Total War Pharaoh: Hands-On Campaign Preview

ign.com:

Even as the Nile gleams beneath monumental pyramids and the looming chaos of the Late Bronze Age Collapse nears the shimmering shores of the New Kingdom in Total War: Pharaoh's grand campaign, there's still a certain pesky scarab in the sand. Total War fatigue is real. I've been playing this series since the original Shogun over 20 years ago and seen so many permutations of the formula that it's hard for me to get excited about it again. Especially when I could be playing Total War: Warhammer, which has dragons, hydras, and wizards…

…which is why the couple dozen turns I put into Total War: Pharaoh were so surprising. This ancient sandbox really has gotten me excited about a classic swords-and-sandals Total War again. It's a familiar formula, but Creative Assembly's Sophia studio has proven once again that they can craft an interesting vessel to pour that formula into.

I think it's safe to say that Pharaoh has the most campaign mechanics we have ever seen in this series to date. It's almost dizzying to come to grips with it all, though thankfully, they were introduced to me a little bit at a time. Where to even start? As I took control of Ramesses – not yet known by his royal title Ramesses III, as I had not taken the throne yet – the first thing I noticed was that inhabited locations on the map have been split up into three different levels. We have the major and minor settlements comprising a region that you're used to. But around each of these are slots for outposts, which are sort of like an extra set of building slots, except that they all exist at a distinct physical location that can be quite far from the settlement they're supporting.

I ended up really digging this extra layer of granularity, as it reflects how the