Creative Assembly Loses Breath? First Reviews of Total War: Pharaoh
The first reviews suggest that Total War: Pharaoh is a good, but a bit too safe strategy game. In addition, the game suffers from the traditional ills of the series and has performance problems - possibly caused by Denuvo.
Total War: Pharaoh's release as been scheduled for tomorrow. It's a new strategy game from Creative Assembly. After a love affair with the universe of Warhammer the British are returning to familiar historical ground to take players back to the days of ancient Egypt.
Today at 4 p.m. the embargo on reviews of the game has been lifted. The team's experience and sticking to proven mechanics have resulted in a preponderance of fairly high ratings. "8s" predominate, there are also a few "9s", "7s" and a handful of lower notes. Is that good? That's a question every fan of the genre must answer for themselves.
Total War: Pharaoh - selected ratings
- Wccftech - 9/10
- But Thy Tho? - 9/10
- VGC - 8/10
- Windows Central - 8/10
- Game Rant - 8/10
- IGN - 8/10
- PCGamesN - 8/10
- PC Gamer - 8/10
- TheGamer - 8/10
- God is a Geek - 8/10
- CGMagazine - 7.5/10
- GGRecpm - 7/10
- GameWatcher - 7/10
- GRYOnline.pl - 6,5/10
- VideoGamer - 4/10
- Metascore - 76/100 (based on 28 reviews)
Let's start with the fact that Total War: Pharaoh remains very true to the premise of the series - so if it is close to you, you will not only feel like home in this part, but you will most likely also like it. Especially since the campaign is generally praised and enables us to learn a lot of historical trivia about ancient Egypt.
The latter, in turn, according to reviewers, was presented exemplarily from the visual side. The most praise was given to the dynamic weather system, significantly diversifying the battles. It seems that the sound layer of the game also came out quite well, although in this matter the opinions of critics are somewhat divided.
The same is true of mechanics fresh to the series. There are several of them, and Creative Assembly introduced them quite carefully. Unfortunately, not everyone liked them - which also very often affected the final rating, even though the new solutions refresh the game's formula a bit.
The latter consists, among other things, of large-scale battles, the scale and splendor of which did not impress only a few reviewers. Nearly all, on the other hand, share the opinion that Total War: Pharaoh has performance issues - there is no shortage of suggestions that they are caused by the Denuvo security solution - and ailing AI, which traditionally can't find the path leading to the target, etc. The blame also went to the overly long tutorial, in which the developers try all too hard to explain the rules of the game.
To sum up - it's not bad. Those looking for another historical installment of Total War will certainly not be disappointed. On the other hand gamers expecting a breath of fresh air may. It seems that Creative Assembly has released a fairly safe game.
Or maybe it\s only what it seems to be after the Warhammer sub-series? As I mentioned at the beginning, release of Total War: Pharaoh will take place tomorrow, so player ratings will make it easier to answer this question. The title will be released exclusively on PC. Here you can check the game's system requirements.
