As a long-time player of the Guild 2: Renaissance, I was very excited when The Guild 3 was announced and dropped into early access. Unfortunately the early access of the game did not go so well and the the developers of the game ended up leaving and then a new group of developers were brought in to fix the original developers' mess.
It finally launched out of early access last year, but due to the bad publicity it had received I was very iffy about even bothering...
Yesterday, though, I grabbed it for half price on CD Keys ~ (you can pay with Crypto on CD Keys now!!!! I had no idea!) ~ and decided to see the game for myself and form my own opinions.
A lot of the recent negative reviews about the game involves shoddy multiplayer support and not being able to see inside some interiors. Two things I care absolutely nothing about. Another negative review claims that the game is less in-depth than the Guild 2. That's also fine by me because, despite my lengthy playtimes, I never really got into the nitty-gritty and just fooled around. A more casual experience sounds good to me.
I decide hop into the tutorial first to see how things work. While it is a very similar game, my eyes and brain are used to the UI style of the old game, so I thought playing the tutorial first would be best.
Making a character is straight forward. There are less options to choose from when compared to the Guild 2 where you can choose your Empathy, Rhetoric, Bargaining prowess, etc, but it looks like they fit those options in the more easily accessible "intelligence."
I name my lady Kelsey Arisse — Kelsey after my current protagonist I'm obsessing over in the novel I'm currently writing, and Arisse because that's the name of the royal family in another novel series I've been writing, haha. I give her a purple emblem and purple clothes so it's easier to see her and my other dynasty members when out and about in the city.
The character appearance is less than in the Guild 2, but whatever. While I would appreciate more, it's not that type of game.
I couldn't change what business/craft I specialise in. Not sure if that's just for Tutorial purposes or perhaps there's an initial starting point for all classes. Guess we'll find out.
First of all. I'm happy that now you can actually pause the game!~ In the Guild 2, "pausing" basically just meant suuuuuper slow motion. I appreciate that in this one pause actually means pause.
You can still change the speed of the game to super slow motion or 4x, which is nice. I like to keep things slow-ish because I'm a bit of a clod and like to think about every little thing I do. But when I get better and things and my family is running nicely, being able to speed through processes is of course lovely.
Just like in the Guild 2, the very first thing you should do is create your first business building.
This crude craftsman's hut is the only building I can make on this person so I go ahead and build it across the road from my house for easy access and easy protection.
Now we get to the business side of things. Now that my craftsman's hut is built, I can hire employees for it.
In the Guild 2 when you created a business, you automatically got given a transporter as well. In this I have to hire the transporter. Which makes all the sense in the world. Why would one just randomly appear with your building? xD
So I hired a transporter and a worker, and got my worker to craft some iron ingots from the ore already in my storage, as directed by the tutorial.
This is what I found confusing... my new worker created the ingots, and then my transporter automatically picked them up, and then they seemed to vanish? I don't think he was selling them... he wasn't trotting off to market to sell. Unless I no longer see the transporters as they travel?
Either way, the quest completed and I was directed to do other things. I'll have to dive more into what the heck my transporter is doing when I start a proper game... I don't want my transporters automatically doing shit, not til I know more things.
Now that someone I employed created three iron ingots for me, I was directed to "employ" my character in the home residence and set her off to do the job "boast about your achievements."
Which sent my lady to a nearby pathway where not a single person could see her boasting.
I don't recall doing this in the Guild 2. There were several other things I could do in the house too, like craft flannel for washing and briefly increasing my charisma and attractiveness, and crafting bouquets of flowers to give to my lady's future husband. There are options for children too, to go out and play, catch rats, among other things.
Seems a bit better than what's available in the Guild 2 where children could only study in the home then get packed off to school, and the way you perform these actions seems a bit more straight-forward than it was in Guild 2.
Successfully boasting gave her experience points and influence points, and normally I'd jump straight to the skill window to see what I could do with that, but the tutorial had other plans for me.
