The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410
Ashborne Games · Simulation, Strategy, RPG
Overview
Choose from professions like Smith, Preacher or Alchemist to gain riches in this medieval economic simulation. Climb the social ladder, dominate politics, and lead your dynasty to power over multiple generations to ensure your legacy.
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The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410 takes you back to the roots of the series, drawing inspiration from the original Europa 1400: The Guild. Starting at the head of a fledgling dynasty with only a modest business, your journey begins. As the years pass and your enterprise grows, you need to expand your family’s influence and secure a succession to ensure your legacy endures.
However, business and trade alone won’t give you a voice in the town hall. To truly steer the fortunes of the city and ensure the law always favours your ambitions, you must engage in the intricate political landscape. Use popularity, bribes, or even blackmail to climb the social ladder and secure your place in the highest offices.
In The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410, you navigate a complex web of relationships, where every decision can impact your dynasty’s future. Master the art of trade and production to build your wealth and use diplomacy and cunning to outmanoeuvre rivals. Build your legacy and make choices that will ripple through future generations. Whether through strategic alliances or open rivalry and clever schemes, the path to dominance is yours to choose.
As in every The Guild game, craft and trade is one of the core pillars of The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410. Choose from a wide variety of professions, like the blacksmith, alchemist or the tailor, and expand your business until you are the most influential magnate in the city.
Each profession offers an immersive and unique gameplay experience, putting you in charge of your business’ growth and success.
For those who prefer alternative ways to make money, The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410 offers a different, more thrilling path. Order your thugs to waylay carts, scout buildings for valuable loot, or send them to pickpocket unsuspecting citizens, and even kidnap people for ransom. The life of those who oppose the law is filled with danger but full of excitement and potential for great rewards.
Alternatively, you can choose to uphold the law and have your mercenaries patrol the streets. Protect the city from criminals, maintain order, and earn the respect of all law-abiding citizens. Whether you choose a life of crime or one of virtue will have a significant impact on your fellow citizens.
In The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410, politics is key. Securing one of the prestigious and powerful offices yourself can significantly advance your ambitions while impeding your rivals. And when necessary, a bit of blackmail can be just the tool to secure the support you need from other office holders. But beware – every criminal action you take could leave behind evidence, potentially to be used against you in court.
Get drawn into the world of The Guild with state-of-the-art graphics that complement business management. From bustling marketplaces and busy workshops to the intricate architecture of the town hall, every detail is hand-crafted to support the simulation of a realistic, historic city. Watch as new districts take shape and the landscape transforms around your dynasty, reflecting your own actions and the growth and development of the city.
Additionally, The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410 introduces a host of innovative new features to the series to further enrich your gameplay experience, while staying true to the essence and core of The Guild series, offering engaging gameplay for both new players and long-time fans.
From the game's Steam store page.
THE GAMEQ VERDICT261 reviews analyzed
What players are actually saying
1. Summary
Europa 1410 split its audience along one line: whether players wanted a faithful remake of the 2002 original or a follow-up to The Guild 2 and 3. Fans of the first game write much of the praise. They hear the returning narrator, recognize the dynasty-and-business loop, and call it the true successor they waited more than twenty years for. Newcomers who found it easy to learn also enjoy it. Plenty of reviewers who vote yes still warn that the build is very early: it is thin, full of "coming soon" tooltips, and missing whole professions (thief, guard, robber), working taxes and property sales, and two dozen reviewers suggest waiting or playing the demo first. Many positive reviews hedge on the future, talking about potential and what updates could bring.
What players object to depends on how long they played. About half of the 24 negative reviews from players with under an hour object to the core design: you do not control your character directly, and almost everything happens in menus, which critics call "a spreadsheet" or "a mobile game". Negative reviews from players past five hours are more often about carts. The cart logistics have no automation, robberies and escorts are punishing, and family "masters" given a business wreck it by hijacking carts and selling off crafting materials. A cluttered UI, a flood of pop-ups, heirs married off to people decades older, and late-game stutter fill out the list, and reviewers on both sides argue over whether the current build is worth $20.
2. What keeps coming up
What players praise
A faithful return to the original GuildHigh
Veterans of Europa 1400 and Die Fugger say it "plays just like the original Europa 1400", that it is "back to the roots", and that "the Guild is back". The returning original narrator (Aart Veder, praised especially in the German voice track), the soundtrack, the small jokes, and the business-politics-dynasty mix all make them nostalgic. A few call it better than The Guild 3 at launch, in design and in stability. Some negative reviewers also agree the mechanics are there. The dissent comes from original fans who feel the first game's darker, more mysterious and more alive atmosphere has not carried over, and a few want torture, trials and executions to feel as consequential and darkly funny as they did in 2002.
A promising foundation that players want to see growHigh
"Great foundation", "has potential" and "needs time to cook" turn up in positive and negative reviews alike. Positive reviewers say the core production-and-sales loop works and is fun and addictive, often only a couple of hours in. Some negative reviewers grant the same foundation and say they will return after updates. Many thumbs up are openly conditional: one asks the studio to "keep cooking", another to "just please dont abandon it like guild 3".
