Feels like a unstable, boring, complicated yet simplified in horrible ways. It looks like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ cartoon, models suck, UI sucks. It has zero feel to it at all and trying to learn it with it's 10hour loading between battles and loading in games is just impossible without losing interest. Might have a good campaign, tried to endure the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ visuals of models and UI but I just could not stand it. I am a big fan of medieval 2 and this game somehow manages to look less realistic. Medieval 2 is 10x more immersive and it is 10x older.

tldr: Total War: Pharaoh Dynasties is the best new historical Total War game in over a decade and well worth the price tag of $40-43.

With the new Dynasties update, Total War: Pharaoh now feels like Total War: Bronze Age. Huge new map, battle improvements, family trees, leaders who can grow, marry, have kids, and die, tons of new units and civilizations to play with, this is now a fully fledged TW Historical title about a time period that is sorely underrepresented in video games. And all this for ~$20 less than the typical cost of a Total War game. If you enjoy historical Total War games, I'd definitely give this a try.

One downside, the Blood in the Sand DLC. The game looks much better with blood effects and the DLC is pretty cheap at $3. However, having to pay for a basic cosmetic upgrade is nonsense especially when there's no other DLC for the game. It looks like CA marketing required the developers to make this DLC before seeing how badly Total War: Pharaoh bombed on release. It's like they had the typical batch of overpriced, minor DLC's they have for all Total War games all lined up but felt like they had to walk it back after the initial fan response. So good on them, I guess? Now just stop nickel & diming (or $10 & $20-ing) the fan base for future Total War games and we can talk about trusting you again, CA.

Pharoah was done raw by CA. CA Sofia came in clutch with a solid game. Then CA corpo said "Nah, let's charge 'em MORE for a game that offers less than what we originally charged". Thankfully Wizards of the Coast came in, kicked their rumps into gear and we got the proper price for the game. To CA's credit, they did offer decent DLC as free updates. Taking those into account I could see this game going for $60 as of this moment.

But they also deleted my old negative review on the game because I properly called out CA for their tyrannical practices. So while I want to say I don't recommend purely for that reason, I will instead say I recommend because the game is certainly where I would like to see it.