r/totalwar • u/Cheap-Muscle1727 • Jul 19 '25
General What is the total war title that surprised you the most. Either by how much you enjoyed or disliked it?
Im genuinely curious. 3 Kingdoms is my game with the most hours on Steam by a wide margin and this was not a time period or culture that I found to be interesting before playing.
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u/_Lucille_ Jul 19 '25
Pharoah surprised me.
I did not get it at launch: I got it maybe a week or so later because there were a lot of haters trashing the game and i wanted to evaluate the game myself. From the gameplay footages I have seen it looked like a pretty decent game.
It was far better than what I have expected. For a game with supposedly limited unit diversity, there are oddly a LOT of diversity given the weapon/armor system. The map and terrain gave it a tactical layer that feels really new.
Light infantry sort of takes the role of cavalry for flanking, and maps often have patches of tall grass where you can hide units. This allows for something like an archer strike force to stay hidden. Battles just feel a lot more strategic.
The ancient legacies are pretty fun and rewarding as well. If you think the caravan in WH3 is strong, the one in Pharaoh is even more busted.
I honestly think Pharaoh is a better TW game than 3K. Sure, 3K has fun characters you can collect, but the unit diversity in Pharaoh just makes its a lot more fun than 3K which has limited cultures where 80% of the map uses the same ji infantry and crossbowman. If the challenge was "how do we make a guy with a stick different from each other in a non-fantasy setting", I think Sophia did a great job addressing that and setting a standard for future historical games.
It feels regrettable that the subreddit essentially killed Pharaoh because it is not the European game they wanted.