The Guild Gold Edition

For those of you who haven't played The Guild, it is just a masterpiece of a game. The only reason it doesn't get that fifth star is because it can be a tad confusing at times, and the manual nor the tutorial will prepare you for the vast amount of stuff you can do in this game. Become an apprentice, master your trade, open your own business, branch out and do other things, own many buildings...run for governer, kill and sabotage other people's estates, attack other people's caravans...these are only some of the things you can do in this extremely open-ended, well-thought-out game.

The Guild was one of those games that was really easy to overlook on the retail racks. The box art didn't promise anything new, and the name didn't promise anything different than the other games that were part of the at-the-time flood of medieval based games, but The Guild is something different. In the guild, you don't set out to be a mage or a demon slayer, but instead you might be a perfume maker, or a blacksmith. While you're focused on improving your chosen business, you also have the chance to slip into political or religious office and try to use the money from your business and some of the goods you make to improve your standing in society, sometimes across several generations. It's that all-encompassing just-one-more-turn feeling that makes games like these greats, and The Guild has it in abundance!

So I have tried to play this game several times, but I have always had severe lags. After every click I had to wait almost a second, whenever I scrolled I needed to wait for the game aswell. I still tried for more then an hour a few times, I have tried to chance the settings, windows compatibility mode, administrator rights, everything I could think of. At this point I'm done with the game. Still gave 2 stars because I am positive it is a game I would love if I could run it and what I have seen from gameplay and atmosphere was superb.

LAN works great! But forget about playing over the internet multiplayer...I had hoped GOG would have fixed this. LAN works though. Same old game as before. The game is great although somewhat boring single player after a few games, but multiplayer is the way to go. So if you can get a LAN game going, you will love this even more.

This game is a lot of fun for people that like the idea of playing a dynasty in the context of history. The historical titbits are rather interesting and relatively well written. The various roles you take on are capable of directly impacting the game world, which can be exciting. Building the houses and other sites and upgrading them is nice, especially since you're passing your estate down generation after generation. However, there are not enough different roles to play. There are not many career paths and the majority of the elected/appointed positions have little to no value other than making you eligible for a higher position on the food chain. One problem there is that the computer players are not limited in this way. Many NPC's are elected to offices far above your station without holding any office what-so-ever - a feat impossible for the player. The combat, such as it is, is horrendous. This is not simply a condition of the game's era, either. The scheme for selecting your units does not work (dragging a box) half the time and you must individually select them from the bar at the top with their faces. Of course, they often all have the same face and their position in the bar is unrelated to their position on the battle field. Then there is the path finding - or complete lack thereof. I have one combat more than once by simply not doing anything and watching the AI also not do anything for the entire 5 minutes or so that combat can last. Really, quite disappointing. The economy is almost interesting, but is mostly artificial as far as I can tell. Yes, you can flood the market with a product and lower its cost (screwing the competition), but it quickly 'resets'. There is also no way (as far as can tell) to determine the age of the wo/men you are to court for marriage prior to marrying them. I was quite the black widower in one of my dynasties - marrying women who died within the very game term I married them over and over - despite never intending to do so. I'd say it's worth the price of admission, but one must understand that it's under-polished and be prepared to be deal with the flaws.