Total War might have dived into the world of Warhammer in a big way in recent years but, at its heart, this is still a series with real-life history at its heart.

Creative Assembly will have thrilled fans by announcing that its next Total War game is Pharaoh – set in Egypt during the Bronze Age. We played a few large-scale battles to see how it’s shaping up so far.

Fading splendour

Booting up Pharaoh will have you quickly learning a whole lot more about a period of history you may have never heard of – the Bronze Age Collapse.

It saw a whole heap of gorgeous civilisations suffer from unrest and instability, prompted by division but also natural disasters and other factors, with the Egyptian empire among that number.

You’ll step in to fill the shoes of a recently dead Pharaoh in the hopes of not only building your own legacy but also protecting yourself from the coming collapse, through diplomacy and – as always – brute force.

Pharaoh will have three main factions: the Egyptians, Hittites and Canaanites, so its focus is a lot tighter than some recent outings from Creative Assembly.

These factions have eight leaders between them, each available to become your avatar as you wage a campaign to conquer the local geography and citizenry, all with different traits and strengths.

It’s a familiar enough setup, and while we didn’t get to sample (or even see) the campaign map or out-of-battle sequences, the strong impression we’re getting is that this is a bit of a return to the roots that saw Rome: Total War become such a breakout hit years ago.

Our preview was limited to a selection of pitched battles to sample, so that’s all we can really comment on, but there are likely to be plenty of fans who are completely fine with a new entry that strips things back and simply fulfils a long wishlisted historical setting without too much fluff.

A thing of beauty

The era of Pharaohs has long been a compelling one from a visual standpoint, with gleaming pyramids and gorgeous architecture capturing imaginations.

That’s something that it would seem Creative Assembly is leveraging in Pharaoh – with cities and oases that look as engaging and intriguing as its battlefields can get.

Of course, there’s less dynamically crazy stuff going on than in Warhammer 3, since this is rooted in reality, but we still get the sense that Pharaoh has enough detail and design to make its locales stand out.

In particular, one of the relatively few major new systems being added seems likely to have major ramifications on our tactics – dynamic in-battle weather. Rather than a fixed weather system for the duration, battles will now have weather that can change abruptly.

This might dry out a creek and create a new flanking path, or do the opposite and create a muddy mire to slow your troops. Baking sun will exhaust them, while raging thunderstorms will curtail ranged attacks and frighten your units.

These effects look superb with sandstorms, in particular, blanketing the battlefield and making for a totally different atmosphere, and really making battles stand out.

Your troops are as detailed as ever, with battle animations that always seem to get minutely more impressive between Total War outings, and while commanders don’t stand out as they do in more bombastic entries, they still have some nice character.

The Art of War

Three battles, albeit a couple of them at a really impressive scale, isn’t enough to get a super-clear sense of how Pharaoh will hold up to the best of Total War when it releases.

That said, it’s more than enough to confirm that the signs are very good – we slipped right into our groove plotting formations and planning charges and counter-charges to take our opponents by surprise.

There’s a gorgeous moment at the start of most Total War battles where you confirm your plans and then start things off, to discover that the enemy isn’t laid out how you presumed or hoped they would be, requiring an immediate and total rethink.

That beautiful forced improvisation, the tactical rewriting that you have to go through multiple times per encounter, is very much present and correct.

While losing out on the huge special powers of Warhammer 3 feels like it could leave things a little pedestrian by comparison, there’s also a real purity of purpose in having a more realistic and pared-back set of options before you.

You’re not teleporting anyone out of trouble or raining down any enormous spells to turn the tide here – if you’ve accidentally steered your chariots into a swamp it’s your own mistake and you’d better hope they can trundle out before being decimated.

That leaves things thrillingly simple, albeit with a huge number of tactical options still open to you at any one time, especially once your army balloons to include dozens of units.

First impressions

While we didn’t play through a particularly hefty slice of Pharaoh, what we did see was heartening – a pared-down and old-school reminder of what makes the series so compelling.

We’ve wanted the series to visit ancient Egypt since it first launched, and to get that wish realised will hopefully be extremely rewarding when the game launches later this year.