Relaxed, approachable, and easy to pick upMedium
Newcomers and players who bounced off earlier Guild games say this one is much easier to learn, with a cleaner interface than the originals and less micromanagement than The Guild 2 and 3. Some describe it as a "chill", slow, cozy loop that works well in the background. One reviewer calls it "a crossover of Crossroad Inn x Crusader Kings", another says "this is basically if Farmville was Crusader Kings", both meant kindly. Others found the learning curve steep and the tutorial poor (see the UI section).
Emergent dynasty and intrigue storiesMedium
Once the systems click, players tell memorable stories: a blacksmith who lived to 112 and became a Duke, a feud of firebombings, trials and executions spanning a widow and a new judge, a priest robbing your carts. Sabotage, curses, spying, blackmail and bribery give the politics a mischievous side that these players enjoy, even though others find the same systems shallow.
Trust in the developers and early hotfixesMedium
Some positive reviews cite the studio's previous game (Last Train Home), its activity on Discord and the Steam forums, the public roadmap, and interiors that were added after demo feedback. A hotfix in the first days after launch (removing a master, cutting cart notification spam, stopping automatic sale of crafting materials) turned at least one negative reviewer toward "playable now". The skeptical side points to the series' history: The Guild 2 and 3 both lost support, so some refuse to trust the roadmap.
Handsome medieval townsLow
Some players admire the cities as convincing, well-researched late-medieval towns and enjoy the building interiors. Others find the graphics dated or muddy (see the split section).
Where players are split
No direct character control: faithful design or step backward?High
This argument fills the negative reviews from players with under an hour: about half of those 24 cite the lack of direct control, menu-driven play, or the gap from The Guild 2 and 3, against 7 of the 34 negative reviews from players past five hours. Critics say the game feels like "a menu clicker", "a spreadsheet", "a web browser text game" or "a very primitive mobile idle game". Courtship, trials and robberies resolve as dialogue boxes with no scenes, your character teleports or wanders aimlessly, and a smith never actually smiths. A Guild 3 modder argues that abstraction demands deep strategy, and that this game abstracts without adding the depth. Defenders answer, often sharply, that the store page, the renamed title and a free demo all said this was a Guild 1 remake ("You want Guild 1, you get Guild 1"), and that the indirect, management-first design is the point; some say they disliked avatar control in Guild 2. A couple of critics reply that the remake branding only appeared after the demo. A middle group accepts the design but still wants more visible in-world scenes and cutscenes for trials, marriages and office work.
Is it worth buying at this stage and price?Medium
The price is $20 / €19.90 with a launch discount. Supporters call that fair or better (one thinks the game is "worth 20 dollars as is", another goes by a dollar per hour of entertainment and expects to clear it), and some bought partly to fund development. Opponents say the build adds little beyond the free demo, "shouldn't even be called alpha build", or is not worth $20 (and certainly not the full $30). Positive and negative reviewers give the same advice: try the demo, or wishlist it and check back in six months to a year.
Graphics and performanceMedium
Some report smooth play with no crashes, including on Linux, and find it more stable than The Guild 3. Others report heavy FPS drops, stutter every few seconds in the late game (especially around 1420 to 1440 on the large Nuremberg map), crashes on save/load, and visual settings that barely change anything. One tip: the menu FPS was uncapped for at least one player. On looks, some call the game "gorgeous" and others call it cheap or pale (one says it "looks as if it was 2005"), with blurry character models and portraits that don't match.
What frustrates players
Too thin even for Early Access: placeholders and missing systemsHigh
Positive reviews raise this as well as negative ones. Players list what is absent or inert: thief, robber and guard careers; many laws and first-tier offices that only pay a salary; taxes that do not reach the city treasury; item effects and building upgrades marked "WIP" or "coming soon"; no demolishing, selling, buying or relocating buildings; no multiplayer yet; a Nuremberg smith with no smiths' guild to advance in. A few call the in-game Early Access labels honest. Others find it galling to be pushed toward crime-fighting systems (barracks) whose supporting career does not exist. Several say the game adds little beyond the demo, and some who played the demo felt it was more polished. Later-hour players add that professions all play alike (buy materials, craft, sell), events repeat after a few variants, and the loop turns repetitive after about ten hours.
Cart logistics: no automation, constant robberyHigh
Of the 34 negative reviews from players past five hours, 15 cite carts, masters or automation. There are no routes, no rules of the "if iron below X trigger cart buy X" kind, and no way to tie carts to a business, so expansion becomes "cart simulator" micromanagement. One business is manageable, players say; one calls running several "tedious micro hell". Robbery is the other half: carts get ambushed right outside the workshop, even 800-gold escorts lose, escorts vanish after one fight or on reload, and the only defense is exploiting the rule that a cart attacked once is safe for the rest of the day by sending a cheap load first. Collecting evidence against robbers often fails. One of the two most upvoted negative reviews calls cart management the "backbone of the game" and ends: "Until that is added, I cant give it a positive review."
