Summary
Fun historical city-building sim
The Good
Pharaoh has the same addictive gameplay as
Caesar III, Pharaoh's immediate predecessor. But where Caesar III had you building cities in the ancient Roman Empire, Pharaoh has you building cities in Ancient Egypt.
The game mechanics are somewhat similar to the
SimCity series. You can lay down roads, zone housing, and provide infrastructure. The similarity ends there, however. Unlike the SimCity series, Pharaoh requires you to take a much more hands-on approach.
In the SimCity games, you don't have to provide anything to your citizens other than zoning and municipal infrastructure. You didn't have to provide them with food or goods -- they took care of that themselves. In Pharaoh, you have to provide all of your citizens with the things they need to live a happy, productive life, including food, religious facilities, recreation, and so on.
When you lay down housing plots, citizens will move into your city. The homes built by these first citizens are small, dirty, and prone to fire. In order to get your citizens to upgrade their houses to larger, cleaner, less risky dwellings, you have to provide them with infrastructure. First, each house must be provided with clean water from a Water Supply. Next, each house must have food from a Bazaar. Then each house must have access to basic religious facilities. And so on. As each one of these goods or services is provided, the housing evolves to more advanced forms. And more advanced housing equals more people to work your industries or more tax money from local nobles.
This "hands on" approach makes the game challenging, as it requires you to provide your citizens the services they need while simultaneously maintaining enough additional workforce to keep your industries running (since your revenue is based on exports from your industries).
Another fascinating aspect of Pharaoh is that the help section for the game contains tons of interesting facts and trivia about life during the real Ancient Egypt. If you're a history buff, you'll often find your game being put on hold as you surf through the historical info and learn about real Egyptian life 3000-4000 years ago.
The Bad
The only critique I have about the game is that the Monuments (Pyramids, the Sphinx, etc) can take a LONG time to build. Make no mistake, the Monuments are a fascinating addition to Pharaoh, and they make the game seem like more than just a city-building sim. So I'm glad they have them in the game.
But jeez, some of 'em are HUGE, and take
forever to build. The Stepped Pyramid Complex took over 50 game years to complete, start to finish. You'll have a working, functional city which requires very little in the way of maintenance and monitoring within the first 10 years of any mission, which means that for long Monument construction projects you'll spend most of your time just staring at the screen, waiting for the construction to finish.
The Bottom Line
Pharaoh is a fabulous, addictive look back into the world of Ancient Egypt. Highly recommended.
