NOT WORTH $60: Total War Pharaoh Fails In Almost Every Way
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- čas přidán 25. 05. 2024
- Total War: Pharaoh is Creative Assembly’s next major Historical game. And is developed by the Sofia team who’s previous work include the Rome 2 DLCs Empire Divided & the Rise of the Republic as well as the Total War Saga games Thrones of Britannia and more recently Troy. All of these have over time had mostly mixed reviews and mixed success. But It's generally accepted that this development studio releases polished, well made games that end up being pretty good value.
Now I’ve personally had access to Pharaoh for about 3 weeks now. I’ve spent over 50 hours playing 4 campaigns so I think I’ve got a lot of experience to make a thorough review. In this video I’ll be talking about whether Pharaoh is worthy of being the definitive Bronze Age game, whether it’s a challenging, replayable and Historical Total War and whether with all of that in mind if it’s worth buying for the ripe standard price of $60.
Hope you enjoyed this video guys and if you did give it a like and drop any thoughts or questions in the comments section below. Subscribe for more total war content, gameplay and news and thanks for watching guys!
#TotalWar #TotalWarPharaoh #HistoricalTotalWar
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No surprise right? Standing on its own merits Pharaoh is at most a 5/10 but DEFINITELY NOT WORTH $60. And given it's Saga scope, the age old issues Total War is plagued with, especially on the battles with unit collision issues, AI issues and crappy pathfinding I wouldn't be surprised if it doesn't sell as well as CA thinks it will. There are good things here, CA Sofia have done things like the court system and the beautiful siege maps in a decent way. But the good definitely doesn't outweigh the bad, and to me it's just a total missed opportunity.
EDIT: Apologies I was under the impression Thrones was made by the Sofia team but it isn't. My mistake
CA is going To VIP rooms of EA Layers.
It's strange to me, that several modders manage to fix a lot of issues in previous games, but CA doesn't know how to.
They have a lot of mony so after Warhammer they should go for a Lord of the rings total war or if that is not possible go for a Game of Thrones total war. Lotr could maybe do even better as Warhammer.
Indeed, as expected. From the outset this looked like a Total War brand game with an LBA veneer over it, not an LBA game that happens to use a TW engine.
Feel a bit sorry for CA Sofia. They seem perfectly competent, but they keep being given games no-one cares about or wants.
Also it’s a real shame considering how Attila absolutely nailed the whole end of the world feeling
they just cant seem to do historical total war correctly anymore and its so sad
@@lyricalmess1723I agree
It’s so frustrating that Total War fans are one of the most vocal about what they want and how they want their developers to make money. Just take a look at the plethora of mods on steam and videos made on what the historical fanbase wants and all they have to do is just that. Still they missed soooo BIG. It’s like being given a cheat sheet with exact answers but still failed the test. I’m not buying another total war game until they make medieval 3 😂
Rome total war 2 sucked ass. The last good title was Shogun 2. Rome 2 was the nail in the coffin, never looked back to this series, and Pharaos shows why.
Attila will always be one of my favorite games ever. That Western Roman Empire campaign...
The fact that Greece and Western Anatolia are not in the game but still depicted on the map screams DLC everywhere.
The game is a mod for Troy, the original plan was pharaoh was supposed to be an expansion for Troy expanding the map. But the failure of hyenas as well as the dismal and greedy leadership of CA forced this to a main entry total war game at full price. Not even a saga game.
@@wile123456 yeah read the latest news the audacity of this dudes...
ya its a bit of a cash grab but a lot of us just wait for steam sales anyways, so I'll take whatever they put out
Having bronze instead of copper and tin as a resource in a bronze age collapse game seems weird to me. Disrupted supply lines between tin and copper producing places had a big effet on the time period.
Very accurate.
That would take someone doing 5 min of research. That would cost money to make and hurt profits lol
In Iran area they used arsenic in place of tin to make bronze
they made the pharoah black? LOL
Tin was also very sparsly spread in the world, with major mines being in wales or afghanistan. Imagine the trade network
I feel like Attila did this right with the Western and Eastern Roman Empires, playing them (especially on legendary) give you this feeling like you were once a superpower, but those days have long passed, you are surrounded by hostile neighbors with a broken economy and surviving will be very difficult. Holding the border everywhere will be nigh impossible as your enemies outnumber you with much stronger units. After 30 or so turns of just scraping by things look like they might be starting to turn around, you gain access to better units, your economy stabilizes you finally have what's needed to hold the border against hostile migrating tribes...
Then Attila arrives in force, and the game completely changes. Attila's units are far stronger, more numerous and their armies are seemingly endless. Their armies burn everything before them and are a seemingly unstoppable wave of death. For every army you kill two take their place. Defeating him is a serious challenge and in my opinion he's the greatest "endgame" boss TW has ever had.
My favorite TW campaign of all time to this day was playing as the Western Roman Empire on legendary and only finally defeating Attila at the gates of Rome, I'd gathered up most of what remained of my armies for one final battle, had I lost the campaign would have effectively been over.
After the victory I was still weak, much of my land had been destroyed, my economy was wrecked and I had barely survived, but I had survived and could begin rebuilding.
What I'm trying to say is Attila as the Western or Eastern Roman Empire plays more like a survival game than a classic total war game of expansion, I was hoping for something similar with Troy but that's clearly not what we got.
God I love Atilla. Its the one game i feel like I am constantly learning. Like hey you dont need to defend immediately. Let them wait outside your settlement...the frost will get them. Oh its an important province? Well you got this champion over there lets speed that attrition up. Oh snap ports get extra holdout time? Wow navies seriously decimate troop transports. I know these guys rebelled against me....but if i subjugate them I gain an ally AND a trade partner to sell my buttload of resources to.
There was also a fuckton of care put in the game. Scroll through a unit. The unit commander is the most armored, he has a standard bearer who also looks different. Every man is not a carbon copy, Some have different armor, helmets, designs. Hell in the weaker units some of them have some women mixed in lol
They also do a bunch of shit right in this title. Mercenaries to instantly bolster your army, which can also be from different cultures to add flavour to a campaign. And theres also martial traditiojs to improve armies that perform well in battles. The traditions vary per culture. Eastern cultures can get crazy arrow counts. Theres so much about this game its insane!
As i look at future titles everythings stripped down. Hell its not even fun to zoom in and watch the combat because its just watching models perform generic swings and flying backwards
The craziest thing is that Atilla's WRE campaign is heavily built on the skeleton of the original Rome Total War's WRE campaign, which was almost 20 years ago. The fact that CA managed to get it right 20 years ago and expand on it positively but now can't even make a proper Total War game is such an insult to the fanbase
Atilla is too difficult with cheats for me bc i diddnt have time to really dive into the game but i think after reading this, ill try your challenge but on a lower difficulty, you got any tips?
@@tomtanaorden What nation you going to play?
@@tomtanaordenIf you want to play ERE take note that they get a 5% interest on their treasury every turn. You can snowball your wealth to ludicrous heights if you manage your money early on.
