Total War: Pharaoh

Poneros said:
I think they've had troubles with every time they shook up the formula with a new major release (of the historical titles). For me it was downhill after Rome 2, which I actually greatly enjoyed even at launch, but even so I didn't think they necessarily moved too far away from the formula. Troy for sure won me back over (and is the only TW I'm playing anymore) so that's why I'm so fond of it and the upcoming spin-off, but I remain aloof towards the more mainline historical titles and have no interest in WH. I think 3K was too much of a let down and all their messaging & attitude leads me to believe they are only going to keep going in a worse direction for those games (at least for my tastes).


No doubt that's played a major role in it, but I think it's probably a lot driven by Sega's financial demands too. Not to mention just good old change over time which has toppled many great studios, see Bioware, Blizzard etc. More often than not if the studio doesn't have a singular owner that's a visionary and which can keep people on task working on that vision, then a drift happens and we see a continual decay until either the death of the studio occurs or it changes so much its unrecognizable.
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I think they have moved a long way away from the original formula which is why the long-term fan base is totally disillusioned with HTW, it's because it's not HTW. The SAGA'S games are just cheap knockoffs of what the series used to be. But if you enjoy these games that's fine, there ought to be room for both but clearly CA have set fire to full-fat HTW and are now selling superhero driven mobile game TW for full price.

I think back to the classcis Rome, MTW2 and Shogun and when they were made and I remember thinking "Just imagine what these games will be like in 10-15 years time" never once did I think they'd look like this, OMG not built upon iteration after interation, but stripped back and ruined instead.

I think you're right about SEGA's financial demands, but I don't care about that I'm the consumer - I care about the quality of the product i'm paying for.
 
Poneros said:
No doubt that's played a major role in it, but I think it's probably a lot driven by Sega's financial demands too. Not to mention just good old change over time which has toppled many great studios, see Bioware, Blizzard etc. More often than not if the studio doesn't have a singular owner that's a visionary and which can keep people on task working on that vision, then a drift happens and we see a continual decay until either the death of the studio occurs or it changes so much its unrecognizable.
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That is true. I don't really follow WH very closely (I enjoyed WH2 for a bit, but realised that unless I really invested a tonne of time into it I wasn't going to get my head around all the mechanics, special abilities and units) but I did catch the outcry about the recent price changes. And the sheer quantity of DLC has been insane. So I can well imagine that Sega are treating it as a major cash cow and reluctant about an old style game in the modern market.
 
Jim99 said:
Yeah Rome 2 was grim. A few of my friends I played Shogun 2 with were so excited about the launch, and then it just fell unbelievably flat. I feel like both Troy and 3K could have been great games as well, but as you say the power fantasy avatars just took all of the focus and the game overall lost out.

It does feel like they've turned the historical series into low budget, second tier games where they're trying to eke out a few quid from the loyalists rather than chasing mass market, but given that the gamble doesn't seem to be paying off I'm surprised that they're still ploughing on.
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I think they chased the mass market with the superhero BS and instead of gaining as larger audience for a niche kind of sub-genre ended up alienating the die-hards and lost more sales than they gained. They also totally lost the casuals with Rome II (that was their chance with hype around TW at it's highest ever point) - since then we've had Attilla which ran terribly, Three Kingdoms a quickly abandoned superhero TW, and some low-effort mobile style garbage.
 
I want to like WH3; I just think the magic and heros are too OP in it now; I reckon I will pick this up on sale I just had a mountain of other games to play :)
 
Apex said:
I think they chased the mass market with the superhero BS and instead of gaining as larger audience for a niche kind of sub-genre ended up alienating the die-hards and lost more sales than they gained. They also totally lost the casuals with Rome II (that was their chance with hype around TW at it's highest ever point) - since then we've had Attilla which ran terribly, Three Kingdoms a quickly abandoned superhero TW, and some low-effort mobile style garbage.
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I remember watching some of the release footage for Rome 2 (AngryJoeShow springs to mind but I know he was mostly compiling the footage of others) and if you weren't a fan of Total War already I can well imagine you'd take one look and think "this is total trash" and not bother again. That clip of the entire enemy army charging a Hoplite shield wall to get to the flag, and getting massacred, is seared into my mind.

Considering how much love there was out there for Rome, yeah, that was a huge opportunity to capitalise and they really threw it away.
 
Jim99 said:
I remember watching some of the release footage for Rome 2 (AngryJoeShow springs to mind but I know he was mostly compiling the footage of others) and if you weren't a fan of Total War already I can well imagine you'd take one look and think "this is total trash" and not bother again. That clip of the entire enemy army charging a Hoplite shield wall to get to the flag, and getting massacred, is seared into my mind.

