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Ambitious Game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: May 25, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The Guild 2 is a very ambitious game. It attempts to simulate not the life of a single person but the life of an entire medieval/renaissance merchant dynasty like that of the Fuggers or the Medici. Beginning with a single family member, trainined in the basics of an art of your choosing, your goal is to climb, claw, assassinate, steal, bribe and otherwise fight your way to the top of the 15th century pecking order.

Starting characters can start plying any number of trades such as alchemist, blacksmith, priest, innkeeper, bandit and many more. Beginning with a single, basic shop and a couple of employees you found a dynasty that will allow you to experience many of the other trades in the game either by purchasing them outright or by living vicariously through carefully trained descendents.

Marriage is of the utmost importance - a good marriage can bring you businesses, expand the range of trades you can ply and allows you to expand your dynasty through your children. Once you have them it is possible to farm your children out for work as apprentices in yours, or someone elses', business or send them off to school for some of the more academic trades.

The day to day affairs of life are as simple as making sure you have enough raw materials to keep your workshops going to siccing arsonists on rival businesses, politicking at the city council or dragging your rivals (or yourself!) to court for offenses real or imagined. As you advance in the game more social actions, such as duels and banquets, become available for you to enact in the game.

There is some multiplayer capability to The Guild 2. You are required to create an account that is linked to your CD key. The long playing times of this game, however, make multiplayer somewhat difficult since there can be days of playing time possible in a single game - limits are the key to a successful multiplayer session.

There are numerous bugs that came with the original shipping of the game, including some that are a quick crash-to-desktop. The camera controls are somewhat buggy and difficult at times and the graphics are taxing on all but the most advanced of systesms. Since the initial release a number of patches have been released for the American version that correct many of the problems seen in the original shipping. Aside from the numerous bugs in the initial release the biggest limitation is the number of maps available - there are six maps total, two variations each on three different base maps, many fewer than the game's predecessor.

Very buggy, and very addictive! Beware Vista users

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: February 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I can only second what many reviewers here have already said.

The game is very buggy. The controls are less than intuative and controlling your characters can be an exercise in extreme frustration. It is not always clear when a unit is selected and it is never clear when to use a left click or a right click to move said unit on the mini-map or main playing screen.

Vista users beware, the game does not install on your system well. The official forum is full of reports of people never getting it to even install, the rest having problems running the game under Vista. I was only ever able to install this game on my older computer which still runs XP. I never did get it to install on Vista even using all the "stand on one foot and use magic pixie dust" tricks the forums are full of.

On the other hand, once you get past the bugs and clunky interface, the game is very addictive. It has a mission mode which is fun and a 'sandbox' mode where you can build literally forever.

This is one of those games that you want to try when you see it on the bargain table/rack. If you have no patience for less than straightforward gameplay or run Vista, you'll want to stay away.

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