Recent reviews by R3YNO

As is, the game is very well crafted and challenging. Depending on the map seed you find some maps are way easier than others. At full price it is a little on the pricier end, as the "story mode" is very short, but because of the random nature of the game the different biomes it does have some replay value. I wouldn’t classify it as a city builder as it really feels more of a puzzle game to me. You first put up drones and buildings to restore the map, then once your objectives are in place, you tear down and recycle your stuff and move on to the next map.

One thing that completely puzzles me is that the map cannot be rotated. Depending on the map, some buildings can be hidden or determining if your hill will form a river can be completely obstructed on the height of the tile. Many isometric builders allow the player to rotate the map to mitigate this issue and is absent in this game.

I think this game would benefit from additional DLC drops as I can totally see a desert biome being super hard and interesting. Larger maps could also provide more of a challenge too. For sure would recommend on sale, but at the MSRP it’s a little steep while I completed the base story in about 9 hours.

Pharoah remains one of my favorite games. It was among the first computer games I ever played, and I hold much sentimental value to it. However, when I got the game in the 90s, a fair amount of time passed since then, and it became increasingly harder to play on a modern system without heavy use of modding.
So when I saw this remaster, I was incredibly excited and closely followed the development team's updates. Now that the game is out, I am delighted and disappointed at what is here at launch.
Pharoah is a different kind of city builder, as it is mission-based and almost works like a resource management puzzle. You start with building small villages with huts and grow to sprawling cities building the great pyramids.
The presentation is excellent. The art updates help significantly to modernize but still respect the original designs of all the buildings, sims, roads, and maps. The music also brought me back to my childhood and immersed me in the experience. One perplexing thing with the audio I picked up is that the original sound assets are reused in some areas. At the start of each mission, there is a briefing done by your advisor and its noticeably tinny and low quality. It would be nice to either; get the voice actor to return or have someone else re-record those lines, so it sounds cleaner. The advisor menus, although perfectly functional, had me missing the original classic menus with statues and hieroglyphs in the background.
The considerable controversy many people have brought up that I agree with is that the military functions are entirely different. I don't agree with how they are currently handled. I say presently as the developers have said they plan to look at that function in addition to various bug fixes and features. Given that development was during covid, I am optimistic that the dev team will make fixes, but I am thoroughly enjoying this game and am hopeful that this game reaches new audiences that will love this game and series as I have.

Easily the best city builder game in years. Highly detailed settings and the devs are still adding content after being out for years.

Cool game, nice to see more stealth games worth playing.
Made by the same people as Shank and has a similar art style which is a plus.

Pretty cool, adds another perspective on Dunwall. Focused on themes not explored with the original campaign. Isn't that long, and one of the locations was already in the game. New weapons are cool, some of the abilities got tweaked like blink stopping time if you are stationary. If you can, buy on sale if you feel like the Fallout DLCs where over priced. It's basically the same amount of game-play/price ratio.
The ending has me to believe that there may be another story to be told by a sequel or DLC.

Great game! Setting is unique, gameplay is like a mix of Assassins creed, Bioshock and Human Revolution. Kind of short on easier difficulties but definitely worth checking out as this is one of Bethesda's best!