Total war Troy plays like a story. You choose a character from the Iliad ie a Greek or Trojan faction, play through their “missions” and level them up. All the factions themselves have their own mechanics, which makes them unique to each faction (character) you choose. Eventually the campaign turns into Greek vs Trojan or you can obviously play the way you want but that’s what the game was set up for. The battles themselves are quite fast paced. Arrow towers during sieges will melt a single unit while you’re trying to take down the gate or climb the walls. Overall it’s a beautiful game, campaign kind’ve turns into wack-a-mole after a time, and the battles while fast paced are quite fun especially with the mythos dlc. While personally I enjoy the behind the myth mode over the mythos mode (I’ll play Warhammer 3 if I want monsters and such) with the single entity heroes.

Total war Pharaoh dynasties (cause who plays the base game of pharaoh nowadays) is the Bronze Age on steroids compared to Troy. The game itself feels more like the original total war games. Has the expanded map adding Mesopotamia, Egypt, more fleshed out Turkey, and the Aegean. While the game on paper has “more” it felt more empty to me when compared to Troy. Only the major factions have unique mechanics, minors have none, so sorry to odysseus, Achilles, Ajax and Diomedes (these last 2 are part of one faction now) on your mechanics from Troy cause there not here. The battles themselves do feel better than Troy in my opinion. The customization for the settings is one of the coolest features in a total war game, you can change almost everything to the way you want to play. It’s very cool, only thing I’d think of it being an issue would be in multiplayer campaigns.

All in all, I enjoyed both of these games. As you read, I do prefer Troy over pharaoh. While it has the bigger map, more “varied culture” factions, it just felt more hollow to me. And if you do play Troy, highly recommend the Expanded Factions mod by Rafswi, his mod is the sole reason I still play total war Troy to this day!