What is it?
Pharaoh came after Caesar III, in
Impressions' City Builder Series, under the
motto: Every good trilogy needs a prequel.
I played the demo on the Caesar II disk back in 1999,
and it had me fascinated, even though, as a demo, it is not really well
made. You play three missions; two are rather trivial tutorial missions,
and then suddenly you have to build a small mastaba in only eleven game
years, without a save function!
You can still download the Demo from many places, even though the official site is gone and the Sierra FTP server does not seem to have it any more. This will be the second version with two gods instead of just one. It was 27.1 MB, videos and additional audio separately at 17.8 MB resp. 19.7 MB, but is now usually found in one bunch of about 53 MB. If you like this kind of game at all, the demo is a treat.
Missions with a time limit, by the way, were dropped from the full game, but reintroduced with the Cleopatra expansion pack.
Much later I actually got the full game, and yes, it delivers what the demo promised. Pharaoh is a highlight in the City Builder Series, and does not even have to hide behind Emperor, though I would not say any more that it is superior. Let me give you a short list of the features it introduced:
- Monuments
- A monument is a building of larger size that you actually build, not just place on the map with a mouse click. There are mastabas, pyramids, obelisks, the Sphinx, and more. Some can be placed at once, but need material and labor to finish, some need quite an amount of material just to be placed.
- Roadblocks
- to control those pesky walkers at least to a certain extent. Whoever has played Caesar III will be able to fully appreciate this innovation.
- Floodplain farming
- It is interesting gameplay-wise and simply fun to watch.
On the whole, Pharaoh is far better adapted to the new walker system than Caesar III. Lion tamers walking through town with a lion on the leash are simply ridiculous. Jugglers, musicians and dancers walking around are at least acceptable. Pharaoh avoids the monumental buildings like amphitheatres, baths and circuses that are inseparable from the Roman culture but do not fit the gameplay and graphic style of the new City Builder games well. And the choice of the Egyptian culture was a lucky one. It has fascinated people for at least two centuries, on the other hand, it is not known well enough to make historical blunders obvious.
| The City Builder Series | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Caesar |  |
 |
 |
VGA |  |
92 |  |
||
| Caesar II | |
 |
SVGA | |
95 | |
|||
| Caesar III | |
|
98 |  |
|||||
| Pharaoh | |
99 | |
Expansion Pack: Cleopatra | |||||
| Zeus | |
00 | |
Expansion Pack: Poseidon | |||||
| Emperor | |
02 | |
multiplayer support | |||||
Reviews and Links
- A fabulous game that captures the era to perfection,
Fresh on GameOver thinks, tiny flaws aside:
Having been a Caesar 3-addict for quite some time and being accustomed with the interface, I found that it takes too much time to get to the good stuff. You have to wrestle through 9 cities before the game gets interesting for the hardcore Caesar 3-players. Building monuments takes a great deal of time and governing a small city that cannot evolve to greater stature is not interesting, but you have to wait until your mastaba is built in order to proceed. That's one of the few things I didn't like about Pharaoh.
- I found that all too often I'd have a smoothly running city with
all of my goals fulfilled except for the monument, KaCee on
WomenGamers regretted:
Once the game got going, many of the same strategies used in Caesar III translated well and I was enjoying myself. Eventually, though, the excitement of building pyramids, tombs, and other monuments wore thin. This is where Pharaoh eventually failed to please: the construction of monuments was so arduous and took so long that I tired of the game.
- Which Way to Thebes?
- Pharaoh Heaven
Some Links About Ancient Egypt
- Tour Egypt is a complete guide to ancient and modern Egypt.
- Kunoichi's Egyptology Page
- An introduction to the history and culture of Pharaonic Egypt
- Ancient Egypt Online
- Ancient Egypt: the Mythology
- OsirisNet.net is mainly devoted to the Tombs of Ancient Egypt.
- Ankh, Snail, Blood, and Knot: On Nefertari’s Tomb
