this article “rules”. not only does it criticize total war for being too formulaic when it comes to real time battles, it criticizes total war for choosing to flesh out macro strategy elements and more importantly to use a different setting.
which leads to this paragraph:
Ancient Egypt is fertile ground for history nerds, but rarely for its battlefields, so the decision to shift the series there, with a limited number of factions and regions to conquer, seemed slightly off. Not to sound like one of those kinds of history gamers, but when pitching a historical Total War game at least part of the appeal is surely going to come from people's interest in the history being depicted. And no offence to those who are into this, but I don't know if there were millions of people chomping at the bit for their chance to take on the checks Bible Hittites.
this is so baffling and dismissive on why people play historical war simulators. no discussion on how total war brings in historians (tw: three kingdoms got THE FRENCH DUDE who knows rotk history) and instead dismissal on what makes history simulators interesting because it isn’t about many factions like in warhammer. bronze age is an interesting period to make a game in; we should be interrogating its history more.
i’m no total war defender and there are real criticisms for pharaoh (it’s clearly underbaked), but i have to say that this article is like someone writing a twitter thread about how they don’t get why other people like this game. if this is critical independent game press journalism, i fear for its anti-intellectual and smarmy future.