Blake’s Takes gives his review of Total War: Pharoah . Is Total War: Pharaoh worth a buy? Is it worth the price? Today we’ll find out.
We’ll be discussing Total War: Pharaoh gameplay, and whether it matches up to current competition.
We look at Total War: Pharaoh vs. other Total War games to see how the competition stands out.
No BS, No drama, just an honest opinion on whether you’ll like this game.
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Timestamps
00:00 – Intro
01:45 – Sound design and graphics
04:10 – Unit diversity and rosters
07:22 – Outposts
08:26 – Immersion
12:05 – UI
14:00 – Tech Tree
15:11 – Unit class comparisons
16:57 – Weather system
18:49 – The Sea People
21:57 – Naval battles (or lack thereof)
22:47 – Dynamic battle map system (or lack thereof)
23:50 – Bugs and glitches
24:26 – Conclusion
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Always enjoyed your TW videos
That review deserves a sub man. Great job summarizing your thoughts and feelings into a coherent and easy to understand presentation. I also appreciate being sober minded and reasonable about it and not being a CA apologist or a CA consumer Karen.
Always interesting to see your take – and glad to see that you gave it a more real review/shot (your hot take video that was more about all the things that might go wrong with it was one that seemed quite premature / clickbaity ).
Chariots were such a big deal in this time period, they'd just spam whole armies of them, the fact they're useless here is a slap in the face
Blake: complains that the UI isn't immersive
Also Blake: uses the boring generic 21st century unit cards
total war troy 2.0
How unfortunate, i have a soft spot for the Ancient Egyptian settings. Looks like I'll wait for a sale
Great review, always a pleasure when you upload.
Sounds like the most impressive part of Pharaoh is dynamic fires, a feature that has been dug up from its initial development in Attila.
So CA Sofia is just as lazy as the rest of CA. Yeahhh definitely not buying this. Imagine wanting this company to make Medieval 3 right now when they can't do anything right. It would be a disaster.
I've only ever played Warhammer games, so I had no idea this existed. But the fire-by-rank thing at around 14:35ish is incredible. A perceivable change to the games animation based on a tech upgrade is awesome
Great review and thank you for not being led by the vocal Karens and just formulating your own opinion and giving a good, honest account.
Hoping CA can get some quick wins over the shorter term with things like chariot pathfinding/weight/impact, general unit retuning, weather system tweaking, morale effects in battles to bring this up to a 7.5 or 8.
Interesting generals and varied tech tree are something I'd like to see real improvement upon over the medium term too at the very least. Could add hugely to playthrough diversity.
But I really like the setting and faction diversity so far – lets get vocal on the forums and make the above happen!
What a disappointment. I had zero anticipation for this game, and still don’t. As having played Troy a couple play throughs, it is without a doubt, a planned DLC that was morphed into a stand alone game, with its own DLC soon to come and then abandoned a year or two down the road. They don’t seem to care at all what people want, they’re like the Joker in the Dark Knight. “I don’t have a plan, I just do..things”. It’s quite ridiculous at this point. I won’t be getting this, even on sale. I learned my lesson with Troy.
This all just seems like a $60 reskin.
This is an excellent review. Thank you.
The game leaves me completely cold.
I didn't buy Troy and I won't buy this.
I like how Sophia had to bail CA out again. They brushed up Rome 2 so its not surprising the game turned out the way it did.
Ironically, the developers spent so much time marketing unit stances and ive yet to hear one thing about it from anyone trying out the game. If anything, CA should have giving cavalry different stances/positions too. Imagine having an entire wing of attack position cavalry that sweeps through a path, rather than target a specific group. It would make charging more risky as they can alter the direction of battle for better or worse. And yet again they refuse to improve or do anything with functional command tools. Like drawing paths since ai picks straight line worse path possible, ignoring other units like a flock of black birds. No symblance lkke in rome 1 or medieval where troops had to wait for others to move in front. Simple, but it goes to show the engine doesnt mesh well with unit behavior. Or better yet, its not addressed at all.
The game looks stunning, but very arcady. Lime what Amazon did to Tolkein, prestine, gender fluid, diverse and modern. Its like a happy person painting depressing artwork, sure it represents darkness and ancient times, but i no way does it actually capture the soul of someone who actually knows what depression feels like, and then paints something real.
Am I the only one that hate small settlement like that? Empire, shogun 2 and Napoleon had this useless things spread out.
holy shit you negative shitlord, what a shitlord review
This seems like a game to keep the share holders happy so that's why I won't be buying, looks trash and Costs too much
wait you want a nice little warning for the sea poeple maybe if they leave a nice little ty message when they leave too, you shitlord?
It is dead on arrival? Im confused? 99% hate it.
Blake, you are right that the immortal leaders ruin immersion. Total War was much better with random characters for generals and faction members. I would often become quite attached to them, even the rubbish ones, and mourn their eventual passing. Also, the fact that naval battles are missing from Pharaoh is a strange decision, as you say, given the setting. Hopefully they will make a return in future titles. As for Pharaoh, I played for a couple of hours a few weeks ago and quite enjoyed myself. While the game has its faults – as most games do – it is at least a decent attempt at a historical title. I think that a lot of the sniping at Pharaoh has been a little unfair. Hopefully Pharoah will serve as the basis for a really good bronze age campaign. Who knows with a few patches and DLC? Paradox use the same strategy of releasing a basic game and then building it up to greatness, and nobody has criticized them for it. Even the much maligned Thrones is now a good game after a bit of attention over the years. Whatever becomes of Pharaoh, you can be sure that CA now knows what the historical community does not want to see, and takes it all on board for the next historical title.
I hope you do something similar to Warhammer 3, specifically the sound design and the soundtrack.
Chaos warriors war horns, voice lines like "SACRIFICE THEM!!" while charging… Hell even the "next turn" sound effects and battle start sounds are fucking dope and live rent free in my head.
Here we go, the highlight of my week, another Blakes Takes video.
This take was hawt – If it were measured in Nando's spice levels this would be extra hot.
My like took it to 420 #blaze it
CA would have been better off just marketing this as a SAGA story and charging £30. People wouldn't have been happy because we didn't ask for/want another SAGA, but it basically is and they would have benefited in sales from people knowing what it is. The fact that we're still comparing this to 10/15 yr old Historic titles says everything. Until they use a new engine and give us a proper, large scale, Historical epic, CA will be in this constant limbo between SAGA and fantasy titles, trying to please everyone and ultimately disappointing everyone.
For me, the TW franchise ended with the fall of the samurai. Atilla and the brittain one where ok but for me a downgrade on Shogun 2. Got me three kindoms but when i saw spearmen losing on cavalry without them having heavy losses, i was done. No tactics where needed anymore. just blobbing units and hope for the best.
I knew this game was going to be garbage from the moment they announced it… let's be honest, it was never more than a poorly designed Troy DLC.
Can't believe how bad these games have become since Shogun 2 and Empire… no thank you. CA lost me as their customer until they make an actual good game…
20:13 great point you brought up! During the weekend release as ramasees I controlled the whole sinai and I literally had a libyan army invade me from the east lol made absolutely no since it just spawned in my southeastern settlements it took me 4 turns to get a army to confront them
I was confused by this review until dude said he didn't play Troy so this makes since. Game is practically copy past
IMO a Total War Troy expansion with small improvement and changes at a full pledge game price… No Ty
2 things
1, this video deserves WAAAY more views. Even if it is about Pharaoh.
2, something you didn't mention that I'm curious about: How were the siege battles?
I miss being able to field armies without generals. Sometimes a provisional commander does well and gets promoted to a General character and that was hype.
I am not really a follower of Total War anymore as I am not into Warhammer so was surprised when this came out but this is a hard pass from me
Immortal generals actually started with Napoleon, not Rome II – Napoleon could not die, only getting wounded when he "died" on the field. I think it worked for that game, especially since it's named after him.
“Need to”. Every time I hear this expression I ask “or what? “
To your credit, you use the expression “cost-cutting“ several times in the video. I don’t understand however, your calls for a return to old systems that would delay the release and raise the asking price.
This game should cost 30 euros.
Good sound design is absolutely irrelevant if the game isn't worth playing long enough to listen to it. Point null.
Love the way you review games. The focus on immersion and explaining why that's so important and why this game lacks immersion was cool.
I feel bad, no matter how good the game is i probably would never get it simply because i'm just not interested in the period it takes place in. at least not for 80 CAD
Don't care, I'm not buying a historical TW unless it's Empires 2 or Medieval 3. Get to work CA!
Pitiful game for 2023. How can they sell the most expensive total war game in history and its just a bunch of repetitive land battles with simple infantry. I mean, I understand if cavalry would not be historical and therefore not added, but man… Naval battles. Hello?.
This is just such a disappointment. Why not do a Bronze Age game with babylon and other regions like rome but make it right this time. Pharao feels like 1/20 of a complete bronze age game, a single faction fighting itself
Pharoh: A DLC for Troy that CA are trying to con people into thinking it's a full game and charging full price.
I won't be buying it until it goes for £10 on Steam, like I do with all TW games since the Rome 2 debacle.
I wonder if the devs play this and I wonder if they genuinely enjoy it
A very good review. As a fan of the series, I originally planned to buy this game. But given the points you mentionted I will refrain from it. Especially as I agree: I expect way more differences between the fractions and not a simple copy and past. The end game scenario sounds really frustrating,- I know from previous games here that you cannot keep too many top-notch armies e.g. chasing than randomly spawing doomstacks is just getting on everybodys nerves.
Tech Tree was already bad in Warhammer and I never really cared what I did researched (as in the end it never really mattered).
The only thing I slightly disagree with are the naval battles,- the game play function was never really well implemented. The choices of warhammer III where no the worst ones,- but I agree: especially for game where you will fight against a sea people this solution is just cheap.
Nerfing the ranged units looks also as if they simply used their learnings from the Warhammer series. But if a whole unit class cannot be really used,- what is the used to implement it at all?
So tl;dr: Thanks. Will not buy this game in the current state and the main reason is that CA did apparently applied mostly cheap solutions.
@11:00 In Rome 2 DeI the general traits are really important and you have to dance around what you'll give to your political enemies, so that they won't grow bigger in political standing too fast, but still keep them growing and winning battles, so the faction won't revolt. Also there's a lot of choices depending what kind of army you are using, so commanders leading different types of armies, or leading them in varied areas of the map, need to skill up differently, or just use that commander to govern and get research, control, growth, trade and diplomatic buffs in a province. Love the system.
What strikes me is how much this … kind of looks like a warhammer3 mod. Not great, from the dev studio that created the games, for their work to be looking like it was amateur-created.
Re: the sea peoples, yes that's basically how they worked irl; they kept appearing all over the place and ravaging whatever they found, destroying a bunch of empires and kingdoms and only actually being stopped by the egyptians themselves at horrendous cost.
The cost-cutting shite is especially annoying given their egregious price-rices in other areas recently
Personally I got the game for 30 bucks and at that price I'm definitely happy with what I got, but man this release feels barebones as hell.
The new systems mostly lack impact, combat is effectively a far more basic version of what we used to have and in general there's just nothing to really latch on to long-term for me. Three Kingdoms has its diplomacy systems, Warhammer has combat variety, Attila the constant decay of everything around you, but this game?
I suppose there's the resource spread, but that was Troy's defining feature first, so ultimately this game just evokes nothing of its own for me and that's a bummer.
i got it for £22 from cd kays.. i wouldn't have paid full price though…. but i rarely do anymore…. i'm certainly not paying £70 for the new spiderman game