Pharaoh

                 Reviewed by Carolyn Brown

I came to Ancient Egypt by way of Ancient Rome, having played and
thoroughly enjoyed the predecessor to 'Pharaoh', 'Caesar III'.
Not being much of a strategy game enthusiast (mainly because I'm
useless at them), I first tried the demo of 'Caesar III' purely
out of curiosity and quickly found myself hooked. This series of
city building games does not concern itself with conquering the
neighbours, as with 'Age of Empires', nor is the environment as
sterile as I personally found 'Sim City 3000'. In 'Caesar' and
'Pharaoh' the cities you build quickly fill with people from all
walks of life and it is fascinating to watch them going about
their daily business, knowing that one bad decision on your part
could result in disaster for them. This is most definitely not a
game for people who like military strategy, as this side of things
is mainly concerned with defending your city, and it does not
pretend to be a military strategy game as such.

Once installed, you start by choosing an Egyptian name for
yourself, and there is a good selection supplied to choose from,
both male and female, or of course you can use anything you like.
The idea of the game is that you found a dynasty which progresses
through the Old, Middle and New Kingdoms of Egypt building bigger
and better cities as you go. I think, although I haven't yet been
playing for long enough to find out, that the ultimate aim is to
actually become Pharaoh. The game engine is basically the same as
Caesar III, with a few enhancements.

In each scenario you are given a tract of land to work with,
either a desert region, or somewhere by the Nile where you will be
able to farm. Once you set out a few roads and place some houses
your people will soon start to move in. You then have to provide
them with everything they need to become a thriving community, all
the time being careful not to get too deeply into debt and, very
importantly, paying due tribute to the gods. Unlike Caesar, where
the gods were the same in each scenario, Pharaoh uses a
combination of different ones for each city, with one major god
and two minor ones. These all have to be placated with temples,
shrines and festivals or they will wreak havoc on your city. I
know, from reading the forum on the Pharaoh web page,
www.pharaoh1.com, that there are quite a lot of people who
actively dislike this aspect of the game as they do not believe
that these old gods could actually cause harm or bring blessings,
and they would prefer to be able to turn the 'god effects' off, as
you could in Caesar, once you had the patch. (In the demo of
Pharaoh you can do this, but not in the finished game).

Once your city is up and running, the buildings you can place vary
with each scenario, but basically consist of farms (grain,
lettuce, barley, flax etc), various religious structures, tax
collectors, schools, libraries, physicians, apothecaries,
businesses such as potters, weavers, jewellers, brick makers, wood
cutters, papyrus makers, also clay pits and quarries. There is
even an embalmer!  Military structures are also provided for, such
as forts and weaponsmiths. You cannot watch your buildings being
constructed, as you can with 'Age of Empires', but most of them
are beautifully animated.

One area of the game which caused major problems for people,
myself included, with Caesar III, was the mechanism of storage and
distribution of goods. This was complicated and caused more
problems than anything else, judging by the questions raised on
the game's website. Apparently this is supposed to have been
improved in 'Pharaoh' although it does work in basically the same
way, and I still find it tricky to get the goods distributed
properly among the citizens. It does get easier with practice,
though.

Once you have progressed through the early training scenarios,
Pharaoh starts commanding you to build monuments, starting with
simple tombs and leading eventually to great pyramid complexes.  I
have only just completed my first stepped pyramid, and although it
took ages, it was fascinating to watch its construction, brick by
brick. In some of the reviews I have read, though, a frequent
complaint is that the larger pyramids take too long and make the
game rather boring. I haven't yet got to that stage, so I can't
comment.

The game comes with a really good, thick manual, containing all
you need for the game plus lots of snippets of info about Ancient
Egypt. The graphics are beautifully and lovingly drawn, and there
is a lot of atmosphere there, which also applies to the music. I
am playing on just above the minimum system required, a Cyrix
PR200MMX, with only 32 Mb of RAM. The absolute minimum is a P133,
32Mb RAM, and the minimum install is 300Mb HD space.  On my
machine the game runs OK at the default resolution of 800 x 600,
but it is considerably faster at 640 x 480, and the graphics are
still very sharp and easy on the eye.

To sum up, I can thoroughly recommend this game to most people. I
think that almost all strategy players, except die hard combat
fanatics, will enjoy it. If you loved Caesar III, then you will
almost certainly love this.




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