A DLC turned into its own game, probably one of the worst decisions this company has made in years and it couldn't have come at a better time when everyone so done with CA's bullshit
*And Sega's
Didn’t they do that with Napoleon though?
@@giants2k8 The quality of napoleon (character developments/attachments, battles, etc.) is miles beyond this garbage. You could replay Napoleon ttw multiple times and it would be fun. The battles were insane. The online battles were satisfying. I looked at the previous of this game and didnt' even bother... stopped at three kingdoms. Company is money grabbing, i'll wait for them to fix their issues before investing another penny.
And dont forget the DLCs this DLC will get.
@@calebaiyuk3041 I agree that Napoleon offered a lot more, but my point was that it was basically an improved DLC of Empire. I think everybody agrees that Pharaoh is a Saga title and should be priced appropriately.
As soon as you said missing factions I know where this is heading. CA loves their DLC.
Thing is it's not even missing factions. Missing factions I would understand. These are entire missing cultures and huge relevant regions. It's like if they launched Medieval 3 Europe without the Middle East or the British Isles
@@TheTerminatorGaming Do not give them ideas!
I assumed they were heading for a Bronze Age equivalent to the Warhammer "Mortal Empires", i.e. if you have all three games you can play a campaign over the entire region.
what i do is i download it for free instead.
Nah this is beyond missing factions. A real bronze age game would have those factions and the campaign would be different because of of them.
Adding the factions later on as DLC would not fix this problem. This is an Egypt/Hittite/Canaan campaign. It will never flourish to a true bronze age game unless there's a huge overhaul.
I’m surprised they just did bronze as a resource. A huge part of the Bronze Age was the fact that only a few places had tin, but a bunch has copper. This meant tin mines were highly sought after and valuable, but also that infrastructure had to pop up around anywhere tin was discovered to get it out of there to make into bronze. I think that could’ve been very interesting, but it’s not that big of a deal I suppose.
YES! I recall their being two huge deposits in Britain and Afghanistan of tin that traders had to venture too with a small tin deposit in Anatolia or Cyprus.
Ensuring your nation controls what little mines are available and trade routes to the big deposits would be an interesting mechanic to work with.
Some used arsenic in place of tin to make bronze
Well, they could have just restricted the bronze production to those places that had tin then. Makes sense, and achieves the same thing more or less.
@@off6848 And that could have been made into a cool aspect of economy/city building as well. Some settlements could have had buildings available that would produce arsenic/bronze, but would come with some minor social or economic drawbacks to give the game a bit more realism, flavor and nuance.
they made the pharoah black? LOL
Regarding the bronze age collapse, I think the player should have started off with the best soldiers and a load of armies, but with each turn they get more and more expensive and your enemies become more numerous. Flips the usual Total War experience and creates a unique challenge.
See this would’ve been cool
Don't worry, Greece and Mesopotamia are definitely coming as $30 DLCs each lol
Not really a shock. No one asked for a Troy DLC. It was doomed to fail the minute someone suggested this in the corporate strategy meeting
What do you mean? It was a great move from the profit/cost point of view. You copy paste game, and still sell some copies. There will be tons of people who will buy it anyway. For the next project, the budget will be bigger, expectations lower, and a space for being sorry/try hard to remediate larger, win for the corporation.
This will 100% be a financial flop from CA. There's not been a proper total war game since Atilla in 2015. And no one wanted this@@ButcherRuls
Speak with yourself I've been dying for a Troy Bronze age sense I discovered Shogun 2
@@mrbushi1062 Honest question, are you happy with this then? I also like the idea of a bronze age total war but so much of the bronze age is missing.
@@Daniel_Jones donno yet have not played it!
These games feel like they're getting more and more streamlined for a "broader audience" with each new game.
I miss when these games were slower paced and methodical.
I miss when games where made for a more niche target audience instead of trying to appeal to everyone
@@Natediggetydogthe sad part is that at the end it doesn't appeal to anyone
@@nemezzyyzz Exactly been here since Shogun back in 2001. Troy, 3 kingdoms, all 3 warhammer titles and now Pharaoh. They are becoming more and more like mobile games and less and less like the games they used to resemble. The new total war fans are despicable. Henry Cavil thinks he is gamer God because he played thousands upon thousands of hours on Warhammer Total War.
@@Person0fColorwhile your criticism is valid I don't get the whole Henry Cavil angle. The man is actually a gamer who is widely known for loving games. He loved the Warhammer editions purely for the setting as a warhammer nerd
Attila really nailed the "collapsing into the dark ages" vibe that this game needs.
A full Bronze Age game would’ve been so cool too. Now we’re probably never getting it after this flop.
Sad that it always goes like that. Same happens with movies. Instead of them seeing that it's a shit game they think people just aren't interested in it.
The problem with the game can be summarized as:
Low Effort.
Even with it missing civs almost seems like intentionally missing (for more dlc/money)... Problem is, is that myself could have thought much more features/gameplay elements to go along with the 3 main civs IF they planned on only doing a few civs, but even with the few civs idea in focus, even they seem bare bones, along with the fact the graphics could be better... not a big effort, hence ppl saying dlc quality for a main line game; sad since the time period is BIG missed opportunity and is apparently well liked
And if we do see one, it will be 5 faction and map DLC's on this game costing over 100$ total.
@@lyricofwise6894There are already 4 packs of currently unrevealed factions as DLCs. Greedy devs as always.
We might actually get a real bronze age age game exactly because this one sucks. If CA isn't completely blind they will realize that everybody wants it.
A true game from 1600 BC advancement and 1400 BC golden age and going through the collapse at 1200 BC trying to survive and emerge as the leading nation on the tail end around 1000 BC
Troy, Minoans, Babylonia, Assyria, Myceneans etc etc there's still room for that game because TW Pharoah is basically nothing.
the biggets issue for me is not being able to play with other nations like Hittite, Assyrian Empire, Babylonia etc
The Hittites are such an underrated civilization.
There are Hittite factions here, but no Assyria or Babylon or others. I agree, I think generational campaigning would have been ideal. You build up relationships with other civilizations, big trade networks and BAM clime change, civil war, sea peoples and you all need to work together to survive or take advantage of the weakest you know? ARGH it angers me how much of a missed opportunity this game is
it will be provided in DLC in few weeks for 20 to 40 bucks lol
Same here I wanted a larger scope of factions. I really wanted to play as Assyria or the Mesopotamia ln Cities
Do not worry it will be aviable by dlc pay wall😂
Honestly this is a sign that CA is in trouble. First Hyenas is canceled with the layoffs and now Pharaohs is just not good
I honestly believe they intentionally sabotaged "The Untitled Bronze Age Game" just to abandon the historical TW games.
