YMMV / Total War: Pharaoh

• Author's Saving Throw: In response to the game’s lukewarm reception and poor sales, Creative Assembly announced that they would be significantly lowering the price and issuing a partial refund to all who had purchased it, in addition to releasing the first DLC pack for free and committing to future updates that would flesh out the map and add new factions.
• Critical Dissonance: While professional critics were fairly positive to the game, mainstream player reception has been much more negative, with the primary criticisms directed towards the similarities to TROY (see below) and what many viewed as an unjustifiably high price. It ended up having one of the lowest player turnouts in the franchise's history, and is often torn apart on various sites such as Youtube or Reddit.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Look at the nomadic Haribu faction and you'll see that their symbol is the Cherub. Some archaeologists have described them as a possible precursor of the Hebrews and that they might have mixed with the Canaanites to create a new ethnic identity.
  • The names of the two faction leaders of the High Tide DLC are not as random as one might think:
    • Iolaos of the Sherden faction shares a name with the nephew (and sometimes lover) of Hercules from the Greek mythology which according to legend settled Sardinia on the order of the mythic hero. It is also referencing some of the theories that the Sherden people were the Nuragic civilization of Sardinia.
    • The Peleset factions are the ancestors of the Philistines. Their leaders' name, Walwettes, is Theorized to be the pre-Hebrew version of Goliath.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: One of the primary criticisms of the game, is how similar it is to A Total War Saga: TROY, with much of the same UI and mechanics, to the point some derisively refer to it as just DLC for the latter game.
• Tainted by the Preview: When the game was initially announced, fan reception proved very mixed, with many people disappointed that the Total War franchise was doing another Bronze Age game (after TROY), instead of doing sequels to Empire: Total War or Medieval: Total War, which fans had been clamoring for for some time. This didn't abate as time went on, with many comments on previews or gameplay demonstrations being critical.

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