I dont really want a medieval 3, Shogun 3, or Empire 2 anymore. CA would just ruin the game as well as the title associated with it. They're basically going to stick with this game style. This is CA now. If people enjoy it cool, but i think I'll be focusing on other strat games from now on. Plenty of total war style games out these days
Agree 100% Those asking for medieval 3, shogun 3 or empire 2 are dreamers and i get them, but its not happening. We wont have medieval 3 for the near future, even if CA releases medieval 3 its going to be just a husk of a broken engine with a broken and dying company
Sadly you're right, honestly I'd just like medieval 2 remastered with online multiplayer campaigns added because that's about the only way I can see CA successfully handling Medieval at this point.
Unpopular opinion: I think Troy was pretty good, a solid 3.5/5 for me. It could have been even better with further support, as it had lots of new features and mechanics that were steps forward for TW as a whole. With Pharoah I just don't know who it's for, it doesn't really appeal to the history buff in me but it also doesn't appeal to the fantasy/mythology fan in me either. Combine that with the ridiculously high price for a sagas game and I just don't see myself ever buying it.
@@FlyingFox86 some people (perhaps just a vocal handful I don't know) seem to actively dislike it and the overall consensus on it seems mixed at best. Still I'm glad its not just me that enjoyed it, though a Stephen Fry narration wouldn't have hurt!
Volound is so right about historical vs fantasy total war. It's a distinction thats pushed by CA that isnt really real. I would consider myself more aligned to the 'historical' side but i totally agree with you that a more ahistorical version of this would be more interesting. CA thinks for some reason historical means like obsessively strict historical. It's like recreating gladiator units in the original rome. Probably not exactly super historical but people didnt care. The real problems are deep in the design and historical or not those issues persist
yeah and even that is not true for this game. Nothing 'strictly' historical about this game. Besides being in a historical setting nothing is historical accurate about the gameplay at all.
When you talk about sieges, it reminds me that phrase: Players will optimize fun out of the game. Perhaps it would be more interesting, if CA wanted epic sieges that actually matter. Screw random free garrisons. If sieges needs to be long and epic it should have significant impact on the campaign. But then again.. luring army outside of the settlement is still an easy cheese. This is tough issue to solve. Honestly when I played Shogun 2 and sieges were so much fun to play, I almost never played offensive sieges because they were so difficult, unless I was in significant advantage to autoresolve, or it was defensive siege where I could wipe 2 times bigger stacks and my matchlocks would get 400kills each. Perhaps there is no way to make sieges "fun" for both attacker and defender and perhaps they shouldn't be ballanced, because at least I loved those defensive sieges in Shogun 2, can't say I enjoy anything about sieges in WH3 beside them being on cool map, that can get really frustrating they are not made for big armies and if they are, they are expecting you to split your army into 3-5 stacks, instead of epic siege like LOTR Minas Tirith. Or helms deep, btw, both these were one side attacks... lol, it's suprising to find out that 1 way siege was never the issue, it was the bad ballance and boring layouts. Like Walls not worth defeding? The fuck...
Troy is on my wishlist. Once it'll get a big discount i'll end up picking it up with the dlc as i love ancient mythology and it's a fun romp. Here... Not even wishlisted. The theme and the character system clashes and I'm not interested in this region of the Bronze Age.
I got Troy when it was free on Epic. I really enjoy it when I played it at launch (though it s certainly not without fault). I haven't played it in a very long time, but it supposedly has gotten considerably better. Also, as always, the modding scene has expanded a lot since then, which is always a plus.
About the morale thing, I think I heard somewhere a while ago that "if you destroy a Quarter of an army, that army is considered routed" and seriously, if you want to know how exhausting physical combat is? Just watch a boxing match. a single round goes how long? 2 minutes? and the ATHLETES that do nothing but train for it every day have red glowing heads, are sweating buckets and are out of breath after just 2 or 3 rounds already, where they had BREAKS in between! So yeah, swining huge weapons while clad in armor is exhausting business, especially considering that 98% of a soldiers time is spend getting to the place they're going to fight at while carrying all that luggage around. One thing I wanted to add in favour of the light vs heavy armor discussion though. Isn't that the same way in WH 3 too? Heavy armor wins over light armor? Like take Dwarf Warriors of Jade Warriors, Tier 1 units. You can throw nearly any Tier 2 or even Tier 3 melee unit of other factions against them and they won't loose as long as those units don't have comparable Armor levels. Perhaps it would be a different thing if you could bring lightly armored "Shock Troops" that have next to no defense, but ridiculous attack and AP stats but less total damage than "damage dealer" Light Armor troups. Or yeah balance it that Heavy Troops are Tanks and Light Troops are DPS or something like that.
