The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410 Review

A slow-burning medieval business and dynasty sim where one small workshop can grow into a family that has a say in how the city is run.

The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410 is a medieval business, politics, and family sim from Ashborne Games, published by THQ Nordic. It reached Early Access on September 17, and the basic idea is easy to describe. You start as a nobody with a small workshop and a few employees, and if you look after the business, your descendants end up with real influence over the city. 

Before you spend money, though, you should know what kind of game it is, because its name changed on the way to release. It was first announced as The Guild: Europa 1410. Not long before launch, the studio renamed it The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410, and the new title fits well.

The Guild 2 mixed business with a life sim, so you walked a medieval character around the world and dealt with people directly. This game does not work that way. It follows the first Guild, meaning you make strategic decisions while your characters carry out the orders.

The developers had already spent roughly two years on it, so rebuilding the core design was not realistic, and the new name was a sensible way to set expectations. The playable demo stays in step with the Early Access build and now includes a small tutorial city called Landsfort Herle with guided objectives, a good starting point if you have never touched a Guild game.

The launch version is limited in scope. The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410 gives you six cities and eight professions. Thieves, robbers, and guards are planned for a later combat update; multiplayer for up to twelve players is on the roadmap; and the trader and moneylender professions are further out.

For now, The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410 focuses on running a business, raising a family, and climbing into politics, so those are the three things worth judging it on.

The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410 has no written plot, and that suits it, because the story comes from what your family does over the decades. You choose a profession and a city, then begin with a house, a workplace, and no relatives at all. The calendar starts in spring 1410, and each turn moves one year and one season forward, so you're constantly aging.

At some point you look for a spouse, children arrive, and eventually one of them takes over. What you end up with reads more like a family chronicle than the tale of one hero. It shares a core idea with Crusader Kings III: you are a person in the world, and death is part of the deal; only the scale is much smaller.

Random events supply the smaller stories. You might spot something lying on the street and decide whether to pick it up, or hear that thugs are planning a scam. Late at night, something devil-like may offer a stronger bloodline in exchange for one of your children.

If your first wife already carries that perk, you can refuse, take a hit to your health, and keep your only child. Every event shows what each option costs before you commit, whether that is renown, opinion, health, or energy. Town life adds to it. Laws shift, trials arise, and certain surnames keep appearing in court cases and council seats, giving the city a history of its own.

Most of your time in The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410 is spent in the workshop. 

Every profession follows the same pattern: raw materials, intermediate goods, and finished products. As a smith, you buy iron and silver, and they make rings you can sell right away. Iron becomes fittings, and fittings plus more iron become a sword that sells for about three times a ring.

Innkeepers turn rye and barley into ethanol, beer and soup, and alchemists use mandrake and nightshade for stamina potions and bombs. A tailor spends a lot of time gathering materials by hand, while a church needs far more inputs, and a book-producing church needs a proper chain behind it. Those books work twice: you can sell them or use them to raise your own abilities.

You start with around three workers and a short list of recipes, such as a silver ring, a shortsword, and the fitting that goes into it. Upgrading your building unlocks better products, but they cost more and take longer. Once the smithy reaches level two, you can make longswords, which need components you cannot produce yourself.

You buy them from another guild or from the market, and intermediate parts are expensive there. With your workers and equipment, you can turn out nine or ten shortswords in a year, or only two longswords. Prices follow supply and demand and are also affected by seasons and larger events, so making the same item forever is not always the best plan. You cannot set your own prices, though, even when customers buy at your door.

The market decides, and your only lever is holding stock until things improve. You can also overproduce and drag the market down.

Moving goods is where The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410 tests your patience. You send a cart to the market, but you cannot follow it, and it has no waypoint. A small marker in the lower right corner tells you when it arrives, so you either remember the cart is out or keep the market window open.

A trip takes an hour or two of in-game time, about a tenth of a year each way. Carts can be robbed, so you hire escorts, and the more valuable the cargo, the more protection it needs. Even with guards, one sword out of nine can go missing. You can also visit producers directly, such as the iron mine, and save a couple of gold per unit, although finding the mine means sending the cart from a drop-down menu and waiting for its alert.

There are no trade routes, so you cannot tell a cart to buy iron and come back on its own. Every step is manual, and since your own storefront pays roughly what the market does, there is often little reason to make the trip. Carts improve from one slot to two, then four.

Your workers are the next thing to manage in The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410. Few applicants show up. Hiring costs an upfront fee ranging from 80 gold to 500, but afterward everyone draws the same salary regardless of skill. A worker can currently be promoted once, from apprentice to journeyman, with no rank beyond that. 

Workers respond to their pay and to how you treat them, and one-time bonuses raise their opinion of you.

Mentoring speeds up their leveling at the cost of your own energy, and training sessions build skills such as crafting and negotiation. They also get hurt, sometimes badly enough to be out for several turns, and some die on the job, so you cover medical costs and replace them.

