The Guild 3 – Test of The Guild 3 – A difficult delivery

Legacy

The Guild 2, released in 2006 and enriched with extensions until 2010, was a major success in terms of esteem, if not very well known by the general public. He seduced by the richness of his proposal, the game offering to perform many different jobs while having an important political dimension, in particular. If you want to discover more, I can only recommend the excellent Narrative Let’s Play by Joueur du Grenier.

It therefore seemed logical that a sequel would see the light of day and it began its journey on September 17, 2017, with the release of the game in early access. To say that the reactions were negative is an understatement: the developer at the time, Golem Labs, made the choice to start from scratch for the game, which is understandable. However, this resulted in a large number of The Guild 2 features missing when it released in Early Access.

The Guild 3 then took his time. A second development studio, Purple Lamparrived as a reinforcement in June 2018, but the game needed four more years before its release in 1.0, which took place on June 14, 2022. Let’s see what the game offers.

The capital

The Guild 3, like its elders, is a mixture of management game and role-playing game. The player embodies a character, who starts at the bottom of the social ladder. The objective is to climb the latter, which involves money, a lot of money. To achieve this, the character exercises one of the 12 available professions, at gameplay scalable.

So, in one part, I decided to start as a horticulturist. At first, I harvested fruit, but I quickly found that the most profitable was cider. So I opened a second company, responsible for collection, while the first specialized in the transformation of fruit into cider. To make it work, I hired transporters and created trade routes to transport the fruit and then sell the cider to market.

However, this is only the beginning of the game. Later, it is possible to open an inn, which has its own needs, but can be much more lucrative. The Guild 3 has a fairly unique wealth of its kind because of the many options offered by each of the professions, especially since they are deeply complementary. So, while I was playing co-op, my partner opened a bakery, requiring rock candy, produced by horticulturists from honey and blackberries. If he was playing solo, he could have acquired a second profession and progressed until he had the recipe, or simply bought what he needed at the market. As we were playing multiplayer, it was me who took care of producing this resource and providing it to him, creating a valuable collaboration.

If the economy is at the heart of the game, it is however not its purpose. The money makes it possible to buy titles, which give the right to present themselves at the various posts in the city. The latter offer in exchange money and influence, as well as certain constraints. The game offers several maps, of different sizes, and different endgame objectives. The most common, however, is to become sovereign of the region you are playing on, giving politics a prominent place.

To reach the top, it is possible to seduce and convince, but also to bribe or even assassinate a competitor. The options are many and really appreciable.

However, progress takes time, more than a man’s lifespan, especially if you’re starting from the bottom. This is why in The Guild 3, the player actually embodies a dynasty rather than a single character. The first character created must marry and then have children, one of whom is designated as the heir. In total, the player can control three of them at the same time, the other family members can be used as workers in the different businesses, but not directly controlled.

Likewise, the character has a level, the progression of which grants skill points. Each skill provides bonuses in certain categories, encouraging specialization: a transporter will need strength and dexterity, a worker intelligence and dexterity, while a politician will above all take care of his charisma.

Skills are not everything, it is also possible to choose the equipment of his character: mount, outfit, possible weapon, jewels… all this brings bonuses, but is obviously very expensive, money being the nerve of war in The Guild.

Technical

However, I have not yet addressed the main pitfall of The Guild 3, which may have jumped out at you when you saw the screenshots above: the game is very ugly. This is noticeable from character creation, whose options are terribly limited: there are only a few options for each category, themselves available in very limited numbers (size, face, clothes, voice, hair color… and that’s all). Aesthetics is absolutely not the main interest of the series, but we must be warned: the game has progressed very little compared to its predecessor, which was released fifteen years earlier. It’s a shame, because I would dream of having a more successful game on this level.

In short, The Guild 3 has a wide variety of possible actions, but it was already the case with The Guild 2. If it is not much more beautiful, why would you want to play the new opus rather than the ancient ? The answer is simple: multiplayer. As I mentioned earlier, The Guild lends itself very well to multiplayer because of the wide variety of possible actions. If this feature existed in The Guild 2, it was very unstable, to the point of being virtually unplayable. Quite the opposite of The Guild 3: playing multiplayer is extremely simple and works perfectly. I have only one regret, but it is important: while in solo it is possible to modify the speed of the game (from active pause to very fast forward), this is not the case in several . This therefore means that the games are noticeably slower and, conversely, it is sometimes necessary to do several things in a hurry. It’s quite frustrating.

Finally, I was faced with very few bugs. The game is therefore technically quite clean, which is appreciable.

Old girl

The Guild 3 gives very contradictory impressions. The game is technically outdated, but its basic principle remains just as pleasant as at the time and the title finally works in multiplayer. It is therefore a game that we cannot recommend to everyone, but which does its job perfectly for the public for which it is intended. So let’s hope that the game finds a buyer and that if one day The Guild 4 sees the light of day, it will finally live up to its potential, combining technique and rich gameplay.

Test carried out on PC by Alandring using a version provided by the publisher.