Review: Total War: Pharaoh

It wasn’t easy, but I’ve become the Great King of the Hittites as Kurunta the Usurper, named after the hunter god. Many soldiers died along the way, but all for a good cause. Leaders were assassinated as I worked my way up the Hittite court. Now over 100 turns of Total War: Pharaoh later, I had united the Hittites—united in a conquered sort of way—and it was time to set my eyes south towards Egypt.

But Egypt has faced its own struggles as well. Several leaders, including Ramesses and Seti, have also been fighting for control of the Nile. Seti reigned supreme, but unfortunately for him, I had already solidified my desire to rule the sands. With the colossal pyramids in the backdrop, my siege of Cairo began.

The Total War franchise has always succeeded in its main goal: massive battles on a grand scale. But for the first time in a while, Total War: Pharaoh tries new things—and quite a bit of them—to amplify the journey along the way.

Total War: Pharaoh (PC [reviewed])
Developer: Creative Assembly
Publisher: SEGA
Released: October 11, 2023
MSRP: $59.99

War in all its totality

In Total War: Pharaoh you take on the role of one of eight leaders from three different factions: Ancient Egypt, the Canaanites, or the Hittites.

While previous entries in the series have focused almost entirely on gold as your resource, Pharaoh shakes things up in a big way. Gold is still a resource, but in Pharaoh, it’s primarily used for trading with other factions or building the highest tier buildings and training the best troops. Food is your most essential resource, as it’s required to create and upkeep your generals and units. Stone and wood are needed to build most of your buildings at your settlements, and bronze is needed to recruit most units.

Each region that you can control focuses on producing one of the five resources. As such, the buildings you can build at the settlement in that region will increase your yield of that resource. Having to manage all the different resources is a big change for Total War, but it feels like a good one. It’s one of the many changes that helps to create more entertaining gameplay outside of battles.

Another new addition is outposts. As per usual, each province is made up of 3-4 regions with a settlement you can capture. Occupying all the settlements in a province will allow you to issue a command over the entire province. However, each region also has two or three outpost slots. Once you control a region you can construct outposts in these slots that benefit you in some way. Some of the outposts even serve as sort of a buffing outpost, allowing you to direct your armies to it before heading out for battle to obtain various temporary boons such as increased march distance or reduced upkeep.

Deities plan

In previous Total War titles, you mostly focus on just building up your armies to conquer everything around you. But Pharaoh features a few new systems to help aid you in your conquest.

First are deities. There are over a dozen gods across the different factions that you can construct monuments and shrines to. Your generals can then pray to and worship these gods, granting you buffs in battle. Once your general devote themselves to the god, they will begin to accrue favor by killing enemies in their name. As favor increases, the general will obtain their own boons for worshipping the god, while also increasing the efficiency of all the shrines built in honor of that god. Like many of the new features in Pharaoh, it gives you the ability to do more to influence your journey to conquer your enemies.

There’s also a new Royal Court system, where the different leaders in your faction vie for positions on the court. Each position has its own unique benefits and actions that it can perform. You can also attempt to influence leaders in the different seats on the court, in an attempt to get them to do your bidding. Blackmail, bribery, and even assassinations are a few of the ways to influence those on the court as you gain a currency called Regard with them. You can then use this Regard to force them to share their benefits with you or perform their unique actions at your behest.

Alongside the Royal Court is the Power of the Crown. As you win battles, conquer regions, construct monuments, and carry out court plots, you will gain legitimacy. Once you’ve built up enough, you can start a civil war in your bid to claim the throne. The other leaders in your faction will choose to support you or the existing king, as the fight for the crown unfolds. In previous Total War titles, this was often a one-time late-game event, but in Pharaoh, civil wars for the crown are commonplace.

All of the new systems and features in place in Pharaoh feel like fresh additions to the formula. Admittedly, it took me a couple of playthroughs to really comprehend and grasp the nuances of the new systems. It’s not that they are difficult to understand or anything, it’s just that there are so many it took me some playtime to understand each one and come to the realization that they are intended to be supplemental to the classic Total War experience.

Golden Sands

The setting of Egypt is just perfect for a Total War game, and Creative Assembly does it justice. All up and down the Nile there are beautiful landscapes, including North of Cairo where the Hittites begin. Of course, the Cairo area where the pyramids reside is the best. It’s so cool charging into a large-scale battle with the backdrop of the pyramids.

Speaking of which, this may be the most optimized Total War yet. I’m currently using an i7-6700K with an RTX 2080 Super, both of which are certainly outdated at this point. But while I suffer from long load times in other Total War entries like Total War: Warhammer III, that’s not the case with Pharaoh. The only time I see any sort of slowdown is when there is an absolutely gargantuan battle taking place. But once again, with my hardware, that’s to be expected.

A visit to the Cairo-practor

Unfortunately, I did encounter a few bugs in my time with Pharaoh. Not an eighth plague worth of bugs by any means, but enough to notice them. Most of them were little things like my generals not being able to equip certain items. I also had an annoying bug where minimizing the game had about a 50-50 chance of causing my game to lock up when I would try to refocus on its window. Of course, I’m not sure if that’s somehow unique to my setup, but definitely an annoyance worth mentioning.

It’s also worth noting that the core battle system in Pharaoh still has the faults of previous entries in the franchise. Often times, battles will end up in a ball of melee troops standing around waiting for the opportunity to move up and to the frontline and die. This isn’t necessarily a new issue; fans of the franchise are surely used to this by now. But it’s still there, which at this point feels like a problem.

There were also some weird AI quirks along the way. One battle said I would lose, so I chose to fight manually. And, for some reason, the enemy chariots just did not respond well to my troop movements. If I would start firing on the chariots, they would flee. But as soon as I stopped, they’d turn around and beeline toward my archers. I was able to toggle between firing on and off while just kiting the chariots back and forth. Dirty, I know. But I wanted to be king.

Also, the lack of troop diversity is worth mentioning. Most of the troop types are your basic infantry. Swordsmen, spearmen, archers, and the like. Perhaps a chariot rider or two. But I can’t really fault Creative Assembly for that. After all, they are sticking to the historical accuracy of the time period. The insane amount of troop variety in Total War: Warhammer III has probably spoiled me, if anything.

In the end, Total War: Pharaoh stands atop the pyramids of grand-scale RTS. It takes the franchise in a bold new direction, adding a slew of new systems and features that enhance the gameplay. Despite choosing to play it safe with battles, the new systems are a big step forward. And while it has its flaws, Pharaoh features one of the best campaigns yet in an exciting and beautiful setting.