In tww3 super heavy units wasn't op, becouse there are 1) AP damage dealing units like blood letters or wardancers. Nasty slulkers t2 unit will cut jade warriors to pieces. 2) magic 3) AP ranged units 4) artillery 5) abilities like Morris engine 6) monster AP infantry, AP cavalry In TWP there is none of this
In TWWH3 even non-ap, anti-infantry wardancers with low/no armour can cut through certain armoured units. Armour is an rng damage negation, not guaranteed. Armour only rolls rng if your melee defense failed to dodge attack, so high melee defence is more effective. Having dwarf style low dmg output, gives offensive units more chances to get past your armour. Armour also gets shadow nerfed as a unit tires. Just watch a multiplayer match with someone against Dwarves.
okay thanks, I just never watched MP matches at all, I'm not interested in that ^^' And I was mostly saying melee vs melee unit I'd think heavily armored would always win, but yeah would need to check that somehow in MP sessions, would be just nice if I could control both armies to have better tests :x
Pharoh: A DLC for Troy that CA are trying to con people into thinking it's a full game and charging full price. I won't be buying it until it goes for £10 on Steam, like I do with all TW games since the Rome 2 debacle.
Making campaign artifically longer isn't an issue as long as turn times are fast. I hate on WH IME there is this "fear/punishment" of pressing next turn because you are waiting a long time for the finish of the turn so you try do to as much as you can in that turn. AI needs to make their turns too and needs them a lot since they are not efficient even with all those cheats.
Thanks for the in depth review! Coming off a few campaigns of Med II, watching the battle(blob)? footage genuinely insulted me haha Ultimate battle sim has better physics then any modern TW..... god the battles are just bad to watch.
Isn’t it funny that just as CA is launching this, I’m playing rome total war (remastered admittedly). I would rather play something old that works decently, than this trash.
I've had Rome remastered in my library for a while now (pretty much since it came out), haven't gotten around to playing it. Are you having fun with it?
@@FlyingFox86 it is better than the original, but still has some of the same issues. A big consideration though is that alliances mean nothing. The AI will always attack what they perceive is a weakly defended settlement, and will break alliances to do so.
I'm pretty sure Thrones of Britannia wasn't made by CA Sofia. Troy got screwed over by its bad launch state, it has become a great game. As for Pharaoh, meh, wake me up when they merge it with Troy and add myth units.
@@user-dx6bv2pe1s Yeah, afaik, they did some DLC for Rome 2, then made Troy and now Pharaoh. I have no idea who the devs of ToB were, but I'm pretty sure it's not CA Sofia.
Youre not rating this fair at all lol. Fantasy and history are fully different ca genres and cannot be compared. Imagine if I’m a Harry Potter fan for whatever reason. And somebody tries to get me to read Sherlock holmes. And I drop a “ London without magic? No thanks “ it doesn’t work because that’s not the genre they were going for. Don’t get me wrong I absolutely hate pharaoh and they should make better history games but you rated it really weird
AdmiralPrice was a big supporter of Troy and its mechanics and had he stayed on RUclips then eventually the TW community would've converted and agreed with him that Troy was actually quite good but missing some X factors, same with this game except the factions don't have the unit and playstyle variety that the Troy factions did, like costin said at the beginning
Only 50 user reviews on steam for Pharoah (For release day)... Rome 2 has 45,000 over the course of many years, and the fairly new Warhammer 3 has 63,000. I'm glad CA managed to make a game neither side of the community buys.
The problem is that the company looks at RUclipsrs who received the game as a gift from the company. They will certainly not give their honest opinion about the game. These are the main cause of the problem that made their subscribers buy the game even if it was bad, which raises the sales percentage for the greedy company
@@Costin_Gaming fair enough. I mean I loved Western Rome, but it does seem like it mainly just works for W o E Rome, and really only for a playthough of each, which I feel is becoming more common in TW games. More and more, tey seem to be making thei games for a player who will play one or two campaigns and enjoy the game enough to buy DLC, but not enough to try and play more campaigns and get burnt on shallow mechanics.
