Pharaoh: A New Era Reviews

It's a good remake of the best city builder of all time. Just the new military system is... questionable (= it sucks). However since military is not the focus of the game it's still fun.

All the charm as the original with just the same game-breaking occasional bugs. It's a LOVING tribute to a hell of a game from back in the day.

Game's amazing, the new interface is a bit weird compared to the old one but you get used to it pretty fast and it has several small improvements compared to the original version; even at full price it's worth buying it

If you played the original run of this game, this version is exactly the same but updated nicely. It was a fun replay.

This game is a delightful little city-builder with charming graphics, beautiful music, and gameplay that leaves me feeling quite accomplished as I watch a small settlement of mud huts evolve into a beautiful, lively city of people of various personalities and charm. It's not too difficult (although I only completed the campaign past the "Old Kingdom" chapter as of this review, which I'll explain), but it still stimulates the noggin just enough to feel rewarding when you get your industry off the ground and start watching the cash flow into your coffers. All in all, it's a pretty nice game. It's just a shame that there is one big flaw that holds it back from being so much better: Monuments and the dreadful amount of time it takes to build them. See, in many missions, you will be tasked with not only reaching a certain score, but also building certain monuments. This doesn't seem like a big deal, since all you need to do is build up an industry to create the materials you need to build them, right? You'd be right... If the mission allowed it. But more often than not, it won't, so you'll be forced instead to import supplies from other settlements in order to build these monuments... Many of which are NOT small projects and require hundreds upon hundreds of stone blocks. But that isn't the worst part. The WORST PART is that traders will only provide a small number of these vital resources with each trip they make to your settlement, and each trading season they are only allowed to trade so much, before you have to wait for the next season to get more. The result?: You spend hours in a single mission that you had long since "won" simply waiting for a trickle of resources to help you properly finish the mission. They weren't kidding when they said the game offers more than 100 hours of gameplay, but they didn't mention that most of it would be just waiting around or doing light tinkering with your city to pass the time while you wait for a monument to finish so you can FINALLY move onto the next mission... Only to end up doing it again and again. It's no wonder most people don't complete the "Old Kingdom" chapter, said to be the longest chapter in the game (in more ways than one). A shame, too, because I still enjoy the game despite this annoying flaw. If you're looking for a bright and colorful historical city builder with industrial logistics chains and economic management, this game is worth giving a shot. Just make sure you pack a little something to read to pass the time during monument building projects... One mission once took me about 8 hours to complete, and it was mostly just waiting for the mission to finally conclude...

A good remake of the original Pharaoh series, well worth the price with good frequent discounts as well. Fans of the original as well as newcomers who like this genre should find plenty of fun in it.

I LOVE THIS GAME!!!!!!!!! I loved the original I love this game I literally bought a windows computer just so i could play this being purely IOS usually and i have 0 regrets. Best thing ever can't recommend enough.

I love this game, it's a great update to the original Pharaoh! The military and battle mechanics are almost non existent which is a little bit of a bummer, but I love being able to have an option to turn on or off the world labor pool. Very well done, and I wish all the old impression games could get a nice update redo like this.

I wish i could recommend this remaster, i really do. I loved the Impressions-games back in the day and can't deny, i hoped for this to be successful to maybe have a chance at a remaster of Caesar III, my intro to the series. I even like the new artstyle, yes, it's slightly cartoony, but personally i think you only really notice if you zoom in all the way, on the whole it looks as it did in my nostalgic-idealized memory and i feel like it's gonna age a lot more gracefully (intro cinematic excluded, i kinda hoped that was a placeholder...). Admittedly i find the new menus/sidebars unintuitive and a lil bothersome but adaptable. The game itself runs smoothly for me, although i would've preferred more resolution options / aspect ratios. Nonetheless, details i managed to overlook and generally enjoy the better part of the... apparently close to 60 hrs i spent in this game in intervals - so it was good enough for me to return every now and then. Now to the things i cannot overlook and lead me to now on the whole not recommend this release: The game has not been updated since Oct. 2023 which in my personal opinion allows no other conclusion than that it is abandoned. There are still common bugs like empty infoboxes popping up and what feels to me like random events, usually concerning the kingdom rating, including the rate at which it goes up and down. At least i can't discern a logical or comprehensible pattern in some missions. I made it to Sawu (mission 30 by my count), in some cases by what felt more like grind/brute force than i remember from the original, but this is where i draw the line. I can't be 100% this mission wasn't equally hard in the original, but it feels like i'd either have to trial and error for hrs till i know when which resource is demanded by the kingdom, cheat my way through or find a way to skip it altogether. OR... i can just reinstall and enjoy the original... So in conclusion, unfortunately to me it feels like a late stage early access title that made some money on nostalgia, but either by lack of interest/income or other factors unknown to me and seemingly not publicized the studio turned away... real shame as the greatness of the original shines through despite everything and maybe the genre could've found a new audience... Update: I had to install a mod to get the cheat to skip the mission to work... can't make this up...

I have been playing Pharaoh since I was a child. Have I every actually completed it? Will I ever actually complete it? Best city builder out there.