They're in trouble since TW: Warhammer release. Pharaoh is just the pike of their decadence
The warhammer games have made Ca the most money so no ...@user-jd2ui8si4f
You know if they just took half the budget and made the next total war with just the medieval 2 mechanics, I'd buy that instantly
7:30 remember when you'd play as the Western Roman Empire in Barbarian Invasion and you'd lise half your empire in the first ten turns? Remember the sheer feeling of pride and accomplishment you'd feel when completing that campaign?
Good times...
Personally I didn't find the WRE campaign in BI to be particularly difficult though I think that mostly comes down to quickly figuring out that a lot of the WRE's starting territory is better off being abandoned due to it just being unproductive, barely defendable money pits.
WRE? I remember playing Sarmatian and deciding that i would not become a Horde. That meant defeating the fucking Huns at the start of the campaign. It was one Heroic Victory after another, in full steppe warfare. BI was glorious.
@@ambrosiogiovanni6952 I've never forgotten the Barbarian post-battle victory music, that shit is still glorious.
@@S3Cs4uN8 I found that the best approach was to take the garrisons out of the bigger cities, let them rebel and then take the cities back. After exterminating the population, the cities are very easy to control and stop wasting money. It feels a bit weird when the WRE is the one to sack and burn Rome, but that is the most efficient way.
@@3st3st77 I mean hey if it worked for the Barbarians it can work for the Romans too.
If Pharaoh had Bronze Age Greece and Mesopotamia in the base game as fully fleshed out cultures with their own factions, then maybe it would justify the $60 price tag.
True
DLC #1 : The Myceneans 30$
DLC #2 : The Mesopotamian Kingdoms 30$
Also Naval Warfare
Those are cut content to milk the idiots who buy this as DLC.
People have been asking for a Bronze age total war for like a decade, missed the ball here
It seems odd to me how determined CA is not to release a Medieval 3 or Empire 2. Those two games may not be for everyone because of the historical setting, but both seem to be by far the game most total war fans want. I'm sure they would sell like crazy regardless of how good the game ultimately is haha
I fear that if they try and make any of the two titles you mentioned they would absolutely turn it into dog shit. They no longer know how to make a good traditional Total War game. I hope they do not attempt to remake any of those classics.
Because they know the sizeable fanbase for those exams would rip them to shreds over how poorly said games would be mad. CA has been devolving in gameplay and quality for years, preferring to attack their fans instead of making good games. They know either title would be an expensive failure.
I would add that if they do make Shogun 3 or what have you they would have a much easier time adapting the grand campaigns formula to fit the feudal system. So Medevil 3 or Shogun 3 would be an even safer play. That is to say it will still be ripped apart if they fix the feel of grand campaign through resource and agent balance but fail to fix the broken campaign and battle AI
Honestly we have gone backwards. I recall in empire/NTW when if the general died regular militia would just turn and run. Or if you were hit in the rear it would almost always cause a rout.
I'm no longer confident in them delivering Medieval 3, Empire 2, a new fantasy setting, or even continuing to support their existing game. They hadn't updated their engines or done much innovation in the Battle Gameplay. All of this was gutted by the _suits_ looking for quick, short-term gain.
They were more interested in making Hyenas. The company was taken over by woke diversity hires who don't care about game design and historical accuracy. It's time to pull out the plug.
This is the trend of the entire video game industry overall, with exceptions of course.
I agree with your conclusion, but I would put money that the next major release will either be medieval 3 or Empire 2. This was just a cash grab to tide us over.
That's because there is an endless supply of newly minted casuals that will consume trash because they haven't known any better, this repitition of producing subpar games to milk cash is now cyclical, and nothing can break it till the gaming industry is all but hollow and dead.
Upgrading an engine isn't as simple as you ignoramuses make it out to be nor does that mean all the bugs will all of a sudden disappear and that I won't bring newer bugs to the series ....as the complexity of game development has gone up so have the abundance of hardships which includes bugs it's not a simple oH uPdAtE tHe EnGiNeee
It feelas very, VERY weird not having actual trade in a historical Total War. I don't mean the diplo trade, I mean on the campaign map. Like, remember in Medieval 2 how a port did NOT give a set amount of money, but instead provided income based on your other ports it could trade with, trade partners, population, and province resources. All of these mechanics are still supposedly IN THE GAME, yet because of the extant to which they were mangled, don't actually provide anything deep or meaningful. Hell, even the Empire onwards trade, with the sea lanes and trade points in the ocean would have been better. Bronze is not a single metal. It is copper+tin. Tin was very much scarce in the main areas, the closest high grade and high-quantity source was Cyprus, and then several (potential) trade links from Italy, Iberia and even possibly Gaul/Britain. So imagine if your ability to make bronze, the thing you use for everything from agriculture to weapons goes kaputt because the SEA peoples using their SHIPS (I know, ships are a hard concept), destroy your ability to actually get tin. So now you are stuck with only copper, in the middle of a famine against people who may or may not already have iron weapons, along with a definite supply of bronze weapons, and how fucked you would be.
The bronze age was so interesting because it was a highly integrated and mutually dependent society. Trade was so crucial to everyone which was why the sea peoples disrupting that trade was so catastrophic. This would have been an excellent opportunity to have a well designed economy and trade management simulation.
Nah mate that would actually be an interesting and fun scenario where you can get a unique sense of achievement from the various possible ways to win or lose. And corporations know us gamers are too stupid and immature to enjoy that. Better just to give us flashy expensive repetitive games our monkey brains can understand. Because its not like people who play historically war games i don't know ... enjoy the complicatedness of history?
This sounds like an interesting campaign. Would pay $60.
I really hope Paradox makes a bronze age game similar to Crusader Kings. Sucks not being able to manually fight the battles, but all of the other features in those games more than make up for it. My dream game would be a Total War/Crusader Kings mashup style. All of the depth of Crusader Kings, with the battle aspects of Total War.
There's a Mod that does that, actually. It's a mod for "Crusader Kings" when you initiate battle it pops out a Total War custom battle with units from the Crusader Kings game.
@@BloodyKnives66 Are you serious!? Do you know if it is for CK3? Or is it just for CK2? This may just lead me to sinking another few hundred hours into Crusader Kings haha!
As a dedicated paradox player, shut the hell up that would be a nightmare.
@@17crusaders should be the third one, saw a guy on CZcams playing with the mod a while back
This reads to me like a game designed to only work if you buy 2 or 3 DLC. I don't think they forgot Mesopotamia, I think they're just gonna want $25 more for it lol
that's the only real downside of the whole game :D at least if you're into ancient history. it's far too expensive and they even did the popular greedy dlc shredding as well. I just wonder if there is any possibility to be able to play as the sea people raiding the s*** out of all the great empires of the eastern mediterranean, but since they were so diverse in the location of their origin or bases, equipment, culture and such and them serving as the endboss of the whole game, I don't have too much hope. it would also be quite frustrating if the only option to play them would be paying even more for a DLC just to play the legendary sea people.
