A very horrible game, but there is an important lesson I learnt from it... read on.
The gamplay in the Guild 2 is very bad. Its hard to manage a business empire when the camera just doesn't work well with the map. You can often get confused with which angle the camera is on the map. Also, the path the character takes to its destination is rather awkward, as they frequently just walk through small things such as boxes and crates. Its just hard to love the gameplay mechanics.
There is almost no realism. Sure, all the buildings and forests and lakes and rivers look real, but other than that, nothing else is realistic. Characters interacting with eachother are very unrealistic. For instance, you can get someone on the street to love you through only a single "conversation" (such as you complimenting or even kissing them just after meeting them). I guess it makes sense, as soon enough your main character will
probably be history, either through rival dynasties or old age.
Another poor effort is the character customization. There are so few options to customize your main character, that they might as well remove it altogether. There are a few options for changing facial looks, hair and facial hair, and about four different voices. Clothes are already set depending on which class you choose, you can choose your characters date of birth and either be a catholic or protestant christian. That is about it for character customization.
The graphics are good, but the audio is rather basic. The music is constant and doesn't really capture the atmosphere of medieval europe. Its easy to bear at the beginning, but after a while, it just gets plain annoying. Adding several soundtracks would definitely make the game more enjoyable. The graphics make the game look like medieval europe, which is a relief. The walls around the main town, the villages encircling the town and the prison gratefully give that middle age-ish feeling of europe.
So to wrap it up, the Guild 2 is an original idea of feuding between dynasties that can get very violent, yet the game itself fails to live up to its full potential. The miserable gameplay, bad audio and useless character customization just don't help to make this game any better. It could also do with a few more business options, as well as a deeper story, which is pretty hard, by the way. The one very good thing I learnt from the Guild 2 is: never buy any old game you see on a shelf. Trust me, that lesson is useful.