The Guild 2

A lot of people make the mistake of buying this game instead of The Guild 2: Renaissance. The latter is a stand-alone expansion with all the features of all the rest and less bugs. The first is bug-ridden and fairly terrible. I'd get the original The Guild or wait for Renaissance, as much as I love GOG.

I bought the Guild series when they where released and so I can tell you a lot about the patching mess and how they never get the game bugfree. The game would be great if you didn't ran from one bug to another and the promised multiplayer part NEVER worked. It was promised on the retail package and you had to learn they will patch it in, and they tried hard but never got it in a working condition. As this game is a really longterm game where you play hours for hours the problems multiply and so you will never end a multiplayer game as it rarely works 2 hours straight. The single player game is also bug ridden but at least it is playable. Save often, keep track of everything to see problems quite fast (you really need to micromanage every aspect especially because of the bugs). I would rather not recommend the title because of the many problems, but as the game has no equal competitors in the genre I would recommend it if you can take quite a bit of frustration and you absolutely love the idea of a simulator of guilds and European cities around 1400 AD. Without bugs it would get 4 to 5 stars from me, but as it is so buggy I could only give it 2 stars.

tl;dr: Good game to spend hours on if you like the genre. Unique startegies and gameplay that is destroyed by gamebreaking bugs. I bought the entire series and I was loving the game until i was forced to abandon the game I was playing after working hours on becoming the most powerful of Lyon because of a stupid council bug that was not allowing to be any more council meetings. It's not THAT bad because I simply started another game but stil... it kinda sucks. There are many minor bugs I wouldnt have even considered but when the bugs force you out of the game there are no excuses.

I played the first Guild and it was great because it was unique for its time. Own property, marry, have children, own a business, train your employees, conspire against your competitors and enemies, become part of the city council, duel, and basically all the mischief you could wish for in a city/era simulator. Unfortunately Guild 2 takes all this, improves the graphics somewhat and the rest is all glitches. Constanly having to woo a prospective mate or they loose interest. Buying and selling seems to be monotonous this time around. Almost impossible to keep your businesses going cause you dont have the money or supplies and the AI makes it hard for you to just do what you did without fluster in the The Guild 1. This game is hard work even though it supposed to be a prettier and more open ended sequel. Avoid.