“Even a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step” – something like that, anyway. You’re reminded of this at the start of the game – you start from humble beginnings and attempt to rise to power in the land of Egypt.
Overview
While the things you do (control your economy, develop technology, build your city, keep your citizen’s happy, defend against attackers, etc) are pretty much the same as in any other game of this ilk, Pharoah is a bit different in that it is mission-based. You have to complete a set criteria in each section to be able to move on to the next section – i.e. reach a certain quality of overall housing, build a particular monument, etc.
First Impressions
Each level plays like a tutorial – at each stage you are introduced to the options that were unavailable in the previous levels. This works well but once you’ve reached a certain stage, there is little incentive to go back and replay earlier levels (you can try to get a better overall score, faster time, etc) as it’s to frustrating to be limited again in what you can do when you’re used to having more options. However there are plenty of missions to get through so it won’t be a problem for quite a while.
The game itself is quite easy to pick up, a little harder to master, and generally very fun to play. I enjoyed the game pretty much from the first minute I played it.
There are a few out-of-the-ordinary features that add to the gaming experience too – for instance, you have to make sure you keep in favour with the Gods, with the local diety in each area taking precedence – if you make temples and alters etc they will be happy and bless you, if they thing you’re being less than loyal to them they will bring various disasters on your fair land – and you keep tabs on your personal fortune as well as the city’s fortune, but some of this may be used to curry favour with the Pharoah when you’re only a local ruler, etc. These features add to the overall difficult of the game and help to keep things interesting!
Interface
The game can be controlled entirely with your mouse but there are keyboard shortcuts for pretty much everything. You access your building tools from the main screen, and the various other options – taxation, education, religion, etc – from a series of other screens – your “advisors”. When there’s a lot going on it can be quite easy to forget what screen you need to go to, so it’s not a completely perfect interface. However overall it is a good interface.
On nice touch is that you can click on individuals wandering around the map and they’ll tell you what they think of the city, what they’re doing, what problems they’re facing etc. It’s not really necessary in playing the game but can be quite fun for a while. Likewise, clicking on a particular facility, i.e. merchant, lets you see their stock levels, set their priorities, etc. There’s a good range of levels you can interact on, helping you to feel involved with the little community you’re creating.
Difficulty
There are various difficulty levels and the differing challenges offered by the missions are good. However, one slight drawback is that if you get completely stuck on a certain level (it happened to me about half-way through the game), you won’t be able to get to the later missions. And as mentioned already, going back to earlier levels where you’re far more restricted in what you can do is not much fun either. This is probably the only thing that stops this from being a 5-star game.
Aesthetics
The graphics, while not exactly mind-blowing, are colourful, descriptive, and vividly animated. The movie clips still look pretty good too, and while they’re not up to today’s standard, it would be unreasonable to expect that. The only real disappointment is that when you change resolution, you change the amount of the city you can see rather than adjusting the detail level. If you have a very old and thus slow computer, you can turn off some of the animation features. The sound FX throughout are evocative and the music’s pretty good, though it will start to grate on your nerves after a while – you can always turn it off though!
Will You Still Be Playing it in 6 Months’ Time?
Possibly not - but you’ll probably be playing it up to the 6-month mark. A lot depends on if you get completely stuck on a level – if so, you’re likely to get fed up of it at that point and not come back to it. If not, you won’t want to stop playing it till you’ve completed the very last mission.
Is it Worth the Money?
Now that it’s out on budget, most definitely. It offers all the normal elements of this sort of game and a few more besides.
*****************
Final Ratings
Graphics: – 76% - colourful and animated, it doesn’t look great in light of today’s standards, but it doesn’t look terrible either.
Sound: – 79% - good SFX, music can get annoying after a while though.
Playability: - 87% - easy to pick up as you go along and plenty of options, but it gets a little confusing when you get about half-way through the game and you have a lto of things to keep on top of. The variable game speed helps though.
Longevity: - 82% - good generally, but if you get stuck you won’t be able to get to the later stages.
Replay Value: - 67% - you can go back and try to beat your times etc for missions you’ve already completed, but I don’t see many reasons you’d want to do so.
Value For Money: - 81% - as a budget title it’s great. You’ll consider it $10 (or possibly less) well spent, if you like this sort of game.
Overall Rating: - 80% - I kind of like the mission-based system – until I come to one I can’t beat, of course! It’s different enough to make it worth playing even if you’ve got a whole load of Civilisation-like games.
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.