14.3.2006

Here you will have to control city after of skilled egyptians as you shape their culture, land and life. Each new level brings you a new area of land to develop as you see fit. You must build houses for immigrants to live in, food for them to eat, temples for them to worship, water for them to drink, places fo leisure, places for education, places for the dead. You will have to suffer the hardships of war, famine, disease and drought while you struggle to keep your city alive and cmplete the tasks you are set. But you will attend festivals, watch dancing and plays, watch your workers complete pyramids and see your cities and your people thrive!Pros:>The graphics are exellent,you can see each individual person, their faces, their clothes etc. It all looks very realistic, from the trees in the wood to the rocks int he desert. Even the splashes made by the fish in the sea!>It has lots of help pages that pop up with new information about anything you have not yet encountered, with clear instructions and detailed, colourful pictures too.>The game, quite frankly, is fun to play, watching your cities grow, your goals being completed, your allies respecting you after all your hard work and devotion!Cons:>It can get v.v.boring when, in the later levels of the game, you have to build pyramids. Each pyramid contains about 1000 bricks, you recieve about two blocks every 15 minutes (if you're lucky!)DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG YOU HAVE TO WAIT??? I say grab a drink, biscuit and a book before you begin! And then there's also the cost of the bricks you use, and to be honest, it ain't cheap!>Money is yes a problem, unlike some of the other games similar to Pharoah e.g. Zeus, every time you get on to a new level your money is put back to a certain amount, so if you finish a level on, say, 50,000 deben, when you get onto the next level you are put onto about 15,000 deben, apparently enough to start a city. I think not. In some levels you can also run into enormous debt, which is IMPOSSIBLE to repay, your debt just gains a mind of its own, you have to have a good income before you spend to much when you try to complete your goals. (a quick tip, make sure you tax ALL your people, not too much mind you, but so that you have a steady income. Also, start trading as soon as you can, preferably several items! If you have nothing you can sell from your own city, import a raw material, develop it and then sell it, for example, by flax, turn it into linen YOURSELF and then sell it as linen, a quick way to profit!)>War isn't as big a part of the game as i thought it would be. If a country says they are sending an army over, they don't mean an army, they mean about four people, honestly, you only need one battalion, there's no point in having any more, you simply don't need more!>Okay, last complaint! sometimes when you think you have completed a goal, i.e. you have done everything it asks, you don't always instantly complete the level, sometimes you have to wait a bit, sometimes, if say one of your goals was to have a culture rating of 12, you may have done that, but in the several seconds it took you to go to the loo it may have decreased to 2, without you noticing! Sometimes you have no idea why the level won't finish so you can move on, sit it out and keep checking you have completed all your goals!Overall it is a great game, easy to follow, fun and exciting and since it's fairly old it's cheap too! It's definatly worth getting, especially if you see yourself as ruler of a vast and memorable empire!

8.5.2002

Coming from the same team that brought us the acclaimed Caesar III, Pharaoh is based on the same game engine and not only shifts the action to ancient Egypt, but also builds upon the foundations of it's predecessor to create an even more detailed and satisfying game.In Pharaoh you are bestowed with the task of raising a numerous cities from the desert itself, with the intention of doing it well enough to earn yourself a promotion, which conseqentally leads to you being assigned to bigger and more important cities. As in Caesar III numerous factors have to be catered for so as to keep your city running; most notably food, entertainment, religious facilities and sanitation. When these 'core'needs are in place you can get down to improving the lives for your citizens in different areas of your city, which will encourage richer (and thus more taxable)folks to move in. Education, health, fire prevention, crime, and immigration all have to be tackled for you to progress. From time to time your shining city might also be situated in a hostile region, so military matters also have to be seen to, else your enemies start destroying all of your hard work. Whilst this military element is by no means as sophisticated as say Shogun, or even your standard RTS game, it certainly adds an element of suspense and threat to the proceedings.Where Pharaoh does differ from Caesar III however, it genuinely succeeds in adding to the enjoyment of the game. The lifelessness of the desert means that the Nile has a huge importance to your city, with all farming being based upon it's banks and subject to it's temperamental inundation cycles. Unlike Caesar, Pharaoh takes place over a much broader time period, covering the Egyptian Kingdom from it's primitve beginnings to the Ptolemy governership. This means that not only is Pharaoh at least partly historically accurate, but the huge time frame adds variety to the gameplay. Perhaps the greatest new innovation however is the introduction of 'monument building'. Often you will be ordered to build vast structures such as mausoleums, obelisks and ,yes, pyramids to improve the prestige of your city, and Egypt itself. Such building projects not only require founding numerous construction guilds, but also HUGE amounts of resources, in particular bricks. This inevitably places pressure upon you to import goods from other cities, and to focus all your attention on completing the project. Just don't get too distacted, else the rest of your city fall down whilst you're not watching!Phaorah graphics are excellent for a game of it's type, and it's music evokes Egypt effectively. Gameplay is also well thought out, with a relatively fair learning curve. Having said that Pharaoh remains a very detailed management sim, which for some people can prove to too overwhelming. Those who like fast paced games may also find themselves bogged down by levels which often require many hours of work to just complete, let alone master. It should also be said that whilst the mission structure gives a purpose to your building schemes, it also means that following every promotion you have to start over from scratch, which can grow a bit frustrating and tedious after a while.This said though, Pharaoh remains a game of great quality, and a must for anyone who likes their building/historical sims. At such a low-price I'd have to reccommend it to anybody.

