Review PC.IGN reviews The Guild

Tags: Europa 1400: The Guild

<a href="http://pc.ign.com/">PC.IGN</a> has posted up a <a href="http://pc.ign.com/articles/378/378894p1.html">review</a> of <a href="http://www.the-guild.com">Europa 1400: The Guild</a>. It's four pages long, and fairly positive. In the end, the reviewer gives it an <b>8.5/10</b> and describes it as <i>frustrating</i> because there are some annoyances in the otherwise good game. Here's a text-bite:
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<blockquote>Next, you choose your parents (alright! for once!) from groups of five men and four women representing different professions: trader, thief, priest, etc. (Yes, I know priests were sworn to celibacy by this period in the history of the Roman Catholic Church, but these things happened. If that's still a problem for you, just think of yourself as a miraculous birth.) Each parent contributes a sort of skills-based DNA to the mix, affecting your final rating in five important areas: negotiation (sales and purchasing), handicraft (business performance), rhetoric (bribes, sermons, court cases, etc), stealth (kidnapping, espionage, etc) and combat (attacks, duels, raids, etc). You then select one of eight professions. (Four more are designated as advanced professions, and become available only after you've started a game.) At that point you advance to the age of maturity, and begin the game with a basic guild diploma, small house and adequate starting business.</blockquote>
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Yup, the Priests having a family thing kind of bothered me as well.
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Why? Throughout European history, it's been a Public Secret that priests are extrodinairily lecherous. I remember reading Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in highschool and there's all sorts of inuendoes regarding the priest character and his "appetites" for choir boys and the like.

J

 

Because not all priests were like that, and they weren't allowed to marry.

 

Of course they weren't, but it was common enough that it became a stereotype. And I know you know marriage isn't a pre-requisite to childbirth.

 

It'd be just a little too out in the open for the Priest not to get "screwed".

As for the stereotype, I've always thought it was funny that school teachers make up the largest profession with that sort of thing going on, but you hear more about the priest thing instead.

 

XJEDX, what about gameplay issues? It is not fair to have every profession but the priest is able to go through multiple life times.
Does the gameworld include Constantinople? Or, for that matter Novogrod or Moscow?
If so, Orthodox priests could marry. Not to mention the possible early Protestant priests.
Which brings up an interesting question- when does the game end, and can you join the protestant churches?