City building Pharaoh on Steam: Players are not warming up yet

It’s been a few days since developer Triskell Interactive and publisher Dotemu released the Pharaoh remake, A New Era, on February 15th. Until the end of the month, interested parties can get the new edition of the 24-year-old classic Sierra body for a 15 percent reduced price of just under 20 euros from the sales platforms Steam and GOG to back up. A look at the player reviews, which have been able to mature for a week since the release, shows whether it’s worth it.

To date, over 1,300 reviews have been written about Pharaoh (buy now ): A New Era on Steam, but only 64 percent of them are positive. Steam marks this value as “Balanced”. There is no shortage of players in the city building simulations in northern Africa; played at weddings over 6,300 Steam users Pharaoh at the same time.

Pharaoh: A New Era got off to a rather disappointing start

A look at the user comments on Steam may reveal why and where Pharaoh is still stuck. Pharaoh: A New Era is a diamond in the rough but needs to be cut, according to the author of the negative review, which other users have voted the most helpful. According to this, vital features are still missing in the game and annoying bugs that are supposed to make the new Sierra version unplayable are also present in the remake. Other criticisms relate to the lack of a minimap and the state of the game, with several commenters stating that Pharaoh: A New Era appears to be undeveloped and feels more like an Early Access build. The high error density is also confirmed by other negative reviews.

According to some of the positive reviews, however, the new edition seems to have its charm for nostalgics and “Pharaoh veterans”. A Steam user says that the remake feels 1:1 like the original, another speaks of pure “balm for the gamer’s soul”. According to another user, tears even came when the narrator’s voice from the original sounded again. In addition, many quality-of-life improvements have been added.

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Pharaoh: A New Era features 50 missions and over 100 hours of gameplay as a remake of the 1999 Sierra game. The expansion Cleopatra: Queen of the Nile is also included. The developers even took the original soundtrack as a basis and rearranged it with “traditional oriental instruments”. A campaign with six different periods is included, as well as a “free build mode”. The planned map editor will not be ready until the release, but will be delivered as an update. Maybe then there will also be the minimap required by the players.

Source: via Steam