11.5.2004

Pharoah is a simulation city-building game, based on Ancient Egypt, which allows you to build up cities from little mud huts to the great metropolises (plus pyramids, mastabas, statues and Sphinxes), while also providing neat little windows on demand to explain the real history. It looks complicated to the first time player, but it actually isn't that bad, and if you do get stuck, it's one of the few programs I've ever seen whose Help function is worth the time someone spent writing it.It's also not too stressful, unless things go entirely Blair-shaped, which is easy enough to avoid, although in all honesty while buiding a big pyramid things can go a little too far the other way. In other words,

23.9.2010

And I've been doing it ever since. My dad bought me this in the spring of 2000. To cut to the chase, this game is about building cities in ancient Egypt. In my opinion, the fun in playing games is about doing things that you can't do in real life, and city-building in ancient Egypt is a good example of one of those things. You will start by building some humble cottages and maybe even a well for your people. You will have to provide food, water, entertainment, health care etc., and as you do so, your city will evolve. If you need more money, you can build a tax collectors office. You decide how much tax the people are going to pay. Low tax will make you poor but popular (at least for a while),

8.7.2004

It took hundreds of years to complete the pyramids... and i'm not talking about real life.Pharaoh is basically a repackaging of Caesar 3 with a few worthwhile improvements, and is very similar indeed to Zeus, the next in the line.Like these other games Pharaoh offers a challenge set in a pretty atmospheric surroundings with some nice graphics and music. You will be pretty proud when you get your first big palaces, let me tell you.However the flaws include the ridiculous amount of time you will need to spend on this game doing rather repetitive missions, building very similar cities or carrying out military quests which are not particularly rewarding- the combat system is overly simplistic and

21.2.2004

Another Building game from sierra you say, true it is but in a totally different scene.The City scene takes you to the deserts of egypt to beginning your career in the shadows of the pharaohs and the best known civilastion in the world.The basic priniples are the same, to build a city of any size and might.whats the difference then?1) the graphics have improved wuite a bit from the ceasar range.2) the city is more complex needing more governing on your behalf so more interaction.3) (the best bit i think) the pharaoh game can build pyramids! a number of different styles and sizes often based in the campaign but also in open play too.Pharaoh also has other "ups" on ceasar,

23.1.2004

Pharaoh is a fairly old and basic game, but nevertheless enjoyable. In it you build a small Egyptian settlement and develop it to a huge, sprawling city. The game is very easy to pick up, as the missions introduce the different buildings and options gradually. However, these missions do start to seem very similar after a while, and building city after city from scratch can become boring. However, there are many different aspects of being a ruler of your city that you can concentrate on. For example, you could try to establish as many trade links as possible with other cities, or attempt to produce and farm a wide range of crops and products. You could attempt to upgrade your citizens'

11.10.2004

This is a classic empire building game. In the same category of caeser and zeus you can lead the greatest ancient nation through it's full and rich history, without leaving the comfort of you own computer room. Pyramid's, the sphynix, obelisks. You name it you can make it, build you own city on an authentic base or lead your nation through the predynastic area right up to the new kingdom. With wars invasions and monuments on the way there's no way you're gonna get bored. One of the plusses or minuses is the fact that people have a mind of their own, you don't control the bazaar salesmen, he comes and goes as he pleases. Any empire builder needs to check this game out,

27.8.2008

Hours and hours of gameplay. Personally I must have wasted a week of solid gaming time. There is a real depth to gameplay because you not only have to control what you build in the city but you can also have to manage the smaller things like what food / items can go to your markets.The game starts in nomadic times. Moving through the era of city states and into the old kingdom, middle kingdom & new kingdom.Personally even though they are used it is a definate must buy (hell it's a penny). All in all a good game with hours of gameplay.As a final note despite the product saying 95/98 I have no problem playing the game on XP & Vista!

8.8.2011

I bought this for my wife, and I've harsdly seen her since.An excellent game if you get into it.It needs a lot of time to complete.Excellent value for money.

20.3.2013

game from my childhood that i just needed to pla again. old school but sometimes that is the best way

8.2.2015

Excellent. If yours doesn't work then go have a look on GOG - this is an old game!

16.5.2016

I love to play Pharaoh. I do it for years and it never gets old!

18.6.2015

up to now pleased

30.5.2018

Great old game.

Pharaoh: Gold (PC) - Reviews

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