Family "masters" and business AI sabotage your empireHigh
Handing a business to a family member is the only automation, and it backfires. Masters sell the raw materials the workshop needs, sell resources instead of crafted goods, send every cart the dynasty owns on empty errands, and trigger endless "Your cart has made it to its destination" notifications. One player's managers stopped working entirely at 60 family members. The launch-week hotfix eased the spam and the auto-selling, but players still want to switch automation off, give it rules, or appoint an employee instead of a relative.
Cluttered UI and pop-up spamHigh
Windows overlap and block the view, Esc opens the main menu instead of closing panels, clicks fall through menus onto buildings, and prison or town-clerk duties produce dozens of pop-ups per turn ("click off popup" repeated for a paragraph). Players also point to missing links (being told to upgrade without being shown where), a market-price preview that only appears after producing one item, no market dashboard, no cart highlighting, no filters in item-use lists, and saves that can only be deleted in the file folder. The tutorial draws criticism for giving wrong instructions and leaving basics such as turn length unexplained. One reviewer defends the UI as clean and intuitive.
Marriage and family systems misbehaveMedium
Several reviews describe the same problems. Heirs are married off at 14 to spouses in their 40s or 50s who cannot have children, and you cannot arrange, block or choose matches. Widowers cannot remarry, adult children still look like children, families don't move into a new villa, and relatives can't work in shops, run for office, or use their own energy. Several reviewers mention the developers have said the age-gap marriages are being patched.
Shallow politics and economyMedium
Elections feel like a coin flip or a bribe, offices beyond the top tier do little, laws flip every turn without reason, and taxes are broken. The economy barely reacts to production: raw-resource suppliers restock once per turn, there is one mine per town, storage fills after two products, and some cities' economies are reported as unwinnable from the start. Players liked the political ladder at first but found it hollow once climbed, sometimes reaching judge unopposed.
Bugs, some of them game-breakingMedium
Most reported bugs are cosmetic: T-posing and floating townspeople, white-rectangle tree textures, buildings placed in rivers, a finished mansion rotated 90 degrees. Harder hits include a death sentence and 10,000-gold fine with no crime committed (repeating on reload), a wealth victory condition that never triggered, crashes that lost a day's progress, and training that silently fails on sick or injured family members.
No custom names or character creationMedium
First and family names come from dropdown lists, with no free text, no customizable coat of arms, and no naming for businesses. Character names come up in 4 of the 13 negative reviews written with under half an hour played; one asks how a remake ends up "going backwards" on something so basic. Players with more hours treat it as a smaller immersion gap.
Crime, unrest and the energy economyLow
Crime and unrest spiral out of control in some districts. Guard duty costs a large share of daily energy for a tiny reduction, and nothing helps a building stuck in a bad district. Critics call the energy system "mobile game" design, since it takes energy to teach children subjects your character is bad at or to train workers, and injured workers waste the effort.
Missing localization and modding accessLow
A few players ask for Spanish and other languages. One modder notes content is packed into Unreal archives, which dampened hopes for modding.
3. The player conversation
The conversation is polarized but mostly good-natured about the game itself. Launch day brought the most reviews and the warmest (77% positive, 56 of 73), with the original game coming up in 23 of those 56 positive reviews. On the same day several players with under an hour played announced refunds, some of them having expected Guild 2-style avatar control. That clash carried into the reviews themselves: several defenders tell critics to read the title, the developers' warnings or the store page ("IF you are able to read and understand that this is a Guild 1 remake"), and one sarcastic negative review joked that the best PvP was in its own comment section.
The positive share slipped from 70% in launch week to 62% in the partial second week. Reviewers with more hours describe a game that suits what they wanted but breaks down as their business grows: carts, masters, pop-ups, marriage bugs and late-game stutter. Reviewers on both sides talk about a good foundation that "needs time to cook", and many of the thumbs up hedge on future updates.
4. What the developers could do
- Ship cart management and automation first. Routes, restock thresholds and carts assigned to a business come up in more negative reviews from players past five hours than any other fix (15 of 34), and those players say expansion is unplayable without them.
- Rebalance cart robbery and escorts. Players describe ambushes right outside the workshop, expensive escorts that still lose, escorts that vanish on reload, and a daily-immunity exploit as the only reliable defense.
- Make masters controllable or optional. Business AI that sells crafting inputs, hijacks every cart and floods notifications made delegation worse than doing it yourself, even after the launch-week hotfix.
- Clean up the UI and notifications. Let Esc close panels, group or filter repetitive alerts, stop clicks falling through menus, and add in-game save deletion, a market price overview, and cart highlighting, the quality-of-life items reviewers list.
- Finish the systems the game already asks you to use. Players feel misled where mechanics exist without their counterpart: crime tools without the guard career, taxes that do not fund the city, laws and offices with no effect, and buildings that can't be sold, demolished or moved.
- Fix family and marriage logic. Stop heirs being married off to much older spouses, allow remarriage and arranged matches, and let relatives work, hold office and spend their own energy.
- Add free-text names and basic customization. Dropdown-only names come up in 4 of the 13 negative reviews written in the first half hour of play, and they are cheap to fix.
- Address late-game performance on large maps. Players report stutter every few seconds from around 1420 on Nuremberg and settings that barely affect frame rate, which ends long campaigns early.
