Pharaoh

"The only building game that matters!"

I owned all the City building games from the "Caesar" series (the first still being the best), and I always loved them, much more than the Simcity series (I rented some but I never get to really like them). But Caesar 3 was probably the worst in the series: the citizens were real teasers, most entartainment buildings were too big to fit in the most maps and you always had problems with food: never enough of it. Pharaoh is a very similar yet different game: the gameplay is pretty similar, but there are many new features which make it really above Caesar 3: the "gifts" from the gods are really useful and they are much easier to please, the Nile gives you plenty of space for farms, the merchants are always around your town and, last but not least, the citizens are much more Spartan than the Romans of Caesar, meaning that, given food and protection from enemies, they are always happy and eager to please. And the the monuments, the real reson d'etre of this game, are something to be really proud of, when they are finished. It's the first game in months to keep me up till 3 am, totally anaware of the outside world! So why didn't I rate it higher? Easy. The Italian version, the one I own, has immense problems at software level, meaning it can crash anytime without advise. Anyway, buy it!

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 12/28/99, Updated 12/28/99