And that's the problem, games are very expensive these days and paying this much for a game that's just "fine" is kind of a non-starter. Although from my personal point of view it seems a bit weaker than fine
Its horrid everything about this game screams casual gamer and the Troy Engine is so bad it deserves to flop and to add to that nobody wanted this game.
I dont really want a medieval 3, Shogun 3, or Empire 2 anymore. CA would just ruin the game as well as the title associated with it.
They're basically going to stick with this game style. This is CA now. If people enjoy it cool, but i think I'll be focusing on other strat games from now on. Plenty of total war style games out these days
Agree 100% Those asking for medieval 3, shogun 3 or empire 2 are dreamers and i get them, but its not happening. We wont have medieval 3 for the near future, even if CA releases medieval 3 its going to be just a husk of a broken engine with a broken and dying company
Sadly you're right, honestly I'd just like medieval 2 remastered with online multiplayer campaigns added because that's about the only way I can see CA successfully handling Medieval at this point.
I just hope they do a good med 2 remaster. Their new games have been shit for a decade.
New bad games won't ruin old games unless you are blizzard and you make old version (WH: Reforged) unavaiable and only way to play it is piracy, lol.
@@Brutik5
If someone says "Rome Total war" what does your mind think of? Chances are it's Rome 2.
I will just play as Tomb Kings if I want the Egyptian experience.
A good egyptian is a dead one (Sea people's quote).
@Paddy234 Oh boy are you historical players gonna be salty whenever they announce Total War 40k !
Should try Impressions Games' Pharaoh for a better depiction of the setting heh. And there are naval battles!
This "game" should have been a Troy DLC/update becouse that's what it looks like and I'm sure also how it feels like.
Not only that it would have provided more unit and faction variety.
It started out as a dlc for Troy.
Unpopular opinion: I think Troy was pretty good, a solid 3.5/5 for me.
It could have been even better with further support, as it had lots of new features and mechanics that were steps forward for TW as a whole.
With Pharoah I just don't know who it's for, it doesn't really appeal to the history buff in me but it also doesn't appeal to the fantasy/mythology fan in me either. Combine that with the ridiculously high price for a sagas game and I just don't see myself ever buying it.
I didn't know that was an unpopular opinion. Troy is a solid game in my opinion.
@@FlyingFox86 some people (perhaps just a vocal handful I don't know) seem to actively dislike it and the overall consensus on it seems mixed at best. Still I'm glad its not just me that enjoyed it, though a Stephen Fry narration wouldn't have hurt!
Volound is so right about historical vs fantasy total war. It's a distinction thats pushed by CA that isnt really real. I would consider myself more aligned to the 'historical' side but i totally agree with you that a more ahistorical version of this would be more interesting. CA thinks for some reason historical means like obsessively strict historical. It's like recreating gladiator units in the original rome. Probably not exactly super historical but people didnt care.
The real problems are deep in the design and historical or not those issues persist
yeah and even that is not true for this game. Nothing 'strictly' historical about this game. Besides being in a historical setting nothing is historical accurate about the gameplay at all.
When you talk about sieges, it reminds me that phrase: Players will optimize fun out of the game.
Perhaps it would be more interesting, if CA wanted epic sieges that actually matter. Screw random free garrisons. If sieges needs to be long and epic it should have significant impact on the campaign. But then again.. luring army outside of the settlement is still an easy cheese. This is tough issue to solve. Honestly when I played Shogun 2 and sieges were so much fun to play, I almost never played offensive sieges because they were so difficult, unless I was in significant advantage to autoresolve, or it was defensive siege where I could wipe 2 times bigger stacks and my matchlocks would get 400kills each. Perhaps there is no way to make sieges "fun" for both attacker and defender and perhaps they shouldn't be ballanced, because at least I loved those defensive sieges in Shogun 2, can't say I enjoy anything about sieges in WH3 beside them being on cool map, that can get really frustrating they are not made for big armies and if they are, they are expecting you to split your army into 3-5 stacks, instead of epic siege like LOTR Minas Tirith. Or helms deep, btw, both these were one side attacks... lol, it's suprising to find out that 1 way siege was never the issue, it was the bad ballance and boring layouts. Like Walls not worth defeding? The fuck...
There is a way. Look at Stronghold. And just try to adapt it for tw
I worked on this game, so so gutted all our hard work was for these kind of reviews :(
Troy is on my wishlist.
Once it'll get a big discount i'll end up picking it up with the dlc as i love ancient mythology and it's a fun romp.
Here... Not even wishlisted. The theme and the character system clashes and I'm not interested in this region of the Bronze Age.
