Total War: Pharaoh - We've played Creative Assembly's next historical strategy title

After Total War Saga: Troy, speculation started on what time period would get the Total War treatment next. Rather conservatively, Creative Assembly has stayed within almost the same time period, and just moved the setting less than 2000km away to Egypt's New Kingdom. Historically we are still looking at the height of the Empire, and avoiding the downwards spiral towards the late-late Bronze Age when everything comes to a crashing conclusion.

CA has, by some foresight, decided to focus on the glorious zenith of Ancient Egypt, thus avoided touching on the Ptolemaic dynasty and its last most famous ruler, Cleopatra VII, and thus the end of the pharaonic rule of Egypt, instead leaving that trainwreck to Netflix. Instead we get a good dose of historical learning as the Hittites are a big part of the game and also exist as several playable factions.

Here, CA introduced us to a number of new game mechanics that is pretty central to daily life and religion in Ancient Egypt, with weather being the most notable, and affecting your battles. However, as a lot of information has leaked the last few days, including information unknown to those that attended the preview, we will to the best of our ability try to include that as well.

Battles are, as always, all that the rather restricted preview gave us. We were given the opportunity to try three different setups. A basic land battle with starting units, an advanced land battle that also included an oasis, swamp, and late game chariot units, and a siege battle, this time in the role of the defender - which is a lot harder with the reduced range and fire rate of your towers.

These premade, pitched battles don't do the factions or leader full justice as there are eight of them in the game, each representing a faction that either wants to unite the lands and become the new ruler of the Empire, or in case of the Hittites, take over the massive desert. Each also vary in difficulty, however, we did manage to win all three in the first try.

Competing for the Egyptians are Seti, Ramesses, Tausret and Seti II, who battled Amenmesse, also a playable faction giving way to another two playable lords, Irsu and Canaanites' Bay, and the Hittites' Suppiluliuma and Kurunta. How the nomads are going to play will be, well, interesting, as they were basically ruling over their own territory, and had little to do with the pharaonic power struggles of the Egyptian Kingdom. Total War has truly become an interactive history lesson, and a rather complicated one.

This also means that you are to rule over a country that is part fertile river soil, but mostly just sand dunes far beyond the sea, and Creative Assembly has done their best to try and make the leaders interesting and authentic, while also giving a more strategic feel to a game that can seem a bit less complex when 99% of your troops are lightly armoured infantry. We experienced the classic sandstorms that now have to be taken in to consideration, with rain and even fire influencing your battles as well. It makes for a more dynamic and realistic feeling that we surprisingly actually like.

Another new element is armour condition, just as in real life, your units' armour won't be able to maintain integrity after having been stabbed 456 times in the same place, and will therefore eventually dwindle away and be of no use. This adds a deeper tactical sense to how units, especially ranged ones, are used, and makes non-armour piercing units a lot more useful in the late stages of a battle.

We personally exploited this during the siege battle scenario, where we tricked the enemy to follow one of our fast moving units, thus forcing them to move past arrow shooting towers and archer units, which removed their armour enabling our own fast unit, who would otherwise not stand a chance, to easily shred them to pieces with their short range bows, normally only useable against lightly or non-armoured foes.

So, has there been any improvements since Total War Saga: Troy, or is it just a reskin? Well, as we have not had a change to see the campaign map, campaign mechanics or similar, it's difficult to know what mechanics have been reused, remade, omitted or what has been made anew. But we can say for sure that the blandness, the lack of differentiation of units is a thing of the past.

Playing the three battles, you get a very distinct feeling about what units are made for what, who is designed for damage, who is used to counter heavy armour, what units excel at flanking, which are built for the frontline, and it's a lot easier for the player to identify and use each unit type correctly and to the greatest efficiency. With the changes to high speed charges that came with Total War: Warhammer III, a more chariot-based army is also a viable option, and while we dislike the extremely micromanagement intensive playstyle of a chariot-heavy army, it suddenly has become a lot more interesting to maximise your chariots in a "hit-n-run" style of combat for range, alongside high impact charges.

While release is still months away, it still felt pretty finished, there were no glitches or bugs that we noticed, and while small balance changes and adjustments might be needed, we personally wouldn't mind playing it as it is right now.