Mesopotamia is the most important Bronze Age region. The fact it's missing is very frustrating. Same goes to Bronze Age Greece, which is a puzzle to me, because they already have all the assets from Troy. I just installed Age of Bronze, which already has Hittites and Egypt playable in the campaign and you're able to conquer all the regions and factions living in the Near East, like Assyria and Babylon, Knossos, Mycenae, etc. You can play those factions in custom battles, but will be playable in campaign later. Sure, it doesn't have all these fancy mechanics that Pharaoh does, but they often get in the way anyway. Just remembering Realm of Chaos campaign for example.
I see your point, I'm upset it's not there, but Mesopotamia is definitely not the most important Bronze Age Collapse region. That's the focus of the game, unfortunately. Assyria and Babylon were not as directly and catastrophically impacted as coastal regions.
People are correct that they should have just stuck with the Saga label, since that's exactly what it is. I don't care about the price, but it does feel like false advertising based on their previous standards.
@@davidstansbury9309 Yeah, I agree with you on all points.
Don't worry they'll sell you these factions in a seperate 25$ DLC lmao
@@fiendish9474 xD
@@davidstansbury9309okay so let me play as king of Babylon and March to the Med to exploit the collapse of my enemies. I could play Sassanids in rome barbarian invasion even tho the game is called rome? Let me be king of the assyrians and March into Egypt like they did historically. It’s a travesty to not include them
I really want them to make Empire 2 with great details and graphics, and massive world map.
Only if they put effort into it
Not gonna happen, they are just gonna re-use the same engine for another 15 years. Its disgusting. So when they do make Empire 2 its not gonna be a new game. Its going to be patch 2.0 with a heavily modded map and units. Basically what they should have done in the first place if they had bothered to even try to fix the game. And they will ask you for 70$ for doing what they should have done the first time around at no additional cost.
@@Cba409 Don't forget that it will also be a dumbed down, feature less version. :)
THAT would be serious proyect
There's so many extinct features from Empire 1 they'd have to bring back, otherwise it would be the same empty shell they're selling now.
They should have make securing copper and tin resources and trade routes the main driver for this game. Tin was actually the "oil" of this era.
I have a couple of ideas on how to improve this games' campaign:
- Introduce workforce: Similar to population in earlier games. Each settlement has workforce, which gets automatically absorbed by production buildings. Workforce grows per turn with a surplus of food production or trade in the settlement. Workforce can also shrink when too many mil. units get recruited, the town gets smoked or "emigration" happens. Now, the player has to watch for workforce each time they expand buildings and train units. Environmental factors, trade and farming impact workforce growth, food shortage cause famine and deplete workforce, which has palpable impact on production. The player can prioritise workforce to certain buildings to micromanage production in times of workforce shortage. Too much "unused" workforce might also lead to migration and stagnating wealth.
- Trade routes: Trade happens automatically. In earlier TW games there was "wealth", it could be here as well. Buildings can be set up to produce wealth instead of resources, while others are "royal workshops" or farms that produce straight for your warehouses. However, wealth is automatically traded to the towns a settlement buys resources from to fuel production e.g. tin and copper for bronze, or stone and wood for construction. Trade routes are run by ships and caravans. The more there are on the route, the more stuff gets shipped each turn. Conversely, raiding, natural disasters and nearby warfare can reduce caravans and cause shortage in supplies. Cities along trade routes or important ports should be considered "pillars of civilisation". When trade breaks down, civilisation goes down as well.
- Emigration: Warfare, disasters, famine, rapidly depleting wealth etc. will make your "workforce" emigrate. They either disappear or form rebel armies (similar to RTW 1) between the turns, raiding farms, workshops and trade routes. This gives an increased sense of unpredictability. Some safe places can absorb migration. Enemy factions might profit from a sharp increase in workforce. The more emigration happens, the more unstable your faction gets.
- Army morale takes a hit when your faction gets unstable. Some units might desert between turns. This can happen due to massive emigration or rebellion.
- Make bronze a production chain. It's some sort of special mechanic. Bronze producing buildings need tin and copper to produce bronze. If they can't get enough per turn, their production decreases. Therefore its less bronze for you or less wealth per turn to your settlements.
In summary, the player has to consider trade offs when deciding which buildings to construct. Not enough food surplus? Your workforce growth shrinks. Build more wealth buildings? It consumes workforce but gives you no resources. Too dependent on trade? Your factions suffers when trade routes are not protected. Build too many resource buildings? Your settlements don't have enough wealth to trade for stuff you can't produce yourself (like tin). Also, emigration, loss of army morale and natural disasters now have more intrinsic impact on these dynamics. It's simple disaster snowballing but can make the campaign feel less linear and more dramatic. Also its closer to actual history. Cheers.
I truly want to say that I think the Warhammer 3 - Pharaoh combination was finally enough to wake people up to how scummy CA has been. These practices started with stuff like blood DLC's and locking factions behind a paywall.
But for me, the biggest concern has been the battle simulation. For some reason people pavloved themselves into remembering Rome 2 as good besides the bugs, but I think things like DEI tricked them into that viewpoint. Rome 2 was critiscised at the time for things like a shared unit HP pool, dummed down simulation and ranged mechanics, stupid pathfinding, stupid STUPID ai, and a boat (see what i did there) load of things that are frankly baked into this version of warscape. These things were HEAVILY obscured in warhammer because shit like magic and single entity monster units balances well off of some of those features like shared hp, but every single historical game released since rome 2 has released with a mixed opinion on the battles themselves. For all we say about 3k, it is very easy to load up half of your army as archers and sit back for 80% of battle secnarios you can come to.
This is not a player only issue, we also know that the Engine is clunky on CA's end because they have pretty much asked for permission to make a new one after every single game. I genuinely do not think we will see a good historical total war that doesnt rely on a single entity gimick until we get a new engine. At least a new iteration of it. One that doesnt literally lock the map to the game down, and one thats easier for the developers to work with.
We ask for Med 3 not because we want a middle ages setting, but because we want a return to form. We made mods like DEI not because we like rome 2, but because we didnt and saw its potential.
I swear to God if we were in a room right now i would start clapping.
Based
This. It's weird seeing so much praise for Rome 2 these days when I remember but a few years ago how terrible it was.
I guess there really is somewhat of a merit to that "Frog slowly boiling" concept at play, that the water of 10 minutes ago seems so great compared to what it is now, when the water 10 minutes ago was still hot compared to 20 minutes ago.
exactly
Rome 2 was the ultimate dumbing down of the historical genre so they could switch to money grabbing fantasy titles. It's remembered well now because most people now realize that'll probably be the last decent historical title from CA, depending on how you feel about Attila. I started playing with Empire, and people then were talking about how horrible it was compared to Med 2 but I never knew any better til I played Med 2. CA could've kept making their games deep and immersive for the niche historical player base, but they turned their backs on them instead for mainstream profits and Pharoah is the result.
