Equally as impressive is the sound, especially the music which couples with the renaissance theme perfectly to give a far more atmospheric experience. Each different map also reflects its location nicely, with England, Italy and other places offering a stark contrast in visual styles. Obviously the visuals will depend on the hardware you’ve got under the hood but even at lower resolutions the worlds look nice, changing with the seasons and impressively crisp even when fully zoomed in. There’s no denying that the game environment looks and sounds good. Still, there’s no reward without effort so I dug my heels in and got cracking. Sure you get a few tips along the way, but for someone new to the genre telling me to “get involved in politics” doesn’t help without telling me HOW to get involved. Instead of a nice hand-holding experience you get dropped into the game and told to get on with it. So what if this is your first Guild game, as it was for me? Surely the in-game tutorial that every game has nowadays will help… well… no. You see, with being a standalone expansion to the original Guild 2, Renaissance has a limited manual which just tells you what’s new since last time round. Gamers spend hundreds of pounds buying the latest equipment to keep up to speed, and if the early stages of Renaissance are anything to go buy they also have intelligence far beyond anything I can come up with.

Games can last months, years even without anyone flinching. PC gamers are a different breed to those who mainly use a console. As it turns out, I suspect I’m not quite cut out for PC based gaming, even if those games are actually pretty good. Most of my gaming in recent times has been console based, so the opportunity to have a detailed look at JoWood’s Guild 2 Renaissance on the PC interested me.

The guild 2 renaissance pc game