Total War: PHARAOH on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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In Total War: PHARAOH, the newest entry in the award-winning grand strategy series, immerse yourself in ancient Egypt at the zenith of its power and experience the dramatic events that threaten its destruction.
Total War: PHARAOH is a strategy, rts and grand strategy game
developed by Creative Assembly
and published by SEGA.
Released on October 11th 2023 is available on Windows and MacOS
in 12 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Czech, Korean, Polish, Portuguese - Brazil, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Turkish.
It has received 5,024 reviews of which 3,209 were positive and 1,815 were negative resulting in a rating of 6.3 out of 10. 😐
The game is currently priced at 39.99€ on Steam, but you can find it for 6.54€ on Instant Gaming.
The Steam community has classified Total War: PHARAOH into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Total War: PHARAOH through various videos and screenshots.
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS: Windows 10 64-Bit
- Processor: Intel i3-2100 / AMD FX-4300
- Memory: 6 GB RAM
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 / AMD R9 270
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 50 GB available space
MacOS
- OS: macOS 13.4
- Processor: Apple M1 (8‑Core CPU) or better
- Memory: 8 GB RAM
- Graphics: Apple M1 (7‑Core GPU) or better
- Storage: 50 GB available space
- Additional Notes: The game is officially supported on all Mac models released since November 2020 with an Apple M1 chip or better. To check your Mac model and when it was released, select About This Mac from the Apple menu on your menu bar.
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Your mileage may vary, but I think it's a pretty good game that does not deserve its negative reputation. Most of complaints for this are that this is not Medieval / Empire / Rome or too similar to Troy, but on its own, it stands well. The period is immersive, I love the different cultures and units that represent them. For the first time, you can have a diverse empire by recruiting from different cultures. Mechanics are cool if packed a little too densely. Battles are too fast, but I pause a lot to give orders so it works for me. Not to mention the map was expanded greatly with Dynasties at no cost and the base game is cheap. We had a whole expansion for free. That alone is deserving of labour of love award. An underrated Total War game.
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I got TWP a year after release and not long after the Dynasties update. I was unsure if the game would perform well on my computer because TWWIII has pretty poor performance. But with the price drop, I thought it was worth it. I've had a lot of fun playing vanilla TWP. The Ramesses III campaign has been fun so far, and I just completed the sea peoples. The aesthetics and immersion of the game is great. The cities look good and the map captures the bronze age aesthetic well. Unit types like chariots look great, and the units are well done too. The battles have some good features. I like the more advanced weather features like the weather changes. Terrain features like mud are also a solid addition, and the units getting covered in muck when fighting in the mud is a nice touch. I've been playing a lot of Shogun, and though Shogun might be my favorite TW game the maps are remarkably more simplistic and one-dimensional. The maps also feel more lived in and alive, as you see the little huts, farms, and canals in Egypt. Canaanite areas feel less developed, but this works for the immersion too to highlight the difference between the different cultures. I like some of the additions to the campaign map too, like outposts. The campaign map feels much more like a real civilization, as opposed to more sparse prior games. Some of the outposts are special archaeological zones too, which I think is a fun addition to the game. Putting the cities in Egyptian names like Mennefer instead of Memphis or Iounu instead of Heliopolis is a nice touch. Some of the cities have special buildings too which make them more strategically interesting. The 4 resource economy is more interesting than the standard TW resource system which is more simplistic. It makes you form more diplomatic relations, and makes trade more interesting. A cash economy is just anachronistic, but also doesnt capture how central economics and logistics are to warfare and strategy. There are downsides to the game of course. The lack of naval warfare is unfortunate, especially considering this was the age where naval warfare is first recorded. This is the invasion of the sea peoples after all, and naval battles on the Nile would be a nice touch. CA has unfortunately abandoned naval warfare in their TW games. It's also odd since I always end up with a surplus of wood, and naval units would be a nice way to spend some of that surplus wood. The sea peoples are overpowered by the end of the crisis since they get massive leadership bonuses and you get massive leadership maluses. This is alright, since it's meant to be a castastrophe, except the Sea Peoples AI doesnt seem to factor this in to when they attack. As a consequence, once the sea peoples invade, they only attack when they have a massive advantage and you are unlikely to win the battle. There would be more compelling siege battles instead of sieges where the Sea Peoples just wait until they can absolutely crush the defenders. Their leadership bonuses also make it a slog to defeat their armies end game because their units take forever to break. One more thing, there's an odd bug where the sea peoples event turns your vassals against you and ruins your reputation. This is not great since it means there's no reason to get vassals before the sea peoples event.