The price was way to steep for me to even consider a launch purchase
Solid review, thank you for your honesty and suggestions. I truly hope they listen, I think it has potential as a time period and maybe do what other commenters and you suggested, fight for copper and tin for the glorious bronze. Would really tie it all up together well.
I think one real issue CA is facing is that they’re deliberately excluding things that should be in the game to make DLC’s later.
A Bronze Age collapse game should cover Greece and Mesopotamia.
Yup, they've obviously already made the content judging by the map. DLCs are just cash grabs now selling the rest of the game. Not adding new content to the game.
Its not a bronze age game its a game about Egypt the and the others factions in the games experience with the bronze age collopase it was never marketed as a bronze age game its why its called what its called 🤦🏾
I knew Pharao would be a disappointment the moment it was anounced. CA couldve just asked the Community what we want, heck they couldve done a Poll and all this couldve been avoided. Its THAT easy.
They can't make what we want or they would i hope
@@vincentbourgon2517 fxck them then easy
@@vincentbourgon2517 Damn it, many have long wanted the Bronze Age, but not like Pharaoh. The next game will be Medieval 3 in which the playable factions will be England, France and Germany, and the rest will have to be purchased in DLC if they are ever released.
They didn't even need to ask. You can just go to see what mods people are playing on steam
To be fair, they could have made it a decent game if only they bothered to include more than 3 factions, actually built on existing features, fixed bugs and not charged $60 for the privilege.
CA is suffering from their own short-sightedness. In a way, Pharaoh was doomed when CA allowed Epic to give Troy away for free to recoup some of their investment. That decision had long-term consequences; games like this will for the foreseeable future be compared against a game that was (for most players) $0. CA knows that total war fans do not VALUE Pharaoh at $60, yet they are pricing it as such anyway. The impact (similar to the current Warhammer 3 DLC situation) is that CA is selling a portion of their goodwill and reputation in exchange for a quick cash infusion. What concerns me is that CA is being so transparent about their short-sightedness. This is not a good omen for the long-term health of the franchise.
Thorgrim: SHORT!!?
Sorry. All I meant was their desire for immediate monetary gains has dwarfed their long-term strategic vision.@@Gilmier
Facts, but modern companies seem to recover and thrive despite destroying goodwill (Activision, blizzard, ubisoft, ea) CA still has no true competition to the IP and has medieval 3, Empire 2, Shogun 3 in their sleeves that people will buy. It's a major challenge for consumers to change the predatory suits culture CA has adopted. I think polished competition is the best thing that can happen to total war fans, a new company that ,'gets it'.
The responsibility lies with SEGA. Either they sack current CA management or the responsible managers at SEGA. Total war is probably my most beloved game series and I know understand how Blizzard fans feel when they talk about greedy corporations destroying their IP.
If there's one thing I appreciate from an old game that definitely died out and disappeared given that PixieAppolo never covered it again after one showcase, its called Oriental Empires, is that it runs on the same resource system philosophy as the Saga games but I always reached a point where I was so large that I bled resources faster than I could develop them to block off the consumption cost.
This was me, playing as Qin Han in the Warring States period, at its maximum zenith managing several battlefronts and sieges and building dozens of settlements having to face the fact that I couldn't bleed off enough of the supporting population or disband any of the armies to prevent what is in essence, a fiscal collapse where my empire became unsustainable 😅
Keep in mind this was me picking and selecting and establishing control over resource areas and developing the institutions to harvest them and I still collapsed (I never really figured out why it happened exactly and what I did wrong back in 2018) and I think that experience in Oriental Empires really was sorely needed for Pharaoh considering the world has gone to shit, trade is deadish, and you are barely holding. You should feel like you're barely holding on under great duress (as great duress as the AI tries anyway) just as I was under duress to find a way to stop overconsumption and accelerate my conquests, establish desperate diplomacy with far off neighbours to slow and hopefully reverse my resource drain.
Idk, despite being probably gone I feel that I would still enjoy Oriental Empires, for all its faults, more than Pharaoh because I was never defeated in war but I was defeated because my mangement missed something that created a crisis I did not solve or notice until shit went under.
This is a clear example of why I despise modern gaming, it used to be the motto was "It's ready when it's ready" but then they started investing in stock markets and it became "It's ready because the investor needs to see growth". Never mind the product will be poorly or middling recieved, naw shove it out the door people will lap it up and when they don't we will insult them and say "Its your fault there won't be anymore from this IP.".
Can’t believe I’m saying this, but I now enjoy Paradox games more than Total War. The depth those games provide is much more enjoyably than the repetitive gameplay of TW, Mods only help so much. Paradox games have endless replay-ability for me.
Sad but true.
I've played paradox games since Hearts of Iron 2. The programing and game design used to be great, but sadly Paradox is getting lazy and now makes a lot of DLCs that do not enhance the base game and/or derails the base game. They make content that no one asked for. Stellaris is an example. I used to be an avid buyer of all their games, then I stopped buying in the past 4 years after I noticed this pattern of costly but low quality DLC
@ RM. And l can’t believe I agree with you ☹️
Also maybe its just me but i find the rp element of games like CK and stellaris make it fun to lose. Like losing a galactic war i started because it turns out my enemies had unique tech or becoming the emperor of the galactic community. You can lose and win in a unique way and you often decide for yourself what winning and losing is anyway
@@elijahdungan3612 I’m a relative newcomer. The mechanics and depth of each game can keep me playing for hours. Then I go back to TW and am unimpressed by how shallow the mechanics can be. Paradox spoiled me I guess
something interesting they could have done was since copper and tin were often traded from elsewhere adthe campaign goes on and you lose those networks, you loose the ability to build more high tier units so the ones you have become all the more precious.
Don’t worry that will be priced in later 😂
Well it was rather less "were often traded from" than "HAD to be traded from" because there's like... half a dozen or less serious tin-producing regions in _all of Eurasia._ And yes those basically had to supply the entire Bronze Age across the continent, regardless of how inconveniently they might be located from the major high-culture zones. (Sure did stimulate the developement of long-distance trade links tho.)
Not unrelated: why the developement of ironworking was Kind Of A Big Deal had rather little to do with its metallurgical qualities as such (iron's fairly tricky to work with and at the baby-steps stage product quality wasn't terribly competitive with the by then very highly developed bronze tech) but instead sheer _availability_ as it's like a few orders of magnitude more common in the Earth's crust than even copper, less still the much scarcer tin. In some regions you could literally fish nuggets out of lakes and bogs - crap grade metal, but good enough for like nails and similar low-spec everyday stuff. (Peasants were still doing this in the late 1800s in some parts because, well, why not? Shit was basically free.)
This made metal tools and weapons Hell of a lot more affordable ergo common which in turn had some pretty major economic consequences.
I just dont understand why they ignore their fan base. For years we have all been BEGGING for either Medevil 3 or Empire 2 yet they continue to push out titles the majority of us are not asking for and not really all that intrested in.
Would be cool to see you make a video comparison of Pharaoh and Age of Bronze (when it's mostly finished).
