Looking Back: The Guild 2

Welcome to medieval Europe!

For those not familiar, The Guild is a somewhat fantastical series of business simulation games, set during the Middle Ages. With the third game currently under development, this is a good chance to look back at the second game (which I have played much more extensively than the first game).

The second game was built on the Gamebryo engine, and hands you control of a family dynasty trying to establish a presence in one of many major European towns or cities. (A few maps allow you to work in multiple towns.) Farms, smiths, churches, taverns, banks, tailors, and more are all available stores you can run, with some benefits to combining them.

The game is a bit of a cult classic, but was never really popular, partly due to a lack of marketing, and partly due to the difficulty. You see, the game is pretty hard, to the point of demanding precise micromanagement in order to create multiple successful businesses across multiple generations. This obviously wouldn't catch on with a lot of people.

The difficulty exposes a second problem, one a little more subtle. The game also includes all kinds of side activities your characters can partake in that aren't really necessary (and at times, can be counterproductive). Things like getting drunk, using prostitutes (yes really), gambling, going on dates with your character's wife/husband and so on. These seem to exist purely as roleplaying features, which make little sense given the game's demanding micromanagement doesn't leave you a lot of room to indulge in those.


There is nothing wrong with a game being more difficult, as long as there's the understanding that this will naturally turn some potential players off. But high difficulty is not a good tool if you want to encourage roleplaying, since that is primarily about experimenting with different approaches - something this game doesn't give you a lot of room to do. If you want to roleplay, you basically have to pick the easiest difficulty settings with the fewest AI rival dynasties. Not exactly conductive to a fun experience, given that the number of rival dynasties dictates how many different hireable workers are in a town. Oops.

On the plus side, there's quite a bit of actual research put into the game. A lot of little details (like couples' bathing) are lifted straight from medieval culture. The humorous fourth wall-breaking joke where your characters sometimes ask what potatoes are is actually quite accurate, since potatoes were native to North America (and thus not in medieval Europe). Granted, they bend it when it comes to a few things, like the graveyard and tinctuary buildings, but for the most part the game is surprising historically accurate. It's something I wish a lot more games paid attention to.

I still occasionally dabble in the game from time to time, and I did play it a lot once upon a time, but it's not what I'd say was all that influential. Just as well, since it made a number of missteps along with the things it did right. Here's hoping that The Guild 3 is much more polished and focused in how it's handled.