The Guild 3

bought on EA release day, got massively dissapointed, tried checking in a few times later - still sucks ass, devs chose the wrong direction. game doesn't play like the second one at all, requires zero-to-minimal input from you to win itself

Don't buy this game... It doesn't have the depth of the guild 2 and frequently crashes.

The Guild Series is one of my favorite gaming franchises. The Guild 3 clears up a lot of UI issues from previous games. Making it easier to actually play, and the program seems very stable compared to earlier versions that were prone to crashes. Sadly, it loses sight of what the franchise is, and has always been. The computer players are toothless. Even on harder difficulties, there is no real competition. In fact, I spend most of my time in game trying to keep my competitors from going extinct all on their own. Within 1 generation, you'll likely have several successful businesses printing money. Within 2 generations, you'll likely be sovereign with a mansion for a residence. At least 1 tier 3 business maxed out and starting your second profession chain. Your competitors might have bought their first house in the city, and upgraded to a tier 2 business. Their businesses will not be upgraded, and will be half staffed. Remember in G1 how you would get attacked in the middle of the city, or have random events that would cost hundreds of gold? Or in G2 where the robber barons were waiting outside every city gate and were almost impossible to root out unless you took them over yourself? All of that's gone. My buildings occasionally get robbed in the early game and they'll steal like 10g worth of goods but thats about the full extent of the crime. Oh, and when you prosecute crime, you're jailing/fining the henchmen, not the dynasty controlling them. So thats a useless effort unless the family member pickpockets you directly. Which is so incredibly rare its honestly not worth the bother. Political positions award influence which is required to buy new titles. Once you get enough influence to achieve baron, to unlock the last tier of crafting goods, theres really no point in political aspirations. Oh, and the long distance trade routes are a joke. In most all maps theres a dock to far away markets. Pretty early on there will likely be an opportunity to sell goods to one of those cities for above market value. Which means you can park a few transports there during the event, buy from one market place and sell to another making hundreds of gold per transaction. Millions of gold per game minute. Obviously that's optional but it goes to show, there's no struggle in this game. Pretty graphics, great usability, no challenge. Game feels more dead than G1 did with no one in the street. Spend most of your time trying not to win too fast.

Mixed reviews when I am posting this, and around 6,500 reviews. Many of the recent reviews are positive and talking about how it's a great game. The most interesting thing to me, however, is how low the hours are on all of those positive reviews. The game has 6,500 reviews, 61% are positive, and there are only 71 reviewers that liked the game enough to play it for 100+ hours. Compare that to The Guild 2: Renaissance. The Guild 2: Renaissance is just one of a handful of stand alone Guild 2 games which didn't require the other versions to work. Renaissance has a total of 3,200 reviews, half as many as TG3, likely due to presence of other purchasable versions all released around the same time. Renaissance has 81% positive reviews, and despite the lower number of reviews has 170 reviewers with over 100 hours played. That's about 5% of the reviewers playing it for 100+ hours compared to 1.1% for TG3. Even though TG2 is buggy as heck, it was much more enjoyable than this souless sequel and the play time of reviewers is pretty enlightening.

This game plays like your typical abandoned early access game. Some (if not most) game mechanics are completely out of balance, there is almost no sense of actual progression, because most features and buildings that you unlock are next to useless, and most importantly, there's very little challenge. I initially wanted to try it in multiplayer, but after playing a singleplayer campaign i will not even bother. Feels like the developers had a good idea initially, then something went wrong and they gave up halfway and just called it quits and abandoned it.

Sorely needed the treatment 'The Guild 2: Renaissance got'. Not a bad game, just an unfinished one. Shame devs jumped ship. Can't recommend it over its predecessor, unfortunately. Worth it on sale and on sale only. Don't expect much.

Игра хорошая и веселая. Купил себе и жене поиграть по сети. Но увы, мы из России. Разработчики полные Расисты.