The Guild 2, a game that in many ways epitomises game development outside the big AAA studios. One the one hand, it's a game that does an almost great job of living up to its premise, that being letting you found a dynasty that through honest, or dishonest, labour goes from rags & irrelevance to riches & power; should you desire to do so. On the other, it has always left me with that feeling that if only the developers had more resources or time they could really make a great game instead of just a good one, or at least they could fix some of the more obvious bugs. But one can't have it all, & in The Guild 2's defence the stand alone expansion Pirates of the European Seas was almost as close to great as the game could hope to be.
Alas, things have not been rosy since then. 4Head studios, who made the first two Guild 2 games as well as Europa 1400: The Guild has closed it's doors. The third expansion, Venice, was panned on release by fans & critics alike (to the point they apparently won't release it on Steam because of the metacritic score) & was quickly abandoned from further post-release support by the publishers JoWood, much to players resentment. Instead, hopes of the player community increasingly rested on some of the very ambitious mods that came out for it. Back to the Roots, made by a team of German modders, expanded greatly on POTES. & it's spiritual successor, Sovereign, did so even more.
In a somewhat unusual twist, JoWood seem to have seen an opportunity in this modder enthusiasm for their game, & so the modders behind the next planned big mod were given the opportunity to instead create a full blown expansion. Thus, Renaissance was born, which if one pretends (like many do) that Venice never happened can be seen as the real 3rd Act in The Guild 2's trilogy. But, interesting (& probably flawed before anyone calls me up on it) background aside, is Renaissance a good game? Does it step beyond being just a mod & become a product that a consumer would actually want to pay for instead of just saying "wow this mod is so good I'd totally pay for it"?
Well yes & no. Renaissance certainly expands on POTES in interesting ways. The game has had many new maps & new professions added, the latter seeing 8 new potential career paths opened to the player. On paper, these really add a great amount of depth to the game. The Rogue class especially has been expanded to give players options to play shady characters without having to commit illegal acts. Be a mercenary, for example, & play the role of, in effect, a law abiding thug, demanding tolls from carts for safe passage & asking for, instead of extorting, protection money from businesses. A host of new resources & products have been added to greatly expand what market niches the player can seek to compete in or control, & new buildings such as the large (& very expensive) estates ensure that there is something to seek later game fortunes into beyond simply buying every building for the sake of it.
Unfortunately, while great on paper, a lot of these new additions feel unfinished & shallow. While some of the new professions are well fleshed out, others, including the previously mentioned Mercenary career, feel at best half finished. A little more annoying is that NPCs will not build the new buildings, so one can expect the game to lack many of the new items until the player comes to build them themselves. The big new random event, going to war, is equally underwhelming. As a citizen you can sign up when rulers call for soldiers, paying to contribute your own troops or even volunteering as a captain. But when the campaign begins, all that happens is your character disappears for a year before either returning with a bag full of gold, or a war debt to pay depending on if your side won or lost. Of course, it's hard to imagine what more they could have done, & it is no different to the way the game already handles events requiring your character to leave the map. But as with some of the new professions, the concept sounds so great on paper that how it looks on practice just feels like a disappointment.
Renaissance also boasts a number of new maps, in addition to the ones which come with POTES. These are comparatively huge compared to previous expansions, but this new scale is not without its problems. For one, they feel rather empty when playing single player. On the largest map it feels like there are far too few shadow dynasties -NPCs that are not your main dynastic rivals but still own property & businesses-, resulting in whole settlements being all but empty, with all the buildings standing for sale (though, since the icon for buildings for sale has been removed for some reason, one may not notice this). By contrast, because of the extra map size one can find settlements develop at an absurdly fast rate. In the last game I was playing the settlement went from village to Imperial city (effectively from smallest to largest) within five years. Given the expansion seems geared to making games last longer, this rapid settlement growth is a shame, particularly if one fancies the idea of getting involved in settlement politics early & watching the place develop with you (figuratively at least) at the helm.
[img_inline caption="a mercenary fort. Looking foreboding is all it really seems to do" align=left src=http://www.gamersgate.co.uk/img/screenshots/DD-GUILD2R/146362_mercenary1_medium.jpg width=400 height=200]
Increasing the longevity of games seems an aparent goal of Renaissance, for good & ill. The aquisition of wealth feels noticeably slower than previously, & the greater number of, & expense of civil titles means it's a slower slog up the social ladder too. This is by no means a bad thing. It was perhaps too easy with some professions (particularly rogue ones) to make a lot of money very quickly. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends greatly on your playstyle. If you enjoy being able to watch your dynasty go from rags to riches within a couple of hours, the slower pace of Renaissance will be frustrating. But if one is seeking a more "realistically" paced game, these changes are welcome, though sit a bit uncomfortably with the previously mentioned issue of rapid settlement development.
So is it worth the £18 on Steam to play? I would say it is, with a but. The but is that I would not recommend it for someone who has not played The Guild 2 before. Despite definitely adding to the series, I cannot shake off the feeling that Renaissance remains at heart what it started out as, an ambitious mod to further improve upon the undeveloped multiplayer potential of The Guild 2. Consequently, I can only imagine that people not already versed in the mechanics & playstyle of the game will find Renaissance a confusing & apparently buggy mess, not least because it comes with no documentation or tutorial. I've played every Guild game/expansion except Venice, & I still find myself confused by some of the new features. It does, however, go beyond what a (free) mod would be expected to provide, & so for existing fans of the series, I can recommend it. That said, I can only keep my fingers crossed that either the devs or modders will iron out the creases that once again stop The Guild 2 being a great, rather than a good game.
