BlueAlien.org

The Guild 2 is the sequel to 4head Studios? Europa 1400: The Guild. It is a very, very ambitious game with the aim of providing the player with a unique and in depth simulation of life in the late medieval and very early renaissance period. Accomplishing many of those goals The Guild 2 is a beautiful, deep, engaging and accessible life sim that is plagued with glitches and bugs.

Title: The Guild 2
Publisher: Aspyr (North America) JoWood (Europe)
Developer: 4Head Studios
Availability: Retail
Price: $29.99

System Requirements
Minimum System Requirements
Processor: 1.6 GHz Pentium IV or AMD Sempron 2800+ or higher
RAM: 512 MB
Graphics Card: 64MB DX9.0c compatible card
Hard Drive Space: 2.5 GB
Optical Drive: 4x DVD-ROM
OS: Windows 2000 or XP
Recommended System Specifications
Processor: 2.4 gHz Intel or AMD Athlon 64
RAM: 1024 MB
Graphics Card: 128 MB or better, DX9.0c compatible
OS: Windows XP Service Pack 2

Overview

Players have the option of starting in only four different professions, a marked change from the game?s predecessor. This simplification breaks players? options down into four basic categories: Patrons, who are farmers and inn keeps, Craftsmen who run the various shops in town, Scholars who run churches, alchemist shops and mages guilds and Rogues who run the local thieves guilds and robbers? dens. The number of businesses available to the player is still nearly as diverse as in Europa 1400 but because the requirements for running them are vastly simplified ? craftsmen can run any kind of crafting business. Smart marriage choices and good training of your children will allow your family to branch into the other available occupations, picking up farms and inns and churches before long.

One of the chief complaints about the game is the hideous slowdowns that have to be endured. Even with the graphics cranked all the way to the bottom slowdowns are endemic and simply part of the game that have to be endured. Many other users on JoWooD?s forums have complained about similar slowdowns and an unfortunate tendency of the game to crash to desktop after a while. Many of these problems were experienced in Europa 1400, it is unfortunate to see that they still plague the sequel. The translation errors, mistranslations and untranslated fragments seen Europa 1400 are thankfully absent.

Graphics: 9/10

The graphics in The Guild 2 are astounding. The medieval city comes alive in all four seasons of the game. You can stand back and watch pickpockets ply their trade, street preachers convert the masses, and carters shuffle goods back and forth and even the odd assassination or sabotage. Characters age with time and the expressions on their face reflect your favor with them.

Sound and Music: 8/10
The background music was subject to a small feature on the official website. The soundtrack was conducted and composed in part by the Th?ringen Philharmonic. The production values were high and it shows, the soundtrack developers did a fantastic job of producing an excellent soundtrack. It?s possible to listen to some of the samples on the downloads section of the game?s website. It?s a pity that Aspyr didn?t include a soundtrack with the game.

The voice acting, sadly, is somewhat lacking in the game. A handful of actors rehash the same generic lines again ?I believe that the defendant is guilty!? and ?I have evidence of this person?s crimes and wish to bring them to justice. It works, in the short term, but does get old after a while, especially hearing the same few actors do the voiceovers. At least they opted to use real people and a real language instead of Simlish.

Gameplay: 7/10
Ah, the meat of the review. The Guild 2 would normally earn very high marks here but for the horrendous bugs that everyone is experiencing ? even the best designed, most fun game in the world can?t get a full 10 if you can?t actually play it for an extended period of time.

The first thing to understand about The Guild 2 is that it is a life sim, very much like The Sims but is so unlike The Sims as to make the comparison totally useless. While the games are both life sims The Guild 2 when was the last time you could order one of your criminal Sim?s minions to ambush someone in a back alley, beat them unconscious and then slit their throat while they?re laying insensible in the gutter?

Before starting the game players have their choice of a number of different options ? what city to play in, what family crest to use, the number of rivals, difficult and so on so forth. While players do have a degree of customization for their avatars the mode of dress is determined by their profession. For example scholars get robes while rogues get what looks like leather armor. The number of playable locations and maps has decreased from Europa 1400, cutting out the Italian city-states entirely and allowing players to choose between different variants of Augsburg, Lyons and Nottingham.

The different character professions, or classes, have already been covered in the overview so now on to the businesses. Many of the business are simple craft businesses. Purchase leather, iron, pine, oak or other raw or semi-finished materials, have your lackeys (apprentices) turn them into something useful and sell it either in your store or on the open market. Other businesses require more than that simple model. My favorite, for instance, is the church. In addition to producing big ticket craft goods you can have your priests churn out holy water and host to sell to people that wander in. Best of all you can order one of your preachers to hold a sermon, bringing people into your church where they donate money and pay for the stuff you have to sell. You can also dispatch your priests to the markets and streets to convert the wayward to your religion and, hopefully, increase attendance.

The church business is an excellent segue into local politics. One of the major benefits of local politics is the ability to influence policy. For example, one of the ecclesiastical offices allows you to set the proper donation for church attendance, not a bad thing if you have a stranglehold on all the town?s churches. Other offices allow you to increase the severity of punishment in own to send your enemies to the executioner?s block, to change the sales tax to drive competitors out of business or swell your own coffers with taxes you aren?t paying. Political office adds a whole new dimension to the game; interpersonal interactions become much more important than they were simply running a business since offices are only appointed by the existing town council and not elected.