Got it on a big discount some months ago. Fun game for the right price imo.
I got Troy when it was free on Epic. I really enjoy it when I played it at launch (though it s certainly not without fault). I haven't played it in a very long time, but it supposedly has gotten considerably better.
Also, as always, the modding scene has expanded a lot since then, which is always a plus.
About the morale thing, I think I heard somewhere a while ago that "if you destroy a Quarter of an army, that army is considered routed" and seriously, if you want to know how exhausting physical combat is? Just watch a boxing match. a single round goes how long? 2 minutes? and the ATHLETES that do nothing but train for it every day have red glowing heads, are sweating buckets and are out of breath after just 2 or 3 rounds already, where they had BREAKS in between!
So yeah, swining huge weapons while clad in armor is exhausting business, especially considering that 98% of a soldiers time is spend getting to the place they're going to fight at while carrying all that luggage around.
One thing I wanted to add in favour of the light vs heavy armor discussion though. Isn't that the same way in WH 3 too? Heavy armor wins over light armor? Like take Dwarf Warriors of Jade Warriors, Tier 1 units. You can throw nearly any Tier 2 or even Tier 3 melee unit of other factions against them and they won't loose as long as those units don't have comparable Armor levels. Perhaps it would be a different thing if you could bring lightly armored "Shock Troops" that have next to no defense, but ridiculous attack and AP stats but less total damage than "damage dealer" Light Armor troups. Or yeah balance it that Heavy Troops are Tanks and Light Troops are DPS or something like that.
In tww3 super heavy units wasn't op, becouse there are
1) AP damage dealing units like blood letters or wardancers. Nasty slulkers t2 unit will cut jade warriors to pieces.
2) magic
3) AP ranged units
4) artillery
5) abilities like Morris engine
6) monster AP infantry, AP cavalry
In TWP there is none of this
In TWWH3 even non-ap, anti-infantry wardancers with low/no armour can cut through certain armoured units. Armour is an rng damage negation, not guaranteed. Armour only rolls rng if your melee defense failed to dodge attack, so high melee defence is more effective. Having dwarf style low dmg output, gives offensive units more chances to get past your armour. Armour also gets shadow nerfed as a unit tires.
Just watch a multiplayer match with someone against Dwarves.
okay thanks, I just never watched MP matches at all, I'm not interested in that ^^' And I was mostly saying melee vs melee unit I'd think heavily armored would always win, but yeah would need to check that somehow in MP sessions, would be just nice if I could control both armies to have better tests :x
Pharoh: A DLC for Troy that CA are trying to con people into thinking it's a full game and charging full price.
I won't be buying it until it goes for £10 on Steam, like I do with all TW games since the Rome 2 debacle.
Good review, just a correction: Sofia didn't make thrones of britannia
For Atem you can actually dedicate 4 generals - three from favor, 1 as unique power bonus
I really dislike the way the UI and unit cards look. Like half-finished with lots of empty space and minimalistic stylization.
CA listening to this feedback: Visual pack incoming for the low price of £19.99!
Making campaign artifically longer isn't an issue as long as turn times are fast. I hate on WH IME there is this "fear/punishment" of pressing next turn because you are waiting a long time for the finish of the turn so you try do to as much as you can in that turn.
AI needs to make their turns too and needs them a lot since they are not efficient even with all those cheats.
True. I would love for there to be a slower pace in most TW campaigns if it weren't for the turn times that come with that.
Thanks for the in depth review!
Coming off a few campaigns of Med II, watching the battle(blob)? footage genuinely insulted me haha Ultimate battle sim has better physics then any modern TW..... god the battles are just bad to watch.
Isn’t it funny that just as CA is launching this, I’m playing rome total war (remastered admittedly). I would rather play something old that works decently, than this trash.
I've had Rome remastered in my library for a while now (pretty much since it came out), haven't gotten around to playing it.
Are you having fun with it?
@@FlyingFox86 it is better than the original, but still has some of the same issues. A big consideration though is that alliances mean nothing. The AI will always attack what they perceive is a weakly defended settlement, and will break alliances to do so.
@@1234mallard i am still playing rome 2 lmao
IMO instead of these focused games they should make one combined Iron Age game covering the whole Mediterranean.
I'm pretty sure Thrones of Britannia wasn't made by CA Sofia. Troy got screwed over by its bad launch state, it has become a great game. As for Pharaoh, meh, wake me up when they merge it with Troy and add myth units.
