No happy endings after nearly five years of Early Access?

How did The Guild 3 debut as the final release on Steam? We remember, after almost five years in Early Access and a pretty wild growth stage It should be ready in mid-June. From a deep collapse of dissent to less than 50 percent approval, Guild 3 had worked its way up to 60 percent (“balanced”) over the years, with short-term ratings exceeding 70 percent in mid-July—good conditions in and of itself.

How did Steam launch?

If you look at the Steam page now, there is a short term rating But “only” at 63 percent And thus hardly better than long-term ratings. After all, new players had a week to see the final work in a big way. In ratings on Steam, some very lengthy and negative reviews stand out. A user from Germany wrote that fans of Die Guild 2 were disappointed and that newcomers were put off by the graphics. A second user writes that early access was used for good improvements and bug fixing, but the end result will no longer be a guild. The atmosphere, the walk-in house, the city council meetings, setting up a business – which will no longer have anything to do with the guild. But the graphics and the very large map are also criticized.

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A third user, who says he knows Die Füger 2 and Guilds 1 and 2 very well, is particularly critical of the automated management that allows the economic system to run on its own. Among other things, this undermines the fun of the game. This series of games simply “cannot be managed satisfactorily by a small development team with a small budget”. But there are also positive voices from players who recommend buying the third part if they like parts 1 and 2. So you can see that the ratings on Steam are “balanced” for a reason – it doesn’t make the buying decision an easy one.

And what is the developer doing? According to a Steam posting, they are working on fixing bugs and balancing if necessary. Whether there is an editor for the game or not will be decided during the summer. It should also depend on sales figures whether publisher THQ will invest more money in development.