Total War: Pharaoh – if only someone would invent the saddle (Picture: Sega)

The latest entry in Sega’s popular strategy series goes back further in time than ever before, to Ancient Egypt and the Bronze Age Collapse.

Warhammer is both the best and worst thing to have ever happened to Total War. On the one hand the trilogy of strategy games are the best the series has ever been and seem to have been highly successful. On the other hand, they have made the traditional games a much harder sell, since the fantasy elements of Warhammer are much more conducive to a fun video game than dry historical detail.

Developer Creative Assembly were wise to make Total War: Three Kingdoms their first big game after Warhammer began, as it was based on both historical reality and the Dynasty Warriors style fiction of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms. China was a new setting for the series, which also helped, but so to is Ancient Egypt, and while it’s a fascinating subject matter in general it doesn’t make for a very good Total War game.

The problems here are so obvious it’s hard to understand why the concept was even greenlit, since there’s so little variety in terms of military units (the concept of the saddle hadn’t been invented yet – so there’s no calvary, just chariots). The game does what it can to spice things up, and on a strategy level it has some important successes, but it can’t get around the fact that that warfare in Ancient Egypt just wasn’t all that interesting.

While Three Kingdoms was a mainline entry in the series, there’s also been a couple of smaller games interspersed amongst the Warhammer titles, in the form of Thrones Of Britannia and Total War Saga: Troy. Pharoh is larger scale than either of those, but it still doesn’t quite feel like a main entry and has been developed by Creative Assembly’s Bulgarian studio rather than the main one in the UK.

The concept is the same as usual though, with the game being divided into a turn-based strategy element, where you oversee your kingdom in the style of games like Civilization, and then once a battle begins you control everything in real-time (unless you choose to let the computer auto-resolve a fight for you).

The game starts in the 13th century BC, leading into the Bronze Age collapse, and has you playing as either an Egyptian, Canaanite, or Hittite general, looking to carve out a new empire in North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean. This is all handled in classic Total War fashion as you nurture cities, build facilities, raise armies, and engage in tech tree research and diplomacy with other factions.

The strategy level elements of Total War have never been as deep or complex as something like Crusader Kings but since that’s never been all they’re about their relative simplicity has always worked well to keep the series accessible for all. It’s a shame the artificial intelligence is still so weak, especially when it comes to the often random-seeming diplomacy, but otherwise the basics are by now a well-oiled machine.

What makes Pharoh more interesting is that the inevitable collapse means you and your rivals are in a constant state of turmoil, to the point that civil wars are constantly breaking out everywhere. Indeed, they are a primary means of promotion, for you personally, and a major opportunity for your armies. This is codified in a Legitimacy rating that is increased by winning battles, constructing buildings, and gaining friends in diplomacy and trade.

Becoming Pharoh can be surprisingly easy but staying Pharoh is another matter entirely and it’s not at all unusual to win the throne early on, get usurped, and have to win it back again later. With a coterie of lesser positions, like Grand Vizier and First Commander, to handle and a surprisingly complex economy, this is arguably the most interesting Total War’s strategy level gameplay has ever been.

It helps that the collapse is unavoidable and no matter what you do you’ll have to contend with marauding Sea Peoples by the time it gets to the endgame. That makes the tone and nature of the campaign all the more interesting, although it’s a shame the characters aren’t as wild and flamboyant as in Three Kingdoms – although that and the traditionally weak AI is the only real fault of the strategy level gameplay.

Total War: Pharaoh – it wouldn’t be Total War without a siege (Picture: Sega)

The problem with the battles is simply that all the units are so similar, which Creative Assembly can do nothing about. They try, with a greater importance placed on changing weather conditions and new stances allowing you to modify a unit’s tactics, but that doesn’t make nearly enough difference.

It’s a similar problem to first person shooters, which are very rarely set pre-Second World War and almost never earlier than the First World War. There are lots of interesting stories to tell in earlier periods (we’d love a Napoleonic era action game if it was presented like Sharpe) but the technology of the time just doesn’t work with the conventions of the genre.

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That’s the intractable problem that Total War: Pharoh is unable to circumvent and in doing so it only makes it even harder to get excited about whatever the next mainline historical game will be. Unfortunately, Warhammer was just too damn entertaining and Three Kingdoms only helped to underline the fact that the more fantastical Total War gets the more varied and fun it is.

It’s an interesting insight into the whole science of making realistic video games, from sports sims to military shooters. Do you sacrifice realism for entertainment and if you don’t how far can you take it before the game is just no fun to play? Total War: Pharoh is entertaining, but the historical period would’ve been much better served by a different style of game and the improvements to the strategy level gameplay by an entirely different setting.

Formats: PC
Price: £49.99
Publisher: Sega
Developer: Creative Assembly Sofia
Release Date: 11th October 2023
Age Rating: 16

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The latest entry in Sega’s popular strategy series goes back further in time than ever before, to Ancient Egypt and the Bronze Age Collapse.