Thanks for video.
Perfect for when they turn all total war to mobile games, buy 2.99 pack for more resources
"You have expended all your army movement points for this turn. Would you like to buy the premium movement topup?"
@@derkylos"or you can watch this ad for 3 more points!"
Being neutral and unbiased means judging based on FACTS. It does not mean having a neutral opinion for the sake of it.
You can be the most rational person and still see Pharaoh is a complete scam.
Partial scam. Let's not exaggerate.
@@davidstansbury9309 its a scam through and through
How the fuck is it a scam? lol
@@kingmarre9130seriously, these ppl complain abt everything and are never satisfied
@@kingmarre9130 I'm pretty sure OP means a complete Ripoff that does not offer the bang for buck needed whatsoever.
The most obvious red flag for me was the silly ahistoric costumes and cartoony character designs for the leaders.
They've forgotten their customers who have been fans for decades in favor of younger fans
I noticed that too, like they were using CIVILIZATION VI models.
Medieval 2 remastered would be good. The early TW games nailed it, they just need modernizing and bug fixes.
Facts, medieval2 optimised bug fixed AI improvement, graphic update and most of all improved modding support and tools
Yeah i play and steam in yt medieval 2 daily. Still the best
I just don't get how they haven't done this nor Empire
I am still amazed as to how, almost every time, the developers manage to screw up basic mechanics that have been with the TW franchise since it´s inception. You would think that basic things, like importance of morale and positioning in battles, would be balanced into an optimal state by now, but no.
Devastated. Like most I’d love an ETW II / MTW III … but the Late Bronze Age is also a great setting .. if done well.
Dozens of unique cultures, technological innovations, complex trade and diplomacy, etc
Porting the hero mechanic from Troy and TK was the beginning of the rot imho. The whole period is about fighting for one’s dynasty / legacy.. over time.
So glad you brought up these issues... I stated weeks ago on another video that CA should have created a "Total War: Bronze" focusing on the wider view of this time period, to include Mycenae, Sardinia (Sherdana), and other European factions but people attacked me for that. There is enough ambiguity from this time period to take some really cool liberties and make the era come to life. Also, you can't portray resources in the Bronze age without having Tin as a resource. The Tin trade was vital to the Bronze Age world because it was a very limited resource in this era.
Every era, really. Shit's scarce as fuck in the Earth's crust and there's like half a dozen or so major deposit zones in all of Eurasia. Copper isn't super common either (there's a reason it was classed as "strategic resource" during the World Wars and outright theft of the stuff isn't rare today either) but not in nearly as short supply, it just wasn't terribly useful on its own.
Which is why iron was such a big deal. Took a lot of trial-and-error for it to start rivalling bronze in _quality and performance_ (cuz baby steps vs mature tech) but it's orders of magnitude more _available._
@@broadbandislife yep great points!
My most hated part about this game is how no armies stay in formation. Battles will turn into small groups of men running around and clashing in disorganized blobs. I prefer the older games where armies will stay in their formation, and when they break, they won’t come back most of the time
Yup like every Warhammer multiplayer game. Chaotic fast attrition fights
Should just be called total brawl
"I prefer the older games where armies will stay in their formation" LOL, only with mods XD
I resolve that by toggling the Guard mode button on frontline units. But it can be tricky to maneuver a whole army in intact formation.
@@FreeManFreeThought You clearly never played them vanilla if you think that. Up to Shogun 2 and FotS units would stay together. Only the games afterward really need mods to have any unit cohesion.
To not forget how the units move like they are some kind of robot... all the units movr the same, having bigass shields and wobling them around like paper 🤦♂️🤦♂️🤦♂️ cant wait for Manor Lords really... total war is dead to me
What bothers me is they could have done so much better than this. Focused on kingdoms instead of characters. Minoa, Mycenae, Assyria, Babylon… all missed opportunities.
Every game must be character based now, the kids want to play a hero.
Cool! So I'll go on playing medieval 2 and all of its awesome mods.
Cheers for your good review!
Have a great one!
The Bronze Age world-system extended from the Indian Peninsula in the East to the British Isles in the West and from the Ural Mountains in the North to Kush in the South. There is none of this in the game. It is sad.
This is essentially a perfect review of Pharoah, i had a ton of the same take aways from my 40 hours especially the issues with the engine that have been plaguing the series for years. Pharoah feels like a very polished dlc for the historical mode in Troy that suffers from the same issues everyone expected. Some good ideas here and there but just not even close to enough to justify a full title price.
Thanks mate! Big fan ♥
Oh shiiii it's the OG Okoii~ respecc on his name bruddahs.
Thanks. Basically Pharoah is a reskin.
I used to generally love Total War and learned alot of history from them, it’s what got me into PC Gaming. So seeing them fail when they could have such great potential is just so sad.
You learned history from the community, not from CA. If you want to know what CA knows of history just play an unmodded RomeTW. And that was despite all of Europa Barbarorum's historians offering their service for free pre-development. Once they announced, during Empire's development, that from now on they would try to make their games more and more unmoddable it was clear they were done.
Good quality video. Impressive work.
Man you put it almost perfectly. I honestly really love the look and role play of the mechanics, and in my head it is so fun to play and RPG…but then i play it and its just like a bunch of things that “could have been”.
I think that the biggest problem with total war battles in general is focus on kills and not on moral. It would be so much more interesting to win battles by breaking armies and the possibility of that defeated army coming back. It would make killing armies or losing units a lot more impactful
Definitely agree. You could also have moral be more dependant on experience. Imagine having battle hardened units serve to anchor your line and help encourage the fresh recruits from breaking. Imagine how devastating it would be to lose your most experienced units or army.
I mean, that's literally the ultimate goal of any engagement in almost every conflict in human history; make the other side unwilling to continue fighting you. Most of the time that isn't decided solely by a huge body count, but the morale of an army and society, and that's true now as it has been for millennia. For a series founded on historical warfare, its always struck me as odd (and disappointing) that they rarely get this right.
Heck man that's all thr way back in Shogun 2! Morale is a major factor for battles in that game. I enjoy how I can often win with a smaller force by focusing on breaking the enemy army instead of killing them. It's the reason why cavalry are effective despite the massive amount of yari ashigaru.
It would have been so easy to have Assyria, Babylon, and Mycenae in this map.. I just don't know why they would leave them out
And Mittani! Why everybody always forget about Mittani?! :)
so they can sell them to you later
@@pizzakiep4157 that’s so retarded because if the game fails on launch that DLC won’t get made anyway
^
They will be added as dlc mate like greek city states and the Babylonian kingdom
Useful video. Thanks for posting.
Earthquakes from Egypt to the Hittite Empire I believe happened here. Even it was brought up that much like with Vesuvius erupting, the Pompeiians had spent about 15 years recovering from an Earthquake with jars of plaster to repair homes and do more remodelling and such. This looks like multiple events again and again just caused the whole scenario to keep spiralling out of control - as in no more real centralised power anywhere.
