Pharaoh: A New Era Not Appreciated by Players; Fixes Needed

It seemed that the return of Pharaoh as a remake titled Pharaoh: The New Era turned out to be quite successful. Reviewers seemed to be plased with the game, even though it was far from revolutionary. Apparently, players are of a different opinion, because currently Pharaoh: The New Era has mixed ratings on Steam.

So far, the situation is not dire: 65% of more than 1.3 thousand users gave the game a positive rating. Nevertheless, this is still a significant contrast to the widespread praise from reviewers. Especially since, as is often the case on Steam, some reviews are positive in name only. Let's add that at launch, favorable reviews accounted for about 75% of all ratings on Valve's platform.

This begs the question: are these negative reviews the result of the title's actual ills, or did nostalgia do its part? Unluckily for Triskell Interactive, the reviews on Steam seem to point mostly to the former option.

Yes, allegations about the visuals (described as "too cartoonish" or "like a mobile game") can be considered subjective. The same applies to the appearance of the interface, but this is not the only thing for which players criticize the new Pharaoh.

Allegations against the interface and the game as a whole can be divided into two categories. The first is elements changed from the original or even removed. The lack of a minimap and the ability to rotate the camera hurt even satisfied fans, as did the absent support for certain resolutions (including wide screens).

The battle system, on the other hand, was not so much changed as de facto removed (i.e., the command typical of RTS games was removed). Players admit that the battles in the original left much to be desired, but - in their opinion - the developers should rather try to improve this system or develop a completely new one.

Some Pharaoh veterans did not appreciate the new layout and interface.Source: Triskell Interactive / Dotemu.

With this, we come to the second category of relatively objective objections: "new era" Pharaoh is too faithful to the original in some places. The developer has changed the interface to "less Egyptian", while failing to improve a few elements that could have annoyed already in the original, let alone after 23 years of video game design progress (for example, the need to click through advisors to consult the gods).

On top of that, there are problems that bear little relation to the original. Not everyone is complaining about bugs in the game (other than visual glitches), but a fair number of players report numerous bugs related to building and trading, among other things. The problem with getting to mission objectives after the initial notification is closed has also given the players a hard time.

So far Pharaoh: The New Era has not received a major update that could eliminate these issues. The developers have limited themselves to releasing a hotfix and a reminder that work on the map editor has been put on hold in order to focus on fine-tuning the game. Apparently, another patch set is on the way.

However, one wonders if the developers will be willing and able to address complaints about missing features, interface, etc. Nevertheless, many players do not complain excessively about the presence or lack of some of them. Especially the RTS-like combat system.