The Guild 2 [PC]

Europa 1400: The Guild was a strange beast that couldn't comfortably fit into a single genre. You controlled a character -- and eventually a family -- in Medieval Europe. You ran a business in real time and you could also dabble in politics and subterfuge on the side, being as law-abiding or law-breaking as you wanted. The 25-words-or-less pitch would probably have been "The Sims meets The Settlers meets Grand Theft Auto meets an RPG meets a strategy game meets a historical city builder".

Now along comes The Guild 2, with a newly streamlined title minus that stuff about specific centuries and continents. It's still medieval and European, and it's still offering the same ambitious genre goulash. But as you'd expect from a sequel, it's got a bit more of everything: more choices, more buildings, more character development, and more free-form 3D world. The main bullet points stressed by the sequel's publishers are the addition of extra cities, more freedom in your character development, and multiplayer support.

The first game was confined to a single city, but there are five different cities in The Guild 2, giving you more room to expand and compete. And whereas you had to choose a single class in the first game, now you can mix and match occupations by purchasing buildings. It's possible to be both a pig farmer and preacher, if you like.

The RPG elements will feel familiar to anyone who knows his elf from his elbow. When you begin, you'll warm up by customizing your avatar and thinking up a name. Then you'll choose a class and spend a starting pool of experience points to boost your attributes. There are four classes: patron, tradesman, scholar, or rogue. This not only determines the cost of your attributes (rogues improve dexterity cheaply, whereas scholars improve arcane knowledge cheaply), but it also determines which structures you can build in the city.

Each class has a set of buildings. The patron, for instance, can build farms, corrals, inns, and bakeries. The tradesman can make smithies, carpenter's shops, and tailor's shops. The rogue makes thieves' guilds and robbers' camps. The scholar can build mage's guilds, alchemy shops, and churches.

You pay gold to construct these buildings in empty lots in the city. You can then enter them to use their functions. Buildings can be improved in a number of ways, from upgrading the entire building to equipping it with unique items that make it more efficient.

For instance, if you're a scholar, you can spend your gold to upgrade your church to a cathedral or you can kit it out. Add locks, barred windows, and scary reminders of going to Hell to dissuade burglars. Improve its effectiveness with stained glass windows and candelabras. Your church will eventually yield inventory items like a poem that will help you court a potential spouse, a thesis paper that you can use to convert someone to your religion, or a song you can sing to calm someone who's hostile.