As the city grows more office opportunities will open up. Periodically, as the town develops, the sovereign will issue an edict that will raise or elevate the status of the town. Towns become cities; cities become city states and the like. Bigger cities means more people are needed to run things and those who were running things get bumped up the ladder so to speak ? it pays to get into government early to get a head start on the power scrabble.

Interpersonal relationships are key to playing politics in The Guild 2. Simply put people won?t vote for you if they don?t like you. You can improve your relationships by sweet talking, bribery (don?t get caught) or by using special items called ?artifacts?, things like perfumes, cakes and other goodies to boost your standing. Conveniently there is a ?reflection? before the final decision is evaluated in every election allowing you to bribe or beguile anyone in the room, and track your standings while you do it.

Should any of your nefarious deeds come to light for right or wrong you can be dragged to court for it. If you or your men are witnessed doing such humdrum things as firebombing rivals churches, bribing the mayor, dropping stink bombs in rival churches to drive attendants out,

To help in your tooth, claw and nail climb to the top of the ladder every profession has the option of hired goons. They can be used either as security details to guard your carts and preclude the machinations of your enemies or they can be used as spies, saboteurs and assassins. Need someone to not appear in court? No problem, just dispatch the goon squad and hope for the best. Want to create office vacancies or just keep your carts from being robbed of a whole turns worth of production? Your household guard are your best friends.

As your employees do things, craft trade goods, skulk about town, preach or proselytize and so on they will gain experience. Most new employees will start off as journeymen in their trade and will progress up through journeyman as they work for you. This has an effect on your workers much like experience does for you ? their stats change and they get better at what they do. Experienced craftsmen make more goods faster than their less experienced counterparts, experienced thugs are less likely to get caught and less likely to die in combat than someone fresh off the street.

The Guild 2 is more than simply a business sim. In order to found your merchant empire you must have a family to carry on meaning, in the puritanical context of medieval Europe, you must get married. Getting married is simply a matter of finding a suitable candidate (preferably one that at least likes you and your family somewhat) and woo them with gifts, conversation and the like. This is a bit of a step up from Europa 1400 and The Guild 2 requires a good bit more time investment in your family. Players will have to go out of their way to have children, instead of it being a random event. This involves what is usually a comical interchange between your avatar and the characters where they discuss the prospect of sleeping together.

To ensure the continuation of your dynasty (characters to get old and die, after all) you will experience the joy of being able to spend money on your children to turn them into useful future members of your dyansty. School costs money, apprenticeships cost money and University costs lots of money. Miserly players don't even have the option of apprenticing their children in their own business for free, it still costs money. Children who pursue the scholarly career can go to University and improve their skills at rhetoric, becoming better preachers and politicians, while the other professions rely on their life experiences to get better. You can only have direct control of three characters at a time so it might not be in your best interests to provide for all of your children, depending on how benevolent you?re feeling towards your family.

Other minor complaints have mostly to do with interaction. For example, before council meetings or a trial there is usually a two hour or so period where everyone is hanging around the council hall. You can see other characters chat with one another, perform actions on one another such as using artifacts or bribery but, when you attempt to interact with them, you are treated like your target is already in the meeting ? they ?don?t have time for you right now?. It?s terribly annoying and there are few enough hours in the day as it is without two more dead hours added to a council meeting or trial that is already at least two game hours long.

Controls: 8/10
The camera controls in this game are a little bit strange sometimes. It?s difficult to describe but can definitely be felt with trying to do a flyby of the various towns. The interface is sometimes unresponsive ? several times during the game people were mis-targeted for actions or were unable to be targeted at all because the cursor couldn?t ?see? them. There were also a handful of times when mouse clicks failed to register. The biggest weakness is the inability to readily customize the keyboard shortcuts. The interface is almost entirely mouse-driven.

Replay Value: 9/10

The Guild 2 is a very big game, this review has only scratched the surface of what?s available to players. The biggest limitation is the number of maps available ? there are six maps total, two variations each on three different base maps. The great diversity of business seen in Europa 1400 is preserved despite the simplification of character classes. Politics is always a challenge and there is a very robust multiplayer component. That?s right; it?s possible to politick your way up the social ladder against real people. The multiplayer component requires creating an account with your CD-key and the use of an internal client to find other players. Given the nature of the game multiplayer is most suited to pre-arranged games than randomly fishing for pickup games. The Guild 2 English Forums are an excellent place to start finding other players. The publishers of the game have also partnered with XFire to help connect players with one another.

Overall: 8.2/10

The Guild 2 is a great game but the problems that the game experiences bring it down. The translation is much cleaner than in Europa 1400 and the graphics and sound are all excellent. The very low price of $29.99 makes The Guild 2 a fantastic but slightly flawed addition to any gamer?s library. Anyone who appreciates intrigue, business sims or simply the superbly crafted ambience of the game will appreciate The Guild 2's recreation of late medieval life.

The game was reviewed on and tested on a machine with the following specifications:
Processor: P4 3.4 GhZ HT
Operating System: XP Professional SP2
RAM: 2GB PC2600 DDR
Graphics Card: 256MB ATI Radeon X800 XT
Hard Drive: Seagate SATA 300GB
Other: LG DVD-R

Useful Links:
The Guild 2 Official Website
4head Studios, the Developers, Website
JoWood, the European Publisher
Aspyr, the North American Publisher
Dynamedion, the Soundtrack Developers
Official Forums
Official The Guild 2 Demo
U.S. v1.2 Patch
Europa 1400: The Guild Official Site
BlueAlien?s Review of Europa 1400