Editor Reviews:

Amazon.com Review:
If building and managing cities is your passion, then Pharaoh is the game for you. It puts you in charge of building the ancient Egyptian civilization, complete with work camps, temples to Bast, and, of course, pyramids.

Unlike some games of this type, where you build one city indefinitely and watch the population climb, Pharaoh is divided into missions. Players are given a goal--a desired population, food storage targets, and cultural achievements. Play continues until the target is met, unless the city succumbs to plagues, debt, or outside invaders first.

Pharaoh is loads of fun. The mission goals are tough but attainable, and city building for a finite time span will appeal to players who find unending development a bore. The usual juggling of civic needs for water, food, entertainment, and jobs is well balanced. The range of industries, religious practices, and municipal services is engaging, and the graphics are clear enough that it is easy to tell what's going on in the city. The mission-by-mission format allows the game to present a few challenges at a time, providing novelties for new levels of play.

Take charge of the Nile Valley and become a legend! --Alyx Dellamonica

Amazon.com Product Description:
Pharaoh is a strategic city-building game set in Egypt, from roughly 2900 to 700 BC. Grow Egyptian villages into thriving metropolises and watch the economy and inhabitants of this exotic land come to life. Interact with the citizens. Observe their culture and habits. Raise their hopes or raze their homes. Manage your city poorly and watch it burn, be pillaged, or collapse in economic ruin. Manage it well, and ultimately, the greatest Egyptian structures will be built in your honor. Your rule will span generations until your dynasty, your royal bloodline, produces a Pharaoh! Pharaoh includes many features never before seen in a city-building series game, including a farming model based on the flooding of the Nile, naval warfare, giant monuments assembled over time, a unique dynastic progression, and variable difficulty levels. It uses 16-bit color graphics, large maps for seamless game play, and a proven interface.

Rating : - Likely the best game I have ever owned
I have played games on my PC for almost ten years. Many of my games were bought, played, and forgotten, but not Pharaoh. Unlike almost all the other games, I have been playing Pharaoh off-and-on for more than five years, and I am currently working through the very large sequence of campaigns for the second time. This game may be from the 90s, but it is a fantastic game with lasting appeal.

At the beginning of the game you choose a family name. You go on to represent this family through a sequence of city-building scenarios taking place from between the Predynastic Period to the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt. These scenarios get progressively more challenging and are affected by real-life historical events.

The mechanics of the game would seem familiar to fans of Caesar III or of other Sierra citybuilding games. It involves building Egyptian cities from scratch. Basic goals include supporting a population, creating a stable economy, pleasing the gods, and satisfying requests from other cities. Pharaoh, however, is a few steps above Caesar III in my opinion. The economic system is more complex as there are more resources and goods to produce and trade, but not so complex as to be confusing. Also, many missions require the construction of monuments. Some of the pyramids you construct are even intended for yourself! These added complexities make the game relatively challenging and at times very time-consuming, but rarely frustraing. I especially enjoy setting up a solid system of producing goods for exports so my city can make a huge amount of money!

For a game produced in the 90s, Pharaoh is hardly dated at all. Graphics are not phenomenally detailed, but because the gameplay screen is a somewhat distant aerial view of your city this is only a minor issue. The sound is especially excellent. When you right-click on a city walker, the walker gives some opinion on your city or an aspect of it and the voices they produce sound not computer-generated, but like a real human voice. I also would like to point out that many games have soundtracks which are either very deficient in presence or quality. Pharaoh is different. The soundtrack is nearly continuous and the musical tracks set quite a great "Ancient Egypt" mood. I have no idea whether this sountrack is some type of authentic world music or not, but it serves its purpose extremely well and is even memorable.

I personally find this game highly enjoying and addicting, but I realize that Pharaoh would probably not appeal to a wide swath of the public. I think Pharaoh suits the tastes of history buffs the best, especially if they enjoy sim-city-like games. This game also would likely suit younger people who might like Sid Meier's Civilization when they get older. (I own Civilization as well, but have spent a lot more time playing Pharaoh.)

In short, although it may largely be a matter of personal taste, I consider Pharaoh an excellent game, perhaps the best I have ever owned. The concept, gameplay, and technical execution all satisfy me greatly.