Pharaoh (1999)

I am really glad that I got to finish Pharaoh for the first time in the year of our lord 2024, the same year I started playing the Dark Souls franchise from the start (I am halfway through Dark Souls 3). Thanks to that coincidence I can say without and ounce of hyperbole that I will rather play an All Manus SL1 no-hit barefist run of Dark Souls over the Itjtawy mission of Pharaoh in Hard difficulty. Holy shit when this game does not want to cooperate, man...

Pharaoh is one of those Nostalgia games that I really enjoyed when I was a child but, for obvious reasons, I was unable to complete until I was way older. I am amazed on how complex yet fun this game still is taking into account that it was published in freaking 1999!. I still treasure the feeling of discovering new stuff to do in any given mission, new buildings, new resources... It was awesome.

It has its problems, of course: the military and battle mechanics are kinda funky, and the waiting time for building monuments is soooooo damn long (some missions took me more than EIGHT HOURS), but in my very personal opinion those problems don't take that much from the sheer enjoyment of this game. The level of concentration and mindfulness that you have to employ to actually beat this game is kind of remarkable. You have to constantly multitask, and good luck if you want to watch something while you play (I tried), but is not going to work, this game demands attention, but in a nice, chill way. I think that is really valuable nowadays.

I have not completed the Cleopatra missions (after one hundred and fifty hours I kinda need a break), but I probably will end up doing them. Or try other of the "Caesar-like" games, who knows.

"The Pharaoh is the heart of Egypt, the land its body and the people are its blood."

I am gonna start by saying that I didn't grow up with this game, I've start playing it a few years ago when I was looking for retro city building games. And, I really like this game but at the same time some gameplay elements really annoyed me, so I have a love/hate relationship of it, I guess.

I'd like to say that I rated it 7,5/10. Since I can't rate it more than 1-5 starts, I gave 4 instead of 3 stars so the overall rating of the game would be higher.

Here the stuff that I loved in this game:

• Ancient Egypt setting.
• The soundtrack, sfx, graphics and UI.
• The history (including the mission's briefing) and the CGI cutscenes.
• The fact that you actually become a Pharaoh (the game said the truth on its cover 10/10).
• The small details (the building of the pyramids, the fact that the npcs say different thing when you click on them, the info about the actual Ancient Egypt etc).
• Bubastis (my favourite city/mission, also the easiest outside the beginner missions)
• The gameplay (except a few points noted bellow).
• The dancing hippos cheat lol
• The fact that I can accumulate my salary to the next mission (even though this was added on Cleopatra expansion).

Here the stuff that I hated in this game:

• The walker that looks for labourers (thankfully they fixed it on Zeus and Emperor), I hated populating my cities with slums or having my industries close to my population's block.
• The docks/water trading is so annoying!! Baki I am looking at you!! I think that it is either bad game design or a bug that you can't have more than 1 dock. I think that the game should have an option to choose what I am importing from each city and a better AI of the trading boats.
• The fact that the game punishes you a lot. Examples: you aren't supposed to have intersections on your cities but you need intersections for booth/bandstand/pavilion, you shouldn't place industries next to the house's block because it decrease desirability but at the same time there is the labourer walker, the fact that there is little space available at the river bank but you need to place docks, ferry landing, warship boats, fishing boats, shipwrights etc, you need to plan a city with everything close (houses, industries, farms etc) but the game place stuff all over the map that obliges you to build stuff separated. And much more that I don't remember now.
• The culture rating is bugged, why do I need to place 200 booths, 50 bandstands, 30 pavilions, 5 libraries and 10 mortuaries to get the necessary culture rating when all my people are already covered with entertainment, health buildings and schools/libraries?
• Also about the docks, if I have a city trading by land and a city trading by water, the same goods, I wish to choose the land route to trade my goods. Also I can't close some trading routes if my docks were too crowded with boats!! (another example of the game punishing the player).
• The walker carrying goods from a storage yard to another storage yard/industry building/granary takes too long!! In the last mission I was importing gemstones and barley to brew beer and cut gems into luxury goods but most of the time my industries weren't working because they were empty of raw materials.
• The military system!! Everything about it!! I was alternating between a military mission and a peaceful mission until I got to Iken and I was bombarded with 300 enemy soldiers (when the game won't let me build more than 6 forts!!). And I won't even say about how stupid is that the my soldiers get freaked out in the middle of the battle and return to the fort by themselves (???) Also Seth doesn't destroy every single enemy.
• The cities requests! They are so annoying. I am barely building my city, trying to make some money and suddenly "the Pharaoh asks you for 2000 game meat" (???). So I have to stop everything to full fill my request otherwise I'll get attacked if my kingdom rating is too low (it happened to Menat Khufu, but I don't know about the other cities). I understand that the Pharaoh asks stuff from you but why when I got to be the Pharaoh people still ask my for goods? I can't I ask goods from other cities?