The Total War series is one that I have waded in and out of over its long history. My first Total War game was Rome back in 2005. I remember playing and being enthralled by the history that was being shaped on the screen in such detail. Over the years, I have played a variety of entries, from Medieval 2, Empire, and the recent Rome Remastered. Total War: PHARAOH puts us in a time period that I am not too familiar with and also features some gameplay aspects that have been common in the most recent entries I’ve missed. So where does PHARAOH fall into the lineup of Total War games?

Total War: PHARAOH takes place during the Bronze Age collapse, a time when great civilizations crumbled to the ground due to a variety of reasons. In PHARAOH, you can initially take control of eight different starting regions spread across three distinct factions; the Egyptians, the Hittites, and the Canaanites. There are four regions for the Egyptians, two for the Hittites, and two for the Canaanites. While the game initially tries to strong-arm you into playing as Ramesses III in order to get the basics of the game, I decided to ignore this and picked a different Egyptian leader. This both helped and hindered me.

The leader that I picked, Amenmesse, was relatively isolated from the rest of the Egyptians and lived along the borders of the world. While this would probably be fine for me to work with now, my first experience with this leader proved to be quite jarring. The reason for this is that the UI was extremely different from prior Total War titles. With the iconography and the building menu being much different from the previous Total War games I have played, I was thrown off for quite a few turns.

By the time I figured things out, I felt like I was falling behind to the point that I decided to restart with a whole new leader. This time around I picked Kurunta, one of the Hittites, and things went smoother this time around.

The world map that the campaign takes place within will be familiar to people who have played some of the previous Total War games. This version of the Mediterranean area is more detailed than any other game that I can recall and proves to be constrictive enough that you can’t go too crazy in terms of domination strategies. Considering the era in human history in which PHARAOH takes place, it would make sense why the traversal of this map feels just as long as any other Total War map, barring the weirdness of the map from Empire: Total War.

The combat in PHARAOH, which is one of the distinctive staples of the entire Total War franchise, is there in a much slower format than I am used to. I could never quite put my finger on what it was, but the overall speed and intensity of the battles that existed in certain early entries that I am familiar with don’t seem to be there.

Due to the slow pace, I often found myself bored with it and decided to stick with autocomplete battles. There is an interesting animation of the two leaders of the battle fighting each other, but beyond that, there is not too much fanfare. While it was disappointing at first, I was all right with it once I got deep enough into the campaign that I had to manage a boatload of armies and cities.

The one gripe that I did have was the lack of opening cinematics with each of the factions. As far as I could tell, there was only one cinematic that played for every faction and leader. This seemed to be a real missed opportunity to provide players with a bit more of an understanding of who the factions and leaders are. There is a dialogue explanation going into what the situation is with each leader prior to the start of the game, but this is done on the world map and doesn’t have any significant visuals to go with it.

A PC review copy of Total War: PHARAOH was provided by SEGA for the purposes of this review.

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Total War: Pharoah

$59.99

7.5

Score

7.5/10

Pros

• Perfectly Restrictive Map
• Beautiful Landscapes and Map
• Decent Variety in Units

Cons

• Slow Battle Combat
• Lack of Different Cinematic Openings