In the Guild 2 when you court somebody, it's best if you go through your book of social contacts and find eligible bachelors who haven't been snagged that way. In this, I couldn't find the book. My next quest was to woo someone and I just couldn't find the book.
Turns out there is no book. You select the Loveheart on your character's action bar and a list of eligible bachelors appears on screen. Not all are eligible, some are married, but you can be side-meat if you really want to be. Or a homewrecker.
I selected a citizen who was single and my lady ran across the map in search of him!
Turns out he was a guard or something, keeping an eye on possible unruly villagers in the church while a wedding ceremony was happening.
Flirting with him brought up three options with a success rate of each option. Obviously I chose the highest percentage choice on all of my dialogues.
The tutorial demanded that I complimented him twice and give him two bouquets of flowers...
The flower offering was still on cooldown and I had already complimented him twice, the relationship progress looked like it was fairly full, so I risked a kiss on the cheek.
He was unimpressed and punched my woman in the face. HAHA. You kiss me, bitch? SLAP!
So there is still romance failure like in the other game. 😆
After stalking him for some time, I was finally able to offer him that last bouquet of flowers and cemented my lady's intent to marry the man, despite his fists.
So far I'm finding this infinitely easier to understand than when I first played the Guild 2. It's much friendlier. I'm mostly having difficulty with the UI because I'm so used to the older game's UI, but the more I play it, the more straight-forward it is and I appreciate how much easier it is to find actions to perform.
It's at this point of the tutorial I decide that I've played the previous game and this is clearly a much more friendlier version of the same game. As it should be. And that I should start a non-tutorial game and just get used to the UI as I actually play it.
Negative actions against your foes is so much simpler in this and maybe I'll actually manage to become some sort of council figure in this game unlike the previous one which I just couldn't work out how to do. It was far too convoluted.
After playing for a while:
Notable things I've picked up that are vast improvements over the previous iteration of the game include small Quality of Life features like your character automatically gathering more resources once there are no more to be used.
For example, I had my lady making cider out of fruit... the fruit ran out... the game didn't yell at me that we were out of materials and had to get more, no, instead my lady thought for herself and went and gathered more materials. I appreciated that so much.
When courting someone, you no longer have to force them to follow you all day while you wait for cooldowns to finish. AND. You can look at their information panel and see what they would like next... perhaps a gift? Perhaps something a little more romantic? That makes it so much better than just: "Okay, this guy is a Scholar... that means he likes that and doesn't like that." instead you react based on how the NPC is reacting.
There are so many things you can equip onto your characters and your workers that improve various statistics. You can equip your workers with a bunch of stuff that benefits their productivity for your business, you can equip your family characters with clothes that increase different stats, jewellery, trinkets, walking sticks to make them walk faster, weapons.
It's more obvious when other dynasties speak with you, denounce or praise you. Hell, the last time I played The Guild 2 I felt like I was alone and no other dynasties even bothered with me. It's nice to be acknowledged both negatively and positively by the NPCs.
Just, there's so many quality of life features and little tidbits that make this stand out far more than the Guild 2.
A lot of reviewers state to ignore The Guild 3 and just stick with the Guild 2: Renaissance... but honestly? I'm enjoying The Guild 3 far more and I've barely scratched the surface.
I'm looking forward to starting a proper game and writing up a Let's Play of this! 😁
If you've been interested in The Guild 3 (single player) but have been scared away by the mixed reviews, rest assured that it's not as negative as the Steam page would have you believe. Most of those reviews were written when it was in early access and development issues were flying around all over the place, and a lot of the other reviews are written by people who are unimpressed with multiplayer connectivity.
From my very first impressions, though, the Guild 3 is so far just a friendlier and nicer-looking version of the Guild 2, which, in my opinion, is very welcome because there were quite a few things in the Guild 2 that I just couldn't work out how to do, even though I played it pretty extensively.
I'm really enjoying this!
Until next time! 😊