The family side is simple. When you want a spouse, you pick someone from a menu and start courting. Sweet-talking is free once per turn, gifts add to the total, and when the meter reaches 100 percent, you marry. Sometimes the person you were courting goes for somebody else, and you end up with your second choice.

The wedding either drains some of your energy or drains it and pays you, and a higher-ranking spouse pays more. The first child may take around four years. Once children arrive, you can train them from age one and push their skills past your own. If you drain a child's energy to zero, they are injured for four years and lose some stats, but a toddler recovers by five.

Your spouse can hold office too, so when you are the only voter, you can put them in a seat yourself. Politics works through a menu where you apply for a position and compete with other candidates. Each rung pays more per year and adds renown, and you can leave office and return for something one step higher. Offices pay 750 and 1,000 gold a year, the latter being Customs Master.

Once you hold enough authority, you vote on laws, but it is a single action per turn.

Laws decide what counts as a crime so that you can legalize threats, insults, theft, dueling, or lampoonery, and that last one stops skill books from landing you in court. You can also give silver rings to decision-makers to win your first seat, bribe people, improve districts, spy on rivals, collect evidence, blackmail them, or bring them to court. Right now this layer pays out mostly in a bit of money and renown, so it feels thinner than the business side.

Time is the biggest issue in The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410. Each turn is a year, and a character lasts about twenty-five to thirty turns, since a child is roughly twenty-five years younger than you. In a couple of hours, workers get too old, you get old, and your children have only just shown up. 

Four turns per year would let you stay with a character longer, and the developers have said they may add options such as one season per turn. Combat is the weakest part of The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410, and it is extremely basic right now. It shows up as thugs, duels that the council can legalize, and raids on your carts.

The escort system is the main way you deal with it, and it works as a gamble: the more the cargo is worth, the more guards you hire, and the fight plays out without you. Proper thieves, robbers, and guards arrive later, so treat the current version as a placeholder.

The real puzzle is the economy.

Figure out which item earns the most with the time and materials you have, then plan around it. The loop is easy to read, and the ring, fitting, and sword chain teach you the logic quickly. It feels good when a batch sells out and your gold jumps. The balance is another matter.

Ten shortswords at 500 gold each bring in 5,000, while two longswords bring in 3,400, and the shortswords are cheaper to make. So the upgrade that unlocks the more advanced item can leave you worse off, and since you cannot adjust prices, there is little room to make up for it.

The interface makes it harder. Many nested windows make it hard to find some actions, and you sometimes spend more time figuring out which menu you need than deciding. After several hours, you build muscle memory, but it is still the biggest complaint you will have with The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410.

Progression comes in layers. Your profession has levels, and you see a notice when you have earned enough experience to move up. Each level decides how advanced the workshop can be and which upgrades you can buy. Some upgrades bring bonuses, such as reinforced defenses that add 10 sanitation points, improve worker opinion, and allow one extra hire.

Then there are citizen titles, which you earn through wealth. 

Reach 20,000 to apply to become a Burgher, and 40,000 for Patrician. The title controls how good your house can be and how many upgrades it takes. Because wealth opens each door, much of the game becomes gathering money, and it can be frustrating to sit at 23,000 when 40,000 is the requirement. Energy runs all of it. Mentoring workers, training children, and courting all cost energy, so you are constantly deciding where to spend it.

Training a child costs gold too, around 2,000 in one case. A child who learns rhetoric from age one can take over the church, which frees you to chase political goals. The cities in The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410 look good. They are detailed medieval towns full of people and activity, and the six available ones vary in scale, from the small tutorial town to bigger cities with more professions. 

Your buildings change visibly as you improve them: when the smithy reaches level two, the whole facility takes on a new look. The issue is how you see it all. Nearly everything runs through menus, so you spend more time looking at the town than living in it, and the camera will not follow your carts.

Sound is the quietest area. Feedback comes in short lines and notices: workers greet you as master or say they talk little and work, and short sayings pop up as tasks finish. Alerts tell you when a cart arrives, when a worker is hurt, when an election starts, and when a child is born. The audio keeps you informed, but nothing in it stands out. 

The strongest thing about The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410 is how its systems feed into each other.

Your business makes money, money brings status, status gets you into politics, politics gives you influence over the city, and your children inherit what you built. The economy is the most developed part of The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410.

Starting with a single workshop, improving your goods, marrying, raising heirs, and slowly working toward the council is oddly addictive. The costs are clear. It moves slowly at the start, with carts going back and forth, waiting for production and hopping between menus. Years pass too fast, politics has little depth yet, combat is basic, and the interface gets in the way.

You may want the economy to react more, the professions to grow, and roles like guard to appear. If you want direct control, action, quick progress, or a medieval RPG, look elsewhere. If you like strategic management with production chains, The Guild 1 Remake: Europa 1410 is a good fit.