Pharaonic Review | Xbox One UK

You get a fair idea of the difficulty of Pharaonic just by the title. It’s not that it’s particularly complex to pronounce, but it takes a few seconds to wrap your tongue around it and spit it out. Phara-o-nic. The game’s quite similar in that respect – at first, it seems near-insurmountable, but after a while you get a fair(o) grip on how to play effectively. After a short preamble regarding the The Red Pharaoh – you know, the immortal, resurrecting kind of pharaoh that plagued ancient Egypt – you’re thrust into the game, playing as a slave who awakens in a dungeon having been chosen by the Gods. So it’s a ‘good-versus-evil’ game, because that theme hasn’t been done before. Anyway, that’s all just hooey, as is most of the story, which is told mostly by chatting to NPCs. The real drive is the tough-as-nails gameplay. Its over-the-top art style lulls you into a false sense of security, because this isn’t your typical side-scrolling RPG actioner; this isn’t a game for your seven-year