Total War: Pharaoh gives you front row seats to the end of the world

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SHOULD I PLAY TOTAL WAR: PHARAOH?

Definitely play it if you’re a fan of historical Total War games, or if you’ve been thinking about getting into Total War. Total War: Pharaoh is the first proper historic game in the series in over four years, and it’s a retelling of the collapse of the Bronze Age, which took place in the twelfth century BCE. While it still has a lot of the Total War series’ weird quirks, Pharaoh introduces some exciting new ideas to the formula, like outposts, unit stances, and dynamic weather.

TIME PLAYED

I’ve played twenty-two hours of Total War: Pharaoh, which has given me enough time to play deep into the campaigns of Amenmesse and Ramesses, two claimants to the pharaoh’s throne in ancient Egypt. During my Ramesses campaign, I conquered all of Sinai and started expanding north into Canaanite territory, and began taking out my rivals in Egypt by attacking the major cultural center at Iunu. I also weathered several waves of attacks by the rampaging Sea Peoples, who began raiding coastal settlements when the region shifted into crisis.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT TOTAL WAR: PHARAOH?

• A rich and exciting era to explore. Total War: Pharaoh is the series’ furthest journey back into ancient times ever, and it’s a worthwhile trip. I loved the campaign map, which encompasses most of Egypt, the Sinai peninsula, the Levant, and Anatolia (modern day Turkey). The hostile deserts of the Sahara gave way to the lush Nile River delta, with mountains and forests to be found up north in Anatolia. Menus all featured gorgeous renditions of Egyptian, Canaanite, and Hittite designs, and I enjoyed sending my generals out not only to conquer new lands, but also to discover the local gods—I could choose to worship any of these I found, and each one offered unique bonuses to my armies and settlements.

• Epic battles. The Total War series is known for its grand real-time battles, and Pharaoh pulls out all the stops. I watched as my archers fired flaming arrows to set the wooden buildings ablaze during settlement battles, and sudden rain storms would sometimes sweep across the desert dunes and create quagmires that troops struggled to move through. During my siege of Iunu, I was commanding close to thirty units at once, thanks to a backup force of local rebels who I had convinced to join my cause. I was happy to see that Total War: Pharaoh is bright, colorful, and dramatic—the switch back to a historical setting from the chaotic fantasy of Warhammer hasn’t dampened the series’ looks at all.

• The new outpost system. I’ve always felt that Total War’s system for territory management could use a rethink, because it tends to feel too disconnected from the campaign map itself. In Total War: Pharaoh, each of my settlements had two or three nearby sites where I could build outposts. These could be shrines, trading posts, waystations, forts, or monuments, and each type offered unique bonuses to the region or to armies that stopped there. Building a shrine to Ra near a border town allowed me to send Ramesses there on his way to conquer the neighboring territory and get a huge boost to morale and buffed missile defense. Outposts added an interesting new dimension to managing my growing kingdom, and I hope they stick around for future Total War games.

• The Collapse. The collapse of the Bronze Age is a dynamic event, and I was able to either try to hold it back or hasten its arrival depending on my decisions in the campaign. It was possible to prevent this disaster by building up the region’s key cultural centers, but to accomplish this, I had to either conquer all of them myself, or trust that the factions who did hold them would protect them and improve them on their own. A meter at the top of the screen charted progression from prosperity to peril and finally to calamity, and as that happened, the screen darkened and chaos swept across the land. The Sea Peoples began arriving from both the Mediterranean and from across the desert, raiding and pillaging everything they came across. Civil wars engulfed both the Hittites and the Egyptians. There was an atmosphere of catastrophe that reminded me of Total War: Attila in all the best ways.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT TOTAL WAR: PHARAOH?

• Some new concepts fall pretty flat. I was excited by the promise of dynamic weather and unit stances in Pharaoh’s real-time battles, but neither has had much of an impact on how I play. The weather effects certainly looked impressive, but they didn’t have a meaningful impact on my battlefield strategy. Even during an intense sandstorm, I was positioning troops in much the same way I always would, and the “sweltering” weather condition just made everyone get tired out a lot faster—and frankly, I didn’t care how tired they were, we had a battle to fight! Unit stances looked like a neat addition that might make siege defenses easier to manage, but so few units actually have the ability to switch stances that I wound up simply ignoring the feature.

• Shallow campaign mechanics. Each Total War campaign has a set of little side mechanics that define a character’s motivations and goals. In Total War: Pharaoh, these are a mixed bag. I liked the ability to select an ancient legacy for my general, which set him on a path of conquest and allowed me to pick out a key city I wanted to capture, then move to build up a local rebellion against it or sabotage its defenses before I attacked. However, this only ever amounted to me spending gold to pick from one of three possible choices each turn—and even that choice was more a question of preference than of strategy. The royal court, too, is pretty flat and uninteresting; it’s just a stripped-down version of the intrigue system from Crusader Kings III.

• The tutorials are still unhelpful and annoying. I’ve been complaining about this for years, but I simply do not understand Creative Assembly’s insistence on using an in-universe adviser character to teach players how the game works. Total War: Pharaoh continues this trend—the adviser chimed in all the time, but only to explain thematic concepts like how soldiers’ morale can break or that I should try to avoid a rebellion. There was rarely if ever any specific direction on how to use the menus to do the things the adviser described.

I’ve played a lot of Total War, so I know how this stuff works at this point. I was irritated that the text boxes for tutorial messages still hung around far too long, and often required me to stop focusing on the battle I was fighting in order to manually close them.

💬 Will you be heeding the call of destiny and assuming the role of a great Egyptian, Canaanite, or Hittite commander? What’s your favorite Total War game? Let me know in the comments!