Great game made by a team that clearly wants to give the player the best possible experience. Excellent ambience, music has BG vibes, inventory has D:OS vibes, armour has Witcher vibes. Interesting descriptions of items and plenty of stats to nerd out on. "Drying" and "Brewing" options are quite cool additions. The monsters and character portraits are really excellent. Like really creepy looking ghouls not your generic cartoony look. Sometimes lags slightly when running through a GPU intensive scene but otherwise extremely smooth for a game in development. Super smooth scrolling in map mode. I'm already way more interested in these characters and the story than in some other top shelf RPG's that have come out in early development over the past year. Way more content and of course as a BG fan I love the isometric style. Personally I'm having a great time playing and I would definitely recommend the game. Did I mention it's under 30 bucks?? Seriously guys, get this game.
I played this and Baldur's Gate 1 at the exact say time back in 2000 and really enjoyed it. I found this on GOG and was so jazzed to relive those days. Sadly time has diminished the experience for me. The problems I have with this game are the same I have with other city builder style games - too hard AKA requires too much immersion to make it fun. I get that some people like the thrill of just surviving a skirmish by the skin of their teeth. I don't. I play games to unwind from a long work day. These style games require so much study to have even a snowball's chance of survival that you might as well just read a book instead. Because before you even get out of the 1st chapter you'll be outgunned so badly that only pure blind chance or a masters knowledge of each race and individual unit will give you even the slightest chance. It's so skewed against the player as to take the relaxation aspect completely out of the game. This is my experience. You may have a different one. It depends what you want from a game. For me the fighting is incidental. I enjoy the building, the creating, the problem solving. There's not even a space bar pause in this game to collect your thoughts and catch your breath as the enemy hurls dozens of enormous beasts at you in an endless chain. Monsters it would take you an hour of irl time to make just one - if you had access to the resources. Which you don't. The game has AI which perfectly understands not only each unit and it's usefulness but can calculate what units you have and plan against you. So basically you're playing a chess supercomputer but instead it's a city builder game. No difficulty options to make your life easier. In the end I tried the last battle of the 1st chapter about 40 times and couldn't get even 5% through it. That was more than enough wasted time for me. Like many builder games this one is beyond the means of a normal Joe. Thanks for the memories but Warlords Battlecry is going back on the shelf where it belongs.
This game has Cleopatra vibes for me. I love the fun of building a city how I want and in a way that makes sense to me. I love having a lot of options and upgrades and unlocking new buildings or options as my town grows. This style of city building game is like an overly strict parent that tells you you have to clean your room and mow the lawn and eat your lima beans all in that order and then - and only then - you can have a scoop of vanilla ice cream. There's rarely a moment to breath or clear you head never mind any form of strategy. The endless juggling of a laundry list of city destroying problems which can never be solved fast enough turns the game into a crazy, hair raising race rather than a tranquil city building strategy game. To each their own but this game is not in the least bit enjoyable to me. If you don't get food quick your citizens will starve. If you spend too much time on food you'll go broke. You need wood and lumber to build as well as stone. Certain buildings have to be made in order to unlock others. These buildings are expensive and may need resources away from your main castle. If you don't get a barracks up quickly you'll be overrun by enemies (though you can turn this off in endless mode). If you don't get a marketplace up you can't make any money through trade. Then you need to arm your guards, build towers and give them beer and sausages or they'll lose most fights. The list goes on. I guess some people think this style of game makes it more "challenging." I find it robs the fun out of what could have been - but isn't - a very enjoyable game.
I received this game for free during a promotion from GOG. I hadn't heard of it but tried it on a lark. Man am I glad I did! The concept is slightly different from typical role playing games with more fighting. There's a bit of a learning curve in the beginning and the earliest fights were so hard and unforgiving that I almost quit before the game really started. DON'T give up! The reward is totally worth it! Once you're familiar with how to fight and use spells and start getting some quality weapons this game is mostly a total open concept system full of dozens and dozens of quests, HUGE maps and interesting enemies. The storyline is much like other role playing games but still interesting. I found the graphics to be excellent. The Easter eggs are awesome and the random stats on weapons make it a little different each time you play. At times it could be a bit glitchy but not enough to lower the score for me. I didn't really like the item storage concept where there are no slots just stuff piled one on another. To offset that there are apparently dozens of item combinations from forming new potions to making recipes to makeshift weapons and armour. The spells were excellent and complex and a very enjoyable and useful part of the game. If you like role playing type games and you're looking for something new you should love this game! As a Baldur's Gate fan this is a role playing game of a very high quality and sort of in that vein.
This is the 1st city building game I bought from GOG. 1st a few good points about Pharaoh: The animation is excellent, the basic gameplay is easy and practical and there is a wide variety of possible buildings and items to incorporate in the game. There are probably many good cheats as well, I never use cheats so this may enhance your experience. If you're a power gamer who hated Sim City and found it too easy you can change this rating to a 4. Now for the bad news: This game is insanely, mind achingly, waste hundreds of hours of your life difficult. I've only ever played on the easy level and it's a slaughter. It seems like the designers determined to make the game as difficult as possible so as to attract hard core city builders. All the fun of building a city was, for me, taken away as there's no time whatsoever for strategy. It's a madman's dash of knee-jerk reactions and desperation as you race against the clock and your own hemorrhaging bank account to juggle the endless and unbalancable needs of your city. I spent several months playing, reading reviews and walkthroughs online and watching dozens of hours of Youtube videos scouring for info to help me advance. All to no avail. I find my head burns and I'm stupid with exhaustion after a bout of this game. It's a candidate for the hardest game I've ever played. The "hard" level is called "impossible." Another issue is the general glitchiness of this game at least the copy I bought from GOG. I've experienced occasional glitches from patched games from GOG before but very minor. They sell quality games consistently in my opinion. This is the 1st time it's really been a problem for me. Crashing mid game, freezing (especially while skimming freeform missions). Also the freeform missions have restrictions. If there's a totally freeform map where you can access all the features and buildings of the game I've yet to find it. I've been playing Pharaoh for several months and have finally decided to abandon it. I'm not alone, many experienced gamers even in the city builder genre have given up and gone back to Zeus. I wrote this review not to bad mouth the game but just as a warning. There are many 5 star reviews who make no mention of the difficulty or glitches. In my opinion unless you are a power gamer or a heavily experienced city builder you will find this game borderline impossible or worse. If this level of difficulty appeals to you by all means check it out for the excellent artwork and extremely deep learning curve.