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Note to anyone considering buying this: This game received a massive update doubling the size of its map and adding many new playable factions and features, to the point that it required a separate .exe to run. This new update is listed on Steam on a separate page as 'Total War: Pharaoh Dynasties'. If you want more detailed reviews on the current state of the game, check that page instead. (Review is positive because the Dynasties update was pretty good.)
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On release this game was a bit lacking in content, but with the free Dynasties update it's well worth the asking price. It's perhaps a little arcady in some respects, especially on the campaign map, but it doesn't go quite as far as Warhammer. Pros: - Unique setting. We don't see the bronze age much at all in media, and this colourful imagining of it is very compelling. - Solid battle fundamentals. Tactics are actually rewarded and allow you to punch above your weight. Head-to-head brawls take a while to resolve, but finding ways to tip the scales through flanking, encirclement, missile units, cavalry etc is the fun of the game. - Surprisingly varied roster. Yeah it's mostly dudes with clubs, swords, spears, bows etc but light/medium/heavy infantry actually feel distinct in their roles, and its often worth keeping around low tier units long after you've unlocked the fully armoured up troops. I felt like I had to take more care over the composition of my army than in Warhammer, and that game has dragons and tanks and shit. - Factions feel distinct in how they play. Not only are their rosters different, but their campaign mechanics do a good job of distinguishing between. Cons: - AI is still a bit crap. This is a problem in most Total War games. Here it's less of an issue in some ways because there are no complex units like artillery to misuse, but in other ways its more obvious because things like flanking are incredibly potent and the AI just can't grasp the fundamentals. - Difficulty is very frontloaded. Again, a problem in most Total Wars. If you manage to survive your starting area and get a few provinces under your control you'll probably begin to snowball. It's a shame that by the time you become a late-game power there won't be much else to challenge you.
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Fun game. No Rome II -- certainly nothing as legendary as Empire-- but solid release to the series. Not a huge fan of the UI- especially around Diplomacy. Feels less immersive, more arcade style. This will be familiar though for anyone whose played the recent releases. Pros: Graphics, Campaign Map, Immersive battlefield conditions, Original new style for managing some in-game elements like religion/court dynamics and generals (not better necessarily but something new to try). Cons: Up to Rome II, the games were getting more mature, with more complex battle scenarios, combined warfare, better unit diversity and greater scope. The economics of the game and the diplomacy were heading in the right direction as well. (Note - Im referencing ROME 2 DEI as the benchmark - call it vanilla). Since and including the release of Thrones of Britannia TW continues to decline in quality. The battles feel more 'cartoonish' so does the UI and campaign. Buildings and settlements feel more trivial. Diplomacy has become a joke, completely unnecessary to a winning strategy. There's just not as much juice in it. I'll concede that part of the diplomacy issue could be resolved by expanding the scope of the games and going back to a global campaign. These "episode' style releases they've done are obviously smaller by intent. Bottom line: In an effort to make the games appeal to "less serious fans"(eye roll - I know) they continue to undermine the military history, economic and civil development and diplomatic maneuvering. For long-time fans, this attention to detail is the foundation that makes you feel like you are building a lasting empire. Complex games like TW titles of old take a long-time to appreciate, but that's certainly part of the charm. Starting a campaign on the hardest difficulty in Empire or Rome II DEI still gets me locked-in( That's more than a decade since the release of the former.) I sincerely hope a new Empire TW is on the way or a Medieval II -- one that again includes India and the Americas. I also want naval combat back. Especially for an Empire reboot. Look at Rome II with DEI installed. Use as a guideline for future releases. The attention to detail. Growing populations, maintaining military supplies, building out diverse armies and navies to fight across the known world. Dominating trade routes and cornering resources. I want to see global supply and demand for in the game economy. Its fun to be able to manipulate markets to influence my friends and enemies. This is obviously somewhat accomplished by going back to trade route manipulation. Working dynamic elections when appropriate would be fun as well. If you had to whip votes, help people campaign, and manipulate counts -- then actually watch the results play out. Negotiations between monarchs would also be awesome if they played like Rockstar's LA Noir. Lofty goal on that maybe, but just a thought. Negotiating with the Pope over some bread and wine while he tries to talk you into walking to the middle east in plate and mail?!?! Naval combat - esp. for empire is also just the bomb. I don't care about the bugs. Its still awesome. Play Darthmod and tell me you ain't having a good time. Cannons, pirates, ironclads (shout out Shogun II) - lets get all that going again moving forward thanks.
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Last Updates| Steam data | 07 April 2025 00:20 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 12 April 2025 06:52 |
| Steam price | 15 April 2025 04:49 |
| Steam reviews | 14 April 2025 22:08 |
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Online players
68
Developer
Creative Assembly
Publisher
SEGA
Release
11 Oct 2023
Platforms
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