Customer Reviews

PHARAOH GOLD

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

We had purchased this game several years ago,but the disc became too scratched to use. We ended up rebuying it because it truly is a family favorite.

In the original Pharaoh game, one uses logic to plan, build, and manage increasingly more complex Egyptian cities. The cities must include a means to feed and shelter the inhabitants, industry, entertainment, goverment services, educational services, and religious facilities. You keep a delicate balance between spending too much money (going into debt) and not enough money (not providing the services/facilities/jobs necessary to keep your inhabitants happy). While it seems relatively simple, it's not always an easy balance to strike.

As you progress further into the game, you must not only keep your inhabitants happy, but you must also develope foreign relations, trade routes, and prepare for war.

Cleopatra is the expansion pack for the Pharaoh series.

Overall, our family enjoys this game, and it is one of the few that they have come back to over and over for years. As a parent, I appreciate that this game requires a great deal of thought and patience to beat. The graphics, while not as quality as games produced today, are not so dated as to make the game unappealing. The graphics are the main reason we gave the game a 4 - otherwise, we like it enough to give it a 5.

This is the kind of game that you'll initially sit down at, after playing for ten minutes remark "This is stupid. I'll go till the end of this stage then its in the dumpster." then find yourself playing and realize its 2am next Thursday. The missions are entertaining, the citybuilding aspect is intuitive and surprisingly complicated to master, and the system its all based on, whhile frustrating at times, is easy to work with.

Gameplay: 9/10. The setup is the same as any city building/Sim City design, with more foucs obviously on the nuts and bolts of running a city. You have to create a good balance between residence and industry, keep them close together without sacrificing appeal, and still keep enough space and people to run all of your services and buildings. And keep a good, strong armed force. A couple points fall through the cracks that are annoying, and when you stumble upon them you'd wish the game had mentioned them, but those are few and far between.

Story/Audio: 10/10. The voices of the citizens are amusing and actually very helpful in determining what your cities problems are, if any exist. The narration is accurate to time frame and history, as far as I'm aware, and follows the rise and fall of the kingdom. While it would've been nice to have more mission audio, what little there is still manages to be very entertaining.

Graphics: 7/10: Being as far along as technology is, most people will frown at these. Bear in mind how old the game is, and its not too terrible a flaw for an otherwise fantastic game. The best part is considering your system is probably a 1.5 - 3.5 GHz, 2 Gb RAM setup, this game is so compact and streamlined it'll run smoother than your screensaver.

Overall: 9.5/10. I picked this back up after I stopped playing almost 6 years ago. A game with that kind of staying power is impressive. The history and involvement the game has is incredible, and while it'll get repetitive by the end, until you start to get sick of it, you'll be hopelessly addicted.

I have the old, original discs for Pharaoh and Cleopatra. I have always loved this game, and when I got a new PC with Vista I was concerned that it wouldn't play. I had lost track of my Cleopatra disc, but finally found it a few days ago and decided to see if it would install and play on my new computer.

To my pleasant surprise, it did install and plays just fine. No crashes, no bugs, no glitches at all. The game plays just like it did on my old computer, and it's just as fun as I remember.

I origionally bought this game in 2000 and played for endless hours. I lost sleep over it at times. I played off and on over the next six years. It's challenging and entertaing at the same time. My ex took it with him when he left and I found myself dying to play, so I bought this one and it has been great. I can't wait to get to the second disk and see what they added.

I had this game when I was younger and was quite excited to be able to play it once again. Age is no factor when it comes to enjoying this game and it certainly is no hinderance to understand how to operate the different industries and services you can set up in the game, either. This would be a great game for kids and it really doesn't look all that aged graphically. They'll never know it's a game from the 90's.

I like old games, i can deal with them. and if you can deal with them too, then i highly recommend it. If you like high end graphics type gaming, then don't consider buying it. IMPORTANT: if you have (64 bit) windows vista, this game will be full of problems. I never did work out all the problems and haven't yet played it on my computer. Fortunately, there are other computers in my house that can run this game so i was able to play it.

I've had this game for years and love the Cleopatra expansion pack, too. It has worked on every Windows platform until Windows 7. With this operating system, the Pharaoh disk will load and play just fine (with patch download), but once the Cleopatra disk is downloaded, the program fails to run at all. Many users report this issue on forums such as HavenGames.com, but the game may be played in Windows XP compatibility mode. My system is Windows 7 Premium, and therefore not eligible for the XP mode download. If you are operating Professional or higher, you can download the XP mode and enjoy the complete game.

And I've been doing it ever since. My dad bought me this in the spring of 2000. To cut to the chase, this game is about building cities in ancient Egypt. In my opinion, the fun in playing games is about doing things that you can't do in real life, and city-building in ancient Egypt is a good example of one of those things. You will start by building some humble cottages and maybe even a well for your people. You will have to provide food, water, entertainment, health care etc., and as you do so, your city will evolve. If you need more money, you can build a tax collectors office. You decide how much tax the people are going to pay. Low tax will make you poor but popular (at least for a while), and high tax will make you richer but less popular. But then again, money is needed to make the city better. As your city gets bigger and better, you might even consider building the ultimate construction in the game: The Pyramid(!) If you're not interested in history now, I almost guarantee you will be after playing this game. I can't think of a game that has given me more hours of fun than this. Oh wait, the other games in Sierra's City Building series actually have: "Caesar", "Caesar II", "Caesar III", "Caesar IV", "Master of Olympus - Zeus", "Emperor: Rise of the Middle Kingdom" are all made with this same great city-building-recipe as Pharaoh. All highly recommended (including expansions). The other games I listed are set in Rome (Roman Empire), Greece and China respectively.

A combination of Caesar III, Sid Miers Civilizations and Maxis' Sim City games from the late nineties, Pharaoh takes a lot of what made those games best sellers and combines it into a pretty entertaining, if at this point dated, game. Back in the 90s, "God" style games in which you care for and manage a teeming world of buildings and their denizens were having their hay-day.

While Maxis continued to churn out the Sim City franchise, and Civilizations and it's many spin offs have become legend, most games are not either FPS (First Person Shooters) or RTS (Real Time Strategy). The 90s produced some exceptional top-down city management games, and Pharaoh is a good example. Unfortunately, just like the Egyptian empire that you play in the game, poised at its height of glory, this style of game has fallen largely to the wayside. That's unfortunate.

A city management game at heart, Pharaoh gives you much more control over what you build and where you build it than Sim City games. You choose which buildings you want, and where they will be built, allowing you to create a city to your exact design.

War making does come into play, but it is secondary to city building. Many of the missions will require you to create an army and lead them to victory, but this feels largely anticlimactic compared to the fast paced city management that requires 80 percent of your time.

This game is quite complex, entertaining, and truly a classic of the genre. If you're considering buying it, there are other options like Caeser III, but I think this is a superior game. If you like strategy games from the 90s, this ones definitely for you.

I enjoy this game greatly. I've played this game before, but had lost the cd, and had upgraded my computer since. But this version is great, works well, music's normally peaceful and enjoyable, and just a fun game to play with.