Considering how much love there was out there for Rome, yeah, that was a huge opportunity to capitalise and they really threw it away.
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Yeah, I remember it well, I also remember the trailers they put out, siege at Carthage springs to mind they had everyone fooled. Benny Hill Total War would have been a more apt title. Looking back to around that time, what they should have done is just hired all the people that mods the classic mods like EB, Surrectum, RTR, Stainless Steel, Third Age etc plus Darth's work, and all the little sub mods and said "Make us some games".

The achilles heel of these games is always going to be AI, but with better people they could have improved their base AI, plus mitigated poor AI with better game design. They left so many great features out of the classic titles as time went on and replaced them with inferior ones, which were then in turn thrown out to be replaced with more half-baked rubbish.

The stregnth of these games has always been the mods and overhauls though, and there's still tons of replayability left, I've just picked up Rome Remastered for a tenner and i'm playing around with RTR Imperium Surrectum 0.5.5 - 0.60 is out later this month, and the new map is absolutely huge.

www.youtube.com

BEHOLD! THE LARGEST TOTAL WAR MAP EVER! - 1700+ Regions - RTR Imperium Surrectum v0.6 Map Showcase!

RIS Weekends kicks off with an absolute banger. Today we'll be showcasing the brand new map, with brand new textures, new regions and new factions. It is abs...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com
 
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Reviews Here, only a few total: 78 / 77% recommend it
opencritic.com

Total War: PHARAOH Reviews

Total War: PHARAOH is rated 'Strong' after being reviewed by 23 critics, with an overall average score of 78. It's ranked in the top 25% of games and recommended by 77% of critics.
opencritic.com opencritic.com

Personally I only care to see what the performance reviews are, but not sure anyone's doing those.
 
www.youtube.com

Total War: Pharaoh Post Mortem

Predictable Launch. Unfortunate. Hopefully CA learns their lesson this time. https://steamdb.info/app/1937780/charts/Please note this is an unofficial video ...
www.youtube.com www.youtube.com



Aaaaaannnddd it's bombed.

CA conclusion: "People don't want HTW".
 
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Shame thought this may have been great, like the era and hopefully they may improve it over time, seem to be saying this a lot about games recently :)
 
Would prefer a new empires tbh for historical.

Not sure why they went with this, sure it's interesting but it's never going to trump Roman legionaries or tuetonic knights, hopefully this is just a small Troy like game and that something bigger is in the works..

All games are released half cooked now, it's what it is.
 
alchal said:
Would prefer a new empires tbh for historical.

Not sure why they went with this, sure it's interesting but it's never going to trump Roman legionaries or tuetonic knights, hopefully this is just a small Troy like game and that something bigger is in the works..

All games are released half cooked now, it's what it is.
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I wouldn't say all games are half-cooked, and this isn't half-cooked, it's just half a game for full price.

They went with this because it's an easy reskin of Troy.

At the end of the day though, CA can't produce anything close to the mods available for their old games. But it would be nice if they actually managed to produce a new game worth modding.
 
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As much as I love strategy games I have never fully understood the TW games.

No idea when it comes to the base building.

I own WH 1 2 and 3.

I did actually finish a campaign with as the Dwarves in WH 1 but WH 2 and WH 3 I totally didn't understand.

WH 3 seems the worst. I started as the evil guys (Balrog fellow) and didn't understand the game play mechanic with the gates that randomly appear.

Completely destroyed any tactics or strategy for me on the actual campaign map.

I gave up.

I shouldn't buy any more of these games again as they are just not for me.
 
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I've been trying to get into this game over the weekend.

I loved the Total War games back in the day, playing the original Rome and Medieval 2 versions for hundreds if not thousands of hours. I've tried getting back into TW games over the past few years (my Steam library shows that I have most of them), but I just find them so inaccessible nowadays.

I was hoping that Pharoh would keep me going till Christmas, but I just don't get on with it anymore. There are far to many systems on the campaign map, yet the battles themselves seem incredibly basic. I struggle to know what to do or what I should be looking at on the campaign map, which of the myriad popups I need to pay attention to, and how all the different options and systems fit together. For someone that is not deeply into TW games, it's a total turn off, it's senory overload and totally baffling from pretty much turn 1. I don't know how they will every get any fresh players to the franchise as it really feels inaccessible.

The battles themselves also seem pretty lame. I don't know whether it's that games have moved on in the last 20 years, but somehow the graphics seems worse than I remember them in Medieval 2 days, and the combat hasn't really evolved at all. I thought Pharoh would be a good way back into the series as the Warhammer stuff I just don't know the universe enough to really get what's going on, but I like the ancient world setting and I was hoping it would be somewhat simplified. Unfortuantely there is huges layers of complexity to the boring parts of the game, and the battles themselves just feel stale and simplistic.
 
TonTom said:
They should just get on with a new Medievel.
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They're no longer capable or interested in making the Medieval III game everyone has been asking for, for over a decade.

They have shown that they will do absolutely anything except what the players actually want. That's why HTW is in the absolute state it's in now.
 
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