and for me some things were kind of hard to follow. There's also a strong lack of consistency in some of the messaging systems.

I think if you find English easy enough to understand you should be OK. Just don't use The Guild as a tool to learn English because, as I said, the game's English is not very good.

If you find English quite a challenge then the game might be quite difficult for you, mood and tone is hard enough for me to detect in The Guild.

I can only really suggest giving it a try, but if you're really unsure then maybe put it off for a little bit.

(As a side note, judging by some of your posts your English is actually very good. If you're still learning, you're doing really well. Keep at it!)

How different / similar is The Guild to Patrician 3?

The Guild is superior to everything. There are no differences or similarities, The Guild is perfect.


On a serious note, I've never played Patrician 3, although I intend to check out the Patrician series as soon as possible. I understand the basic design philosophy is more or less the same, though.

LongTailGamer if he still visits the forums is to Patrician that I am to The Guild, I think. Maybe we might be lucky and he'll stumble across this post and be able to answer that in depth.

I bought Patrician III and played it for a day. To me, the game seemed to be: trading in order to get more gold in order to trade more in order to get more gold in order to buy more ships in order to make more gold in order to build stuff to make more gold so that you can buy more ships and trade more ad infinitum.

It's a good game, but a trading simulator really isn't my cup of tea.

Their focuses are quite a bit (should I say entirely?) different.
While in Patrician 3 you're a full-time trader who can run a limited political career, in The Guild you're a craftsman who can (and should!) actively pursue a political career. Also, in the Guild you don't buy things to sell them for a profit - you make your employees create items from basic ingredients which then you can sell at the marketplace (or use if yourself - every item in the game has a practical use).

Haha, thanks, you give me some moral here.

It's morale :D

That's the sad thing, I find it hard to bear with a game "until it gets good", I tend to stop playing if the opening doesn't thrill me, which I think is partly my problem, and partly that of the game. Maybe one day I'll try again and find it to my liking if I can get past the opening.

Adding to what Drlstvaan said, in Pat3 you have a ship or shipping fleet and sail around the Hanseatic League. You trade and pursue goals which are generally trading related. You don't have much interaction with the game except trading, though in the late game it becomes more complex to include sieges, politics, and city management.

In the Guild you focus on one city and there really isn't any trading outside your local market. You run your businesses and pursue both political and personal goals. The big difference is that you have rivals which will try to ruin your career and reputation. You have to balance personal advancement with competitor rivalry.

If you are into economic simulations I would recommend both, but be prepared, they both have steep learning curves but are quite fun once you've mastered the basics. There is also the Guild 2 and Pat4 but they aren't as good as their predecessors.