City building sims scare me. Most of the time I have enough trouble organizing my day, how could I possibly manage a city? For this reason most of the games in this genre send a shiver down my spine. It can be a daunting task, not only do the citizens depend on you for security and comfort, but you depend on them to make all your plans happen, and sometimes they aren't too cooperative because they didn't get whatever it was they wanted. Pharaoh, however, is an exception to this. Even with the attention to detail Impressions Games had put in this title, it still manages to be user friendly.
Water, food, minerals, entertainment, and religion are not only the multiple factors the Pharaoh must deal with, but all of these effect themselves as well. Everything is connected in this weave of demands brought about from creating a large living area for your people. Lacking in one area can create major problems in another, and even be the downfall of your empire.
With everything hinging on the Pharaoh, the task seems even more daunting. Yet this game is saved by an almost ingenious set of help menus and screens which explain almost each and every single aspect of creating, maintaining, and expanding your city. For example if you need help on how to create the water system for your city, hotlinks will be peppered in the help window that links to relating items that link to more relating items. This interface makes so much information available, that even someone new to city building sims might not find things so bad. By having such assistance and knowledge at the players fingertips, the burden of ignorance is lifted, and the real fun is allowed to take place.
The player usually starts with a decent sized plot of land. This plot of land is also different from others, and will also fall under different rules of geography. The biggest effect to deal with is water, the lifeblood of any civilization. One aspect of water management involves making sure every dwelling is fully stocked with water, and in effect your citizens will be more productive. The rivers pose the next problem. These bodies of water rise and fall with the passing of time. This change can lead to the devastation of crops if one is not careful.
The rest of the necessities are provided by different skilled people that are pulled from the population, not added to. If a player has a small town, building too many skilled labor workshops might lead to under staffing. If a town lacks the needed people for all the jobs, unemployment goes up, and once again the work of the Pharaoh is brought to a screeching halt.
The city you build is presented on a tilted two dimensional plane, with beautiful two dimensional graphics that are very well detailed. The monuments are well worth the effort to build, and I really must say there is nothing more satisfying than seeing a city that you created prosper. The side menu bar is a little confusing at first since it is based on selecting hieroglyphic type images that represent different aspects of Egyptian society. It takes a little time but once the player associates the images with the functions, there shouldn't be any problem. Although this might be deemed as confusing, the hieroglyphic based menu bar is just another example of impressions Games' attention to detail.
Making the decisions that will decide the fate of your city is certainly no easy task, so like any Pharaoh, the player has a nice sized group of advisors that specialize in certain areas of city management. When tough decisions need to be made, it is really good to be able to turn to some others that can help you see some things you might not have considered before you build that juggling school or palace.
The game has two modes of gameplay. The first mode is the single player campaign. At the beginning of each section a the player is given a set of mission instructions. Usually this just involves getting your city up and running as well as attaining a set standard. This is probably the best way to start the game because it sets a nice pace for you and things tend to be rather predicable. Once a player has been through enough of the single player, they can change modes and just build a city without having the game structure set in stone. This is where the title's replay value really shines, since there are quite a few land maps on which a person can lay their city out. This mode tests the city building mettle of the player far more than the single player missions do.
One complaint of mine seems to be that the gameplay sometimes tends to run on the idea that "Anything that can go wrong, will.". This can make some games one micromanagement failure to another. Constantly error checking and trying again can become tedious for some players, but in all honesty, this is sadly how efficient most cities can run. If you practice enough though, I have no doubt that a person can create the perfect egyptian utopia.
The final mood-setting piece of this title is definitely the soundtrack. All the tunes have some real influence from egyptian culture and at no point does the music interfere with any part of the title. It is simply ambience that allows the mood to be set to even a higher degree.
City-building simulations have always tended to appeal to a rather narrow segment of the market. It really isn't the fault of the developers of these title, because accuracy demands complexity. It is really hard to break complex things down without degrading the level of accuracy in a title. Pharaoh took a totally different approach, and instead of dumbing down the title so it could reach more people, they just found another way to teach the course. This ability has made Pharaoh, at least in my mind, one of the most accessible city building sims ever created.
-- Ryan Thompson