@@user-dx6bv2pe1s Yeah, afaik, they did some DLC for Rome 2, then made Troy and now Pharaoh. I have no idea who the devs of ToB were, but I'm pretty sure it's not CA Sofia.
@@viamdolor9226 Thrones was Jack Lusted's project, he's a lead dev from the UK studio
Sad that IGN gives it an 8/10.
Imagine tomb kings without constructs or magic. No thanks, I will keep playing warhammer.
Also medieval is bretonnia without magic and flying knights. No thanks! xD (Honestly, I enjoy WH3 Bretonnia more than I did Medieval 2)
Ok zoomer.
Youre not rating this fair at all lol. Fantasy and history are fully different ca genres and cannot be compared. Imagine if I’m a Harry Potter fan for whatever reason. And somebody tries to get me to read Sherlock holmes. And I drop a “ London without magic? No thanks “ it doesn’t work because that’s not the genre they were going for. Don’t get me wrong I absolutely hate pharaoh and they should make better history games but you rated it really weird
Let's make it clear it's not the theme it's the lay out and price for what is a dlc
I don't pay for mods. Period.
I appreciate an honest review and the detail you gave.
reminder: Thrones were not made by Sofia
Alright I got that, but still this is the third Saga game and it's still a disaster.
Must disagree. I’ve found it an good not excellent but a worthy total war with some ingenious campaign factors
Well this review saved my wallet now back to Troy then 😁
Ofc Troy was way better. Because it was free and I actually played it.
AdmiralPrice was a big supporter of Troy and its mechanics and had he stayed on RUclips then eventually the TW community would've converted and agreed with him that Troy was actually quite good but missing some X factors, same with this game except the factions don't have the unit and playstyle variety that the Troy factions did, like costin said at the beginning
Who? Never heard of them. It took me only 1 day to hate Troy, 2 days to never play it again.
@@chazz00999 make up your own mind for once, sheep
WORST TOTAL WAR GAME SINCE WH3 AMIRITE GUYS?!?!?!?!
Worst since Thrones so yeah.
I bought this game for 5 bucks, very good one.
Pharaoh is bigger and deeper than shogun2...hardly i could call this as worst game. Not great not terrible
TBH, shogun 2 is the most shallow total war by far, but people keep praising it because of some weeb shit in that game
I liked TW Troy
Well i havent had so much fun since Rome total war to be honest, in my opinion ign made a much better review.
I hate this building icons. It looks cheap and lazy. With that cartoon style it looks like mobile game
How much would you pay for this game?
And now it's great.
Only 50 user reviews on steam for Pharoah (For release day)... Rome 2 has 45,000 over the course of many years, and the fairly new Warhammer 3 has 63,000. I'm glad CA managed to make a game neither side of the community buys.
Pharaoh just got released...Not like rome2
Most people wait till they write a review. You cannot rate something till you use it
The problem is that the company looks at RUclipsrs who received the game as a gift from the company. They will certainly not give their honest opinion about the game. These are the main cause of the problem that made their subscribers buy the game even if it was bad, which raises the sales percentage for the greedy company
thank you for the honesty & detail.
Funny how you are comparing one bad game to another bad game.
A shame, i really hoped this would be the good shit.
"#immortalempires"
How is "artificial" slowing down here different than Attila? Or are you also not a fan of the mechanicst there?
Atilla's campaign is pretty frustrating I think.
@@Costin_Gaming fair enough. I mean I loved Western Rome, but it does seem like it mainly just works for W o E Rome, and really only for a playthough of each, which I feel is becoming more common in TW games. More and more, tey seem to be making thei games for a player who will play one or two campaigns and enjoy the game enough to buy DLC, but not enough to try and play more campaigns and get burnt on shallow mechanics.
Thanks for taking one for the team!
Looks like an 8 bit NES game. 🤬
The game is fine.
I want to pay 60 USD for great games... not "fine" games. Fine games should cost 30 USD
The game is not fine. Ditch the sunk-cost fallacy.
@@luigisaguier8336
Lol, there are great games from indie devs that cost 30 dollars
@@luigisaguier8336you can find it for 37$/35€ on key shops
And that's the problem, games are very expensive these days and paying this much for a game that's just "fine" is kind of a non-starter. Although from my personal point of view it seems a bit weaker than fine
stop crying its very good
Its horrid everything about this game screams casual gamer and the Troy Engine is so bad it deserves to flop and to add to that nobody wanted this game.