Med 3 and or Empire 2 please. I played Troy for 2 or 4 hours then uninstalled as it was a yawn feast. Pharaoh is $79.99 in Canada + tax so Its a big time pass for me.
Please, next game shouldnt be so expensive and should be without microtransactions
No, it will be more expensive if it has more content, and with more micros.
Wake up, it's the 21st century. That ship sailed a long time ago.
Micros are stupid and don't need them in game
And without CA
@@somebody2344you're free to enter the market. I'll buy your game if it's better...or even close
We are all exhausted to wait out the MTW-3, all in a while CA finished off itself.
Awesome content. Subscribed!
Welcome aboard!
Good comment regarding the potential trade routes. Big missed opportunity, would have been really easy to make a trade-route centric game. Bronze originating from 2-3 places in the whole map, dependent on the tin/copper trade routes being intact. Making bronze-clad units similar to the empire RoR of WH (only a few possible, ranged vs melee trade-off).
Couple that with a population system and the sea peoples disrupting trade routes (basically turning off replenishment for the majority of units or smth like that), and add the Attila building depth (e.g. you can build monumental works, but as soon as things go south, the population will see them as shallow symbols of oppression). So much wasted potential.
God the wasted potential is immeasurable here and you just know we're not gonna get anything like this again. If Pharaoh had even a sliver of the budget that went into Hyenas to help the scope and depth of the campaign gameplay it would have been a far better game than what it is now
Chariots were broken in Rome 2 also. I think the warscape engine was great for Empire and Napoleon, but they need something new for time periods dependent on melee warfare.
Chariots were broken IRL too ;) (from the sources it seems armies of the period centered around chariots and chariots only).
Chariots were OP in real life until Alexander came along :)@@090giver090
Lets hope this game is such a minimal effort because major resources are being used to create the next game which finally improves significantly on previous games and has a new engine.
Only a fool would believe that after literally a decade of CA dropping the ball like this
They need to bring back 1v1 unit combat/interaction. Since 3 kingdoms they took it away so the units just crash into eachother and some start falling.... compared to rome 2 where you can actually see them execute, dodge, block, counter etc
It's half a game at full price. It's so narrow focused in terms of cultures and map extension that it definitely feels as another side project instead of full price TW game. And it could have been so much more.
I personally think the original idea was to have it at half price, but they probably knew at that point Hyenas was getting axed sooner rather than later plus the layoffs and everything else, so they increased the price to try and cover for that eventuality.
1/4 a game at best
Very few chasing units? Sad to see this. As far as my knowledge of ancient warfare goes, chasing the enemy was one of the key aspects of any battle, and where most casualties in the defeated army would occur.
not really. it might've been like that in the very late ancient era when they already had iron for several hundred years. bronze age warfare was 90+% infantry plus chariots. it took several hundred years until people developed something like the military cavalry we know about, also because back then, there were no horses which could carry humans, especially for military purposes. and back then when some in central asia developed something that we can call proto-cavalry they even didn't have saddles or stirrups.
there are plenty of great skirmisher units and the chariots to chase fleeing enemies tho.
Thank you for the review.
Sadly, the megatrend in CA to concentrate on overpowered visuals, lighting and animations instead of on well-thought gameplay in the battle and campaign mode kills this series from long time now.
I was hoping for like a Total war Rome type game, with small races fighting the collapse of Egypt, the way the British do while Rome had an empire, unique, interesting starts and mechanics
"We could've had the full bronze age map." Well that's the thing buddy - you can eventually after $300 worth of DLC!!! God, it seems almost jaw dropping that once upon a time in Medieval 2 you unlocked extra factions by just defeating them in the campaign. Or how Empire included EVERYTHING at drop, and the DLC just sprinkled new units throughout a bunch of different factions without making just playing the base game a detriment.
To me, it's jaw dropping how all these whiners can think that 60 bucks for a thousand hours is a raw deal, when a burger meal costs 20 bucks if you're lucky. This game is actually excellent, and I would feel sorry for all the idiots reviewing it negatively without actually playing it if I wasn't so busy enjoying it.
@@brendanfrost9775 You could have coped by yourself without typing anything, but you just had to get triggered someone didn't have the same bare minimum standards for what a total war game should be that you do.
@@ReikerForge Nope, just sucks when bullshit wins and good art goes unrecognized 🤷🏼
@@brendanfrost9775"good art" 😂😂😂 Please visit a mental ward. Give me your Steam profile, please. Bet you're a fanatic Warhammer fan, played no CA title besides that.
@@Tovalokodonc
2k hours of Rome 2 + DeI
2.5k hours of Attila vanilla and mk1212
Not to mention back in the day Shogun, Rome, Shogun 2, Thrones
You morons have a pathological grudge against something you've never even experienced. Get a grip on reality!
I had an Ancient History professor who told this hilarious story about the infamous Sea Peoples. Apparently, there was this kid who didn't pay attention in class; on the final (which was all handwritten essays) he wrote an 'essay' describing how "the C - People wiped out the Hittites."
It’s a shame because you can tell Sofia put a lot of effort into the historical research, and as an Egypt nerd I will play it because of that, but it is super hampered by it’s scope and scale, especially when factoring Mycenaean Greece, Babylonia, Libya, Assyria etc
Thanks for a detailed and in depth review, answers everything I was curious about.
i really wish assyrian, myceaneans and babyolians where in the game
feels really weird not having them
Great review! Well done dude
Thanks a ton!
Would have been really interesting if they had made it a survival TW game instead. Basically the negatives continue to escalate as time goes on. Resource production nerfs, larger sea people armies, less trade as other factions are wiped out, etc. At the same time options such as taking in refugees from other factions that collapse, but you need the food for it. If other factions collapse then you end up with more neutral armies spawning as their armies desert and their civilians turn to banditry to survive, which may have been reduced if you took them in as refugees, but obviously there are limits due to your food.
If that was implemented then maybe on lower difficulties, or at the start of a campaign, it makes sense to take some additional territory. But at some point it literally becomes a struggle just to survive with your current territory. You don't have enough food for everyone due to famines, you can't get it through trade because your neighbors don't have spare food and some of them have collapsed, and the entire time you are fighting off increasingly larger waves of enemy armies. Trying to support your neighbors is good since if they collapse things just get even worse, but how much can you send them to help when your own country is also collapsing?
We know that basically the only society to fully survive the bronze age collapse was Egypt. There were survivors in other places, but their governments and societies had mostly collapsed. It would make sense that just surviving would be the victory condition. The expectation should be that your country will be smaller and weaker at the end instead of stronger, perhaps even an expectation that past a certain point you win even if your society collapses and you would normally lose, simply because your culture survived long enough that it will be remembered after the bronze age unlike most of the factions. Also would mean that not seeing all the world map doesn't matter as much, not likely you would be able to reach those places anyway.
Also for the AI I'm not a huge fan of always having good AI. Sure there are some issues that never make sense, such as an army that just ignores other units killing it. In that case they should always be set to defend themselves. But I can definitely see an army with a bad general and inexperienced troops marching straight through an area where they will get slaughtered by archers, or attacking something that is clearly a trap and being flanked and destroyed. I guess I just like the idea of having multiple version of AI and then basing which type is implemented on the general and experience of the troops. It would make the enemy generals far more important instead of just giving stat boosts to the units. Basically a poor general may end up just throwing their troops at you, and doesn't see an issue with having cavalry charge a groups of spearmen. But a good general would never make this mistake, instead you would see actual tactics and the AI trying to matchup units so that they will win, or even acting like it was lining up cavalry to charge spears but they never actually engage.
I hope a competitor can come in and scoop the historical fan base away from CA. It’s abundantly clear that they have lost the golden touch and I hope someone new can reclaim it.
Unfortunately this is unlikely. This is very niche market. It was a dependable niche but the start up costs to compete with a 20 year old game m2tw would be prohibitive.
I appreciate the comments on the unplayability of constantly rallying enemy units. So I ask, in which Attila and/or Rome 2 mod are the enemy units least likely to rally and return to the fighting? If anyone has any insight on this, please let me know as I'm planning on trying a new Attila or Rome 2 mod soon. Thanks!
If you're gonna play Rome 2, you cannot go wrong with the Divide Et Impera mod.
I recently lost a Medieval 2 modded siege because a routed unit fled through my lines then recovered to capture the victory point. That's Total War for ya.
The routing units generally makes very little difference unless the battle is extremely close or you are fighting a siege battle. For the former generally they run halfway across the map and can easily be escorted off by skirmishers who have no ammo or the lowest tier cavalry if they are important. By the time they have recovered and make their way back you generally will crush whatever units are still on the field and the recovered unit is exhausted. The latter is extremely frustrating and usually the only solution is save scumming.
ha, i remember playing TW Warhammer 1 when it came out, and as human your only enemies around were same faction as you are, so the fighting was absolutely insane- every few second units randomly started to rout, only to return 10 seconds later and now unit that was fighting them started to rout until it ran away for few meters and returned to battle and again and again and again....
for fun a didnt touch nothing for few minutes and battle was literally nothing but two units clashing, one of them started to rout, after few meters they switch position so the one who was routing is now the one pursuing and over again, i never seen anything so absurd, glad to see there is always new bottom for CA
Yes, I agree with your comments, by unplayability, I didn't mean too difficult, I meant not fun. It is simply not fun for me to spend so much time and energy chasing and rechasing endlessly rallying units.@@globalelite3042
Other Bronze Age games (that I'm aware of)
Chariots of War: A pseudo-TW game with both a strategic map and tactical battles, although the tactical battles can't be controlled outside of the initial setup phase. Includes the entire Near East from Upper Egypt to the Caucasus, Persia, and the Bosporus. Heavy emphasis on resource management. Doesn't include Mycenae / Minos.
Field of Glory II - Swifter than Eagles: A turn-based tactical game which simulates massed battles, based on the tabletop wargame. Includes the early Greek civilizations, otherwise the scope is largely the same as above. No strategic map.
Thank you. You are one of the best Total War games reviewers. Subscribed
Thanks!
It definitely feels like the excluded regions of the map are setting up for one or two big DLCs in the future. Which just sucks. DLC is supposed to add to an already complete game, not add up TO a complete game
My take away from the review is that the existing factions don't have enough gameplay differentiation to matter. So even if they expand the map and add more cultures as DLC, it will not make the game better because it'll all feel exactly the same, play the same, and it will remain just as boring. More reskinned cultures that play identically doesn't work.
I have never played a TW: Warhammer game but from watching some videos it appears that the factions have genuinely different playstyles and approaches to the campaign. Why they can't seem to do this for any of the historical games is beyond me.
@@noxplague I'm big into TW Warhammer, and yeah that's a big part of the appeal. Different factions play differently both on the campaign map and in battle. Certain mechanics are a little simpler as a result but it's worth the trade
2:55 the moment he figures those factions might come as dlc in the future, lol or they will do a total war kinda of thing where there will be two other games and the maps will combine, damnnn, that would be crazy
"Many companies forget what it means to make great products. After initial success, sales and marketing people take over and the product people eventually make their way out." Steve jobs
Basically whats wrong with every big game company
Add CA to the growing list of developers/publishers who once made awesome games, but now release trash. I.e., Bethesda, Blizzard, Dice, etc.
Great review. This is a game that I was hoping would turn out a little better than the quite low expectations of the community. Oh well, it is what it is, and you sir have saved me some money.
Victory points, tech tree's, pre set fort positions, set building 'slots', everything done through click screens, 'buffs'.... Leaves me only doubling down to not buying another until it's every mechanic of med 2 or rome, but with improved graphics
Thank you for the honest review. No surprises here, but still good work.
Excellent detailed review - totally agree
Great review thank you for saving me the money! I actually fired up Troy yesterday and began to notice the similarities right away. I'll wait for this to be 15.00
I think most of what you say is fair, but it is sad because a lot of it seems "so close" to greatness, an Attila-like hardcore approach would have made it great with an emphasis on the trade (I can't believe they haven't gone that route with trade on a bronze age collapse game...) but even then, with this narrow map and cultures, it would have probably lacked replayability.
Do you know what this game feels like?
It feels like a game from the early 2000s, when game studios (specifically for PC games) were realizing that the home computer market was a lot bigger than expected and people wanted games with real 'meat' in them and not the blocky pixel stuff of the 90s anymore. This is when games were trying to be different and stand out, they tried new ideas that before might not have been tried before or since otherwise. This is where you get games like Age of Mythology, or Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. It's where you get blockbusters such as WoW (back when it was good, obv). Civ IV won a fucking GRAMMY for it's theme song!
This game however...feels like the ass end of the spectrum from that time period. The kind of game you'd buy for a dollar at a garage sale and then the discs are so scratched up you realize you can never actually use them to play it, or if you do the game is so bugged out that it's unplayable; then what does work is so terribly designed you realize *why* it was being sold for pennies by a rando in the first place!
Would love to see a Total war saga where you can play as Assyrian Empire.
They absolutely should have included Assyria, Babylon, Mycenae and the Minoans as start factions. This feels like they cut the game in half so they can sell the rest later. I would have been down for buying the Libyans, Italics and Israelites later. What happened to the old days, when a dlc was basically a new game with some similar assets?
There probably will be a thirds total war on babylon and assyrian, and they will create a big map with troy + pharao + babylon for sure
And the final game compilation will cost 900$
I didn't buy this. I wouldn't buy that either. Topic closes and also CA...
Making Pharaoh like Attila would have been awesome, especially protecting trade for Bronze units. Too bad we are getting cookie cutter games now.
Looking forward to getting this on sale.
11:00 screams like TROY haha. i had to chase almost every unit off, unless they surrendered