Posted February 16, 2009
The Guild Gold (also known as Europa 1400 Gold) has an undeniable charm that hides the fact that it, like the Patrician and Port Royale series, is a spreadsheet trading and economic simulation. Set in a a slightly fantastic version of the middle ages (The Guild includes certain magical charms and alchemy that do not make it completely realistic) the Guild allows you to create your own medieval persona whose life you will direct and nurture. Setting your own goals, the Guild Gold allows you to chose from a large group of professions (set into a smaller number of archetypes) and pursue professional, political, and personal goals at your leisure.
While doing this is often more cumbersome than it needs to be, due to large numbers of windows, selection screens, and buttons to push, the Guild offers such a wide variety of options that almost any fan of the economic/life simulations will be pleased. In many ways, the game plays like the X3 series, only set on the planet, rather than in space - allowing you to build a number of different shops in numerous cities, to run for political office, to carry out different types of skulduggery and defamation against your opponents, or to just settle down, get married, and have children to continue your dynasty.
The learning curve for the guild can be very steep, and the manual is not overly helpful in overcoming this. A number of online fan-made guides exists, but most players will have to use trial and error to see what works. The gameplay can get repetitive, particularly watching and waiting for your goods to be produced, resources to restock, or your wagons to arrive at an assigned location, but this is often alleviated by the amount of stuff that you can chose to do.
Most fans of the series, myself included, consider the Guild Gold to be superior to its sequel, The Guild 2, because it is more stable, less of a resource hog, and has more options available to the player (the Guild 2 reintroduced some of the options in the Guild with its expansion pack, but still was missing some major professions and political offices).
So if you want to play a life simulation like Port Royale, X3, or Patrician, but finally want to get OFF that ship and live life - the Guild Gold is a perfect game for you!
While doing this is often more cumbersome than it needs to be, due to large numbers of windows, selection screens, and buttons to push, the Guild offers such a wide variety of options that almost any fan of the economic/life simulations will be pleased. In many ways, the game plays like the X3 series, only set on the planet, rather than in space - allowing you to build a number of different shops in numerous cities, to run for political office, to carry out different types of skulduggery and defamation against your opponents, or to just settle down, get married, and have children to continue your dynasty.
The learning curve for the guild can be very steep, and the manual is not overly helpful in overcoming this. A number of online fan-made guides exists, but most players will have to use trial and error to see what works. The gameplay can get repetitive, particularly watching and waiting for your goods to be produced, resources to restock, or your wagons to arrive at an assigned location, but this is often alleviated by the amount of stuff that you can chose to do.
Most fans of the series, myself included, consider the Guild Gold to be superior to its sequel, The Guild 2, because it is more stable, less of a resource hog, and has more options available to the player (the Guild 2 reintroduced some of the options in the Guild with its expansion pack, but still was missing some major professions and political offices).
So if you want to play a life simulation like Port Royale, X3, or Patrician, but finally want to get OFF that ship and live life - the Guild Gold is a perfect game for you!