Customer Reviews: Read 3 more reviews...
  Simply the best of the "Caesar" games! True Gold December 16, 2008
A combination of Caesar III, Sid Miers Civilizations and Maxis' Sim City games from the late nineties, Pharaoh takes a lot of what made those games best sellers and combines it into a pretty entertaining, if at this point dated, game. Back in the 90s, "God" style games in which you care for and manage a teeming world of buildings and their denizens were having their hay-day.
While Maxis continued to churn out the Sim City franchise, and Civilizations and it's many spin offs have become legend, most games are not either FPS (First Person Shooters) or RTS (Real Time Strategy). The 90s produced some exceptional top-down city management games, and Pharaoh is a good example. Unfortunately, just like the Egyptian empire that you play in the game, poised at its height of glory, this style of game has fallen largely to the wayside. That's unfortunate.
A city management game at heart, Pharaoh gives you much more control over what you build and where you build it than Sim City games. You choose which buildings you want, and where they will be built, allowing you to create a city to your exact design.
War making does come into play, but it is secondary to city building. Many of the missions will require you to create an army and lead them to victory, but this feels largely anticlimactic compared to the fast paced city management that requires 80 percent of your time.
This game is quite complex, entertaining, and truly a classic of the genre. If you're considering buying it, there are other options like Caeser III, but I think this is a superior game. If you like strategy games from the 90s, this ones definitely for you.
 Try Heroin First, it'll help train you to break addictions September 23, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This is the kind of game that you'll initially sit down at, after playing for ten minutes remark "This is stupid. I'll go till the end of this stage then its in the dumpster." then find yourself playing and realize its 2am next Thursday. The missions are entertaining, the citybuilding aspect is intuitive and surprisingly complicated to master, and the system its all based on, whhile frustrating at times, is easy to work with.
Gameplay: 9/10. The setup is the same as any city building/Sim City design, with more foucs obviously on the nuts and bolts of running a city. You have to create a good balance between residence and industry, keep them close together without sacrificing appeal, and still keep enough space and people to run all of your services and buildings. And keep a good, strong armed force. A couple points fall through the cracks that are annoying, and when you stumble upon them you'd wish the game had mentioned them, but those are few and far between.
Story/Audio: 10/10. The voices of the citizens are amusing and actually very helpful in determining what your cities problems are, if any exist. The narration is accurate to time frame and history, as far as I'm aware, and follows the rise and fall of the kingdom. While it would've been nice to have more mission audio, what little there is still manages to be very entertaining.
Graphics: 7/10: Being as far along as technology is, most people will frown at these. Bear in mind how old the game is, and its not too terrible a flaw for an otherwise fantastic game. The best part is considering your system is probably a 1.5 - 3.5 GHz, 2 Gb RAM setup, this game is so compact and streamlined it'll run smoother than your screensaver.
Overall: 9.5/10. I picked this back up after I stopped playing almost 6 years ago. A game with that kind of staying power is impressive. The history and involvement the game has is incredible, and while it'll get repetitive by the end, until you start to get sick of it, you'll be hopelessly addicted.
Excellent strategy game for a few bucks September 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I enjoy this game greatly. I've played this game before, but had lost the cd, and had upgraded my computer since. But this version is great, works well, music's normally peaceful and enjoyable, and just a fun game to play with.
Pharaoh Gold August 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
You can play missions over and over, and each time you can be more creative and try new configurations. You can also challenge yourself and set the level of difficulty, edit missions and create totally new maps. This game never ends.
Hours of fun.................. May 10, 2008
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I origionally bought this game in 2000 and played for endless hours. I lost sleep over it at times. I played off and on over the next six years. It's challenging and entertaing at the same time. My ex took it with him when he left and I found myself dying to play, so I bought this one and it has been great. I can't wait to